I do seem to have overlooked that the article focuses on the creators / developers (my brain just lumped all of the "next generation" of employees into a single group). You right.
Yep. Fuck Nintendo. I don't care how good their games might be, they're not getting another dime from me for as long as they're hostile to their community and customers.
That's unlikely since they'd still be Japanese most likely
Nintendo's especially strict content creator and fan game creator practices stem from Japanese Copyright law encouraging IP owners to be waaaaaaaay more aggressive about protecting them than in most other IP markets.
Like I'm pretty sure the concept of fair use isn't legally recognized in Japan.
I'm going to need sources on that copyright law especially because of the amount of misinformation that is spread online about Japan deliberately by trolls and misinformed users
they may make slow hardware but like every one of their consoles last forever. I think my n64 was like nokia level murder proof, i remember a buddy powerbombing his while we were playing wrestling and it didnt even hiccup.
I used my DSi so much the battery nearly exploded. Swelled so much it broke the rear panel... yet, I bet if I get a new battery it'll fire right back up.
It's not about the hardware, obviously better hardware is better but that's not what it's about. It's true tho that they must hate their customers, especially people in competitive scenes and modding.
The problem is the idea of working on games sounds amazing... and it allows them to pull in a constant fresh young pool of eager workers willing to completely destroy themselves to make their mark on the world and release something they're passionate about...
And all these publicly traded ghoulish-MBA-run companies would rather have more cheap inexperienced "Pikmin" type workers to throw at endless "copycat-chase-whatever-concept-is-popular-and-constantly-pivot-toward-the-popular-right-now" type game projects than experts in their field with dozens of titles under their belt, decades of design, or artistic, or programming experience.
Actually Nintendo is one of the few companies who hasn't burned out their designers - as easily exemplified by people like Shigeru Miyamoto literally having been there his entire life for more than 40 years at a single company.
This is something unheard of outside of companies like Nintendo, but also Japan in general. Even major industry figureheads like John Carmack, Ken Levine, Jason West and Vince Zampella (the guys who made Call of Duty that Bobby Kotick fucked over and then started Respawn and made Apex Legends - whose features Fortnite stole and added to their own game - just like Fortnite also did with PUBG) - all of whom no longer are at the original companies where they made multi-billion-dollar IPs possible... and then there's guys like Cliff Blezinski who were on the literal front pages of game magazines and keynote speaking roles at industry events like E3 in the mid-2000s with Gears of War... who just literally quit making games after leaving Epic and then starting a studio that went out of business a few years back.
Nintendo's biggest problem is that the old master game designers running the place basically don't seem to "get" the internet... so they have dumb ideas about emulation and ROMs, online fan interactions and e-sports, terrible support for modern ancillary features indirectly related to gaming like voice chat, complex parental controls, advanced technical features like Dolby ATMOS sound, HDR color space, DLSS and modern shader pipelines.