Nintendo would "rather go in a different direction" than follow AI trend, says Miyamoto
Nintendo would "rather go in a different direction" than follow AI trend, says Miyamoto
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has stated the company would "rather go in a different direction" when it comes to using AI.
Thankfully, Nintendo gets it.
One thing about them, they might be assholes when it comes to game preservation and whatnot, but they always did their own thing based on what they think gamers would like.
They're a toy company. That's how they think of themselves. The fun comes first. That's why they also try new gimmicks in games and then most of the time never do it again. In their minds they already made that toy.
Which is honestly something I love about their games. I play Nintendo for some casual gaming fun, then I go to Steam for my preferred niches.
The one glaring exception here is Pokemon, but that's technically Game Freak instead of Nintendo proper, so I guess they're okay making the same toy over and over because it's a gold mine.
That... actually explains the logic of this lawsuit for me. I still disagree and think they're overly litigious fucks, but I think I might understand a less malicious argument for it. If someone mods a see 'n say to have a different audio track and slaps some new stickers on it, that's still a see 'n say, right? The mechanism is fundamental to the product - a see n say is the spinning wheel -> random noise and Pokemon is video game where you throw balls at wild not-animals to catch them and use them to battle people. There's a difference between a toy that's heavily inspired by another one and being an edgy five year old with a firearm sticker pack who gives them to the cows and chickens and sheep.
I really have more of a games as art philosophy though, and I'll just point to the works of Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp to make my argument here, my edible just kicked in.
If Nintendo weren't such pricks about their IP, they would be a perfect company. They don't chase short-lived trends, they don't make live-service slop or loot boxes, their DLC is usually great (without feeling necessary), they constantly experiment and innovate, and most of their hardware is incredibly durable and reliable (joycon drift being the big exception). But if you make a fan game or host a tournament using one of their games, even if it's been out of print for 20 years, even if you're not monetizing it, they will come after you. It's the one thing I really hate about them.
If Nintendo weren’t such pricks about their IP, they would be a perfect company
They also have some atrocious work culture. Managers screaming at people. Developers routinely overworked to burnout. Leads can be egomaniacal in their pursuit of a particular vision.
The IP attitude is deeply rooted in a company culture of strict control and authoritarian attitudes.
That said, they produce some incredible art and style. So it's hard to argue with the results.
Wish people would be more comfortable simply feeling inspired by Nintendo and doing their own things, rather than trying to harvest Nintendo IP and fight them for control. Would make everyone happier over the long term.
That's more of a Japanese company thing than something specific to Nintendo.
Not that it makes it OK, but this is a country that looked at how workers are treated in America and decided the problem was not going hard enough.
Oh, I'm sure sure their culture is terrible, but that's also about what I expect from any game developer in 2024. At least they're not like Microsoft, buying up small studios, working them to death, and then shutting them down for short-term profit. But you're absolutely right, that is a shitty thing about their company that I completely glossed over.
Also, to he fair, Palword tried to do something cool inspired by Pokémon, and The Pokémon Company and Nintendo are suing them on what seems like a bullshit patent-troll claim. I actually think some of their character designs do seem like blatant rip-offs, but the idea that those games are too mechanically similar is nonsense.
Has anyone told them they can probably use AI to search for opportunities for lawsuits?
They already do that. I think it was Did You Know Gaming channel's video about Pókemon ROM hacks and they mentioned that few of them were likely taken down because they were targeted by an AI crawler.
Nintendo Lawyers realizing some of their IP is represented in LLM training data and outputs.
Oh, If love it if their lawyers tore a big strip out of Open AI (not that OpenAI need any help operating their massive money furnace.)
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Pokemon effectively makes them all the money they need and all they need to do is sick one of the rabid lawyers they keep in the basement on anyone even remotely infringing upon what they think they own.
They're like a litigation equivalent to McDonald's land ownership twist to company financial equivalency.
They want AI to get to a point where they can sue it.
Nintendo n....
Wait they did a good thing? huh, that's... new
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I mean morally good, if Disney didn't suck total dogshit now, I'd call Nintendo the Disney of Gaming
It's too early. In 10 years Nintendo will, it's the Nintendo rhythm.
You don't have to shove AI into everything but it allows for a lot of amazing and crazy things. Gameplay first and I don't think we need AI for this, but a lot of side elements can be handled by AI. Be it sounds, dialogues, voices, randomness in monster or level design etc. In general, AI could be good with filling games with content without it being generic. It will help to elevate content past obviously identifiable "random" content. Same way an AI image doesn't look AI if it's well made. However, we'll get a lot of shovelware stuff of lazy companies, no one needs those.
There is already a lot of work in generative game design that doesn't involve AI, including a lot of procedurally generated items. There is also a lot of bad generated designs as the inputs allowed to be changed are not sufficient enough to create enough variance.
I know it was funky in its initial release, but I miss when openAI had free api access so a bunch of games temporarily had chat with NPCs. It was really cool.
Spacebourne 2 had an AI ship computer you could ask questions or whatever. Craftopia had all NPCs and monsters with chat capabilities which was kinda hilarious because a goblin that's attacking you would tell you it's peaceful and would never hurt anyone lol
It's one thing I've wanted forever to be in a video game, the ability to communicate what I want to communicate and to get dynamic responses, not just some dialogue wheel or whatever
I mean, look at No Man's Sky. It's not Ai but some algorithm creating the world and it looks really generic and the same everywhere.
I hope using AI can make worlds like that feel actually different.
Yeah that semi randomness of NMS is what I had in mind. AI could improve that a lot.
Good thing happens:
Lemmy: Yeah but lawsuits am I right?
Can't you people be happy for one goddamn second?
SadlyNo
No, it's fucking Nintendo
We have not once encountered a corporate shitstain as aggressive as them.
They make some good games, that's all. Everything else about them sucks.
We have not once encountered a corporate shitstain as aggressive as them.
Are you kidding? You can't think of a single company in the modern games industry worse than Nintendo? Do EA, Ubisoft, and Activision Blizzard not exist in your reality? What did they do in your eyes that makes them worse than sex abusers and slave drivers?
Fuck Nintendo
Care to expand? They seem like one of the best video game companies out there, even though they are traditional Japanese patriarchy
Dunno why people down voted you for asking, but personally while I love some of their games and the creative direction they take their consoles - they just have way too many anti-consumer practices.
From recent memory, they've DMCA takedowned YouTube videos of people playing modded versions of Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom released. This isn't the firs time they've DMCA takedowned videos they didn't like, including videos showing emulation in the past. Their online service, despite costing money to play games online, primarily relies on peer to peer networking when their console has a very weak networking chip, meaning most online games have to account for very poor connections. They have been very aggressive in shutting down websites distributing Roms for games that no longer have a way to be accessed or played. It stinks that you have to pay for their online service if you want any form of save data backups, and even those are iffy because they really don't want you putting it on more than one console. Their handling of joyconn drift has left a lot to be desired. They replaced them... Sometimes... And when they did you had to wait a while and usually the replacement would develop it, too.
- throwing copyright strikes left and right at fan videos
- threatening developers of fan games with lawsuits
- actively working against game
preventionpreservation and emulation
It's also worth noting that recently console modding became illegal in Japan. It's obvious who pushed for it
Edit: fucking autocorrect lol
This decision is based, but fuck Nintendo in general for suing palworld and everything Nintendo does legally
They’re constantly suing people just for existing on a day that ends in Y. It’s just really twisted that a company that exists to make fun toys is so cartoonishly evil.
I was going to reply but the other replies have covered everything already!
For me, it's their greed regarding old titles. I bought some older games on the Wii and/or 3ds stores. Well, those go away and you don't get a license for that same game on the new system (even though, presumably, all the porting/emulation work has already been done). Little things like that
They can't automate the legal team yet.
Massive massive W for once
Maybe the 'what the customer wants' route would have been more successful?
Huh. Time to buy some stock.
If the "different direction" to sue everyone who liked them before?!
At least from their games
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/nintendo-now-apparently-uses-ai-“lawyers”-to-dmca-sites….1671298/
Yeah, how would suing something that can't feel pain help you get it up...
Sure it's nice to hear and all but I wrote them off a long time ago and this does nothing to make up for terrible ethics.
The different direction;
No more original IP, and 99% of profits come from litigating against end users.
(It's the same direction as before, just not including AI yet)
List of a few of Nintendo's new IPs from the last 15 or so years:
- Arms
- Good Job!
- 1-2 Switch
- Dillon
- Splatoon
- Snipperclips
- Pushmo
- Steel Diver
- Fluidity
- Nintendoland
Just because you aren't buying/playing them doesn't mean they aren't making them. Let's also not ignore the amount of time to develop a game has increased significantly or how gamers overwhelmingly choose to buy games from well-known IP. They are a company and need to pay their employees. I'm not a fan of Nintendo's litigation practices, but I'm also not a fan of how whiny and bitchy gamers have become. If they aren't whining and or bitching, they are harassing developers and actors.
I mean, that direction is extremely lucrative, whereas AI is extremely expensive and totally unproven to be profitable.
Nintendo noticed ai exists just now and thus dodged the hype cycle
Good for them. I’d love to see ALL industries do this but that’s going to be impossible. We’d need greed eradicated before that happens.
I'm sure it makes designing Pokémon much easier
That's Game Freak. Nintendo is the publisher, and it owns 32% of The Pokémon Company, but they don't actually develop the games.
Is this the Nintendo redemption arc?
Nope, just your regularly scheduled Nintendo technology lag.
Would rather be normal and not dumb.
Nintendo can't even do games on a technical standard higher than 2012, how should they use AI? And their hardware is way to weak as well BTW.
They're just lucky that the current AI Models are crap, otherwise this would be the next standard they're missing in their "more of the same since 1980" games.
They should use more energy and money for developing innovative games than suing every fart on the planet.
I'll never understand how these always get downvoted. I understand Nintendo people love their zelda and mario games, but their console is less powerful than most mobile phones. I bought disco elysium on the switch that i only have for my nephew. It has a lot of trouble running DISCO ELYSIUM!
If you only judge games based on graphics, I understand your point of view.
But I think it can be argued that Nintendo's gameplay/design is pretty often up to date, if not ahead of it's time. And tbh to me that matters the most.
Ex: Mario Wonder, Odyssey, BOTW, TOTK, Metroid Dread, Animal Crossing, etc
Because even though everyone knows Nintendo's consoles are under powered, they still usually deliver a ton of gameplay fun.
In this particular case, very few people want more "AI" in their stuff... and as even OP admits, current "AI" is crap. So why would I want to pay extra $$$ for hardware that can run "AI" when my gaming experience is likely not going to improve one bit?
They’re just lucky that the current AI Models are crap, otherwise this would be the next standard they’re missing in their “more of the same since 1980” games.
So you are complaining they are not adopting something you admit is currently crap?!
I'm going to complain about billionaire taxes then, I mean I have no billions but I'll complain anyway
No, I'm saying, that Nintendo wouldnt benefit at all from AI, so why should they use it in the first place? And the reasons for that are:
-AI in it's current state can only support in certain areas -Nintendo's games aren't massive enough to profit from the things AI can do atm
An example: AI can do Text to Speech, but Nintendo doesn't make games like TES. Nintendo needs to optimise their games highly to run on a switch, which AI can't do.
He is just stating the obvious, like saying the sun is hot.