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- #21
I refuse to believe that Dexit was passed through without Nintendo wanting it to. Nintendo knew, and were a part of the decision and to believe otherwise is pretty ridiculous imo.
Well I refuse to believe that Nintendo could've possibly wanted SwSh to be this rushed and unpolished. Nintendo may very well have agreed about Dexit (although do we even know that much? Nintendo didn't have to agree to anything if Game Freak and Creatures said yes anyway), it's hard to disagree with Masuda that Dexit was an inevitability (I mean who is going to be able to include 1000 high quality models). Still though, the issues go far beyond Dexit, Dexit is just the surface of the controversy. The larger issue is the lack of content and polish behind it and the general feeling that the game felt like one step forward and two steps back. Maybe Dexit would've been easier to swallow if they'd have improved something else to compensate, but little else in the game feels tangibly improved (except for the Wild Area, which still pales in comparison to open areas or even open worlds in other console games), and the whole game just feels like less bang for more buck. Now if Nintendo had handled the game themselves, sure you might still have Dexit, but Nintendo would be much better at softening the blow and improving the game in other areas to make it really feel like the best Switch Pokemon experience we could've possibly gotten in the same way that BotW feels like the best Zelda experience we could've possibly gotten, Super Mario Odyssey feels like the best 3D Mario experience we could've possibly gotten, Smash Ultimate feels like the best Smash Bros experience we could've possibly gotten, etc. Looking at how Nintendo's other IPs are approaching the Switch and how Pokemon are approaching the Switch, it's hard to believe Pokemon is significantly worse for any reason other than Nintendo not having full/majority control over Pokemon.
That strikes me as an awful lot of faith to have in businessmen who just want your money.
It's not a matter of faith, it's a matter of past precedent. Nintendo's made multiple moves that weren't necessarily the best business decisions but resulted in higher quality games, such as the examples cited in previous posts. So it's easy to draw a conclusion that Nintendo doesn't see the high sales of Pokemon as a deterrent to future changes.
As far as reputations go, Dexit feels to me like the only issue worth considering, although we've actually had two games on the Switch now that were sold at a 50% price increase while offering only a playable fraction of the entire Pokémon roster, and the only group I've seen accused of anything particularly negative have been Game Freak, whom people seem to have finally correctly identified as the ones responsible for making the Pokémon games. All that Nintendo is doing is giving the games a platform - I don't think their reputation is the one at stake here, as long as their own products continue to meet the expectations that they've set for themselves.
Most people are blaming Game Freak and TPC, but a few people do mention Nintendo. So there are some people who don't know that they're not the cause of the issue. Still though, Pokemon is a Nintendo exclusive IP, and one that's pretty close to being a first party IP (and it's very easy to mistake it for one). So Nintendo's reputation can still take a hit by virtue of this game being strongly associated with Nintendo.
And even if Pokémon did reach a point at which the public view of it became overtly unfavorable or pessimistic, I doubt that the primary expectation for a resolution to that would be for a partial corporate takeover by Nintendo rather than a rearranging of Game Freak's schedule and resources with Nintendo perhaps providing some contributions. Although as far as we've been told, they did greenlight Dexit. That said, does any one of us here actually know who has the most say when it comes to establishing Game Freak's budget and schedule for a game? Those seem to me like the main things to blame for Dexit, and I would sooner suspect TPC or Game Freak themselves than Nintendo when it comes to that. Nintendo might be okay with delaying a game, but maybe Game Freak (a relatively smaller studio who probably enjoy the regular income) or TPC (whose multimedia production cycle seems to have ossified into a steady three-year routine) are less comfortable with that prospect.
The last part of this statement explains exactly why a takeover from Nintendo is necessary. Because Game Freak and Creatures seem to have no interest in devoting more time and resources, Nintendo is going to need to muscle in on Game Freak and Creatures' share to make it happen. Otherwise they'll just overrule Nintendo.