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The story
A post on 5ch’s Hardware & Industry (Geha) board claiming that “Nintendo is the reason Japan’s technological progress slowed down, stopped” sparked a flood of replies both for and against. The argument’s starting point: because Nintendo has centered its business on handhelds and low-spec hardware, third parties never got the chance to push into high-spec development, stalling Japan’s game technology itself. Counterarguments poured in — “It’s already been proven that tech and hit games aren’t correlated,” “During the PS3/PS4 generation, most third parties flocked to Sony anyway” — with some pointing out that it’s not just Nintendo, but Sony’s exclusivity-contract strategy that may really be sapping Japanese third parties’ strength.
What people said
Stuff like that existed even earlier.
Don't blame the industry just because you lost all hope.
It's your own fault for not buying it.
Honestly, releasing it as an HD game on PS3 was so niche that calling it technological progress is a bit baffling too, if you think about it.
if anything, everyone was in an uproar over the Japan-US trade friction.
If you're going to talk about economic growth, factor that in too.
Re: #33
Re: #22
If we assume Soulslikes have value,
then Nintendo has no value ← cosmically meaningless
Oppression ← a negative act
And the kicker is Pokémon…
And yet they play Chinese mobile games while acting like some kind of "real gamer."
The market PS1 monopolized was home consoles only — on handhelds, Nintendo reigned supreme, and the #1 best-selling software from 1996 to 1999 was Pokémon.
which series, or which development team or developer,
exactly had its technological progress halted? What's the actual claim here?
Watching all the studios that were cocky about making AAA games decline one after another, grumbling "it's not selling…" and "we can't even recoup the budget," I can't help but feel Nintendo's stance of "keep the tech modest, go all-in on fun" was the right call all along.
This theory gets repeated even by industry people and it's deeply entrenched, but it's basically false.
Why? Because during the PS3/PS4 era, the vast majority of third parties went to Sony.
The rare exceptions were Dragon Quest and Monster Hunter 3 —
aside from a few small/mid-size studios coming to Nintendo, it was almost all PlayStation.
And Level-5, who made that Dragon Quest, was at the absolute peak of its game with Layton, Inazuma Eleven, Yo-kai Watch, and Dan-Ball.
It's not like they didn't release on PS — if anything, they had far more titles on PS.
Guess that's basically it, yeah.
PlayStation → lures third parties into exclusivity deals, making them give up the prime PC launch window. Exclusivity also cuts into sales, attention, and buzz. On top of that, even though it's a third party's game, it still gets dragged into console-war flame wars. A sales debuff.
Honestly, as someone who roots for Japanese games, both Nintendo and Sony are infuriating — they're both sapping Japanese third parties' strength.
Going forward, Japanese third parties should only port AA titles to Switch 2, and absolutely refuse exclusivity deals with PlayStation, insisting on simultaneous PC releases every time.
Why the hell are these two Japanese companies weakening Japan's own third parties, damn it.
So when exactly did Nintendo's influence supposedly start?
Is the Switch the root cause?
Nintendo's just doing its own thing, that's all.
Pretty full of yourself for someone in the position of being allowed to sell on their platform.
Why not go sell on a sinking ship instead?
Name one PC-exclusive title with "super technology." I genuinely haven't seen a single one.
And besides, even an idiot should realize an AAA title that fully leverages high-end performance is impossible on the PC market alone.
I mean, they've literally created whole genres, like with Metroid.
Did the $6 million Sony paid for the Monster Hunter Rise timed-exclusivity deal just vanish from your memory completely?
Or are you just clueless enough to not even know about that report?
Sony deliberately locks other companies into contracts that drag down their performance — and then laughs at their "progress."
If it's really about technological progress, they could just keep making AAA games on the latest-spec PCs while ignoring sales.
Most Japanese companies simply can't afford to do that.
Specs don't translate into fun.
People have been saying this for over 10 years — maybe over 20 — and some folks still haven't stopped to think about it…
Virtual Boy: "This, so much."
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The claim that “Nintendo stalled Japan’s technological progress” is a topic that keeps resurfacing on the Hardware & Industry (Geha) board, and behind it lie soaring development costs and a widening performance gap between platforms. Since the PS3/PS4 generation, budgets for AAA-class titles have kept ballooning, and unprofitable third parties have downsized or pulled out one after another, while Nintendo has secured its revenue through a handheld-focused strategy and by creating its own original genres. Within the thread, the counterargument that “technology and hit games aren’t correlated” dominated, but there’s also a structural angle — as seen in Sony’s timed-exclusivity deal for Monster Hunter Rise (reported to be worth roughly $6 million) — where bidding wars between platform holders, backed by their financial muscle, have themselves shaped companies’ technological choices. This structural backdrop is only touched on in fragments within the thread’s replies, and pinning the blame on Nintendo alone overlooks how multiple factors — including rising development costs and the growth of the smartphone market — are intertwined.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry (Geha)) thread “Nintendo is the reason Japan’s technological progress slowed down, stopped ← lol wwwwwwwwww.”
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