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[jigglet]

Let's look at their track record:

• Wii shop - burned to the ground after the gen was over
• 3DS eshop - completely separate from Wii U eshop, eventually there was some weird consolidation that kinda brought it together with the Wii U eshop but it didn't (I think it was just joint credits?). I also vaguely remember the consolidation process being kind of clunky. Obviously I never expected it to sell the same game catalogue due to hardware differences but they didn't need to be two completely distinct ecosystems either.
• Wii U eshop - burned to the ground after the gen was over
• NNID - burned to the ground after the gen was over. You could argue they offered a link to their new account system, but it was clunky as fuck and even to this day doing something simple like resetting my password has gotten complicated (I can't remember why, something about my old email with a new email or something or other). Why wasn't it a straight up migration at the very least, now there's a weird link that causes me grief from time to time.
• So I've got my NNID username, now I've got my Nintendo ID username, then there's a totally different Switch level account name which can be changed. But when adding friends none of these are used - it's the friends code you have to give out (which itself has been re-worked twice, first from a game-level code now to a user-level one). No, none of this is complicated but it's just another example of the pile of shit Nintendo has laid.
• Not all their data is backed up in the cloud, so you're still resorting to old school data migrations every time you buy new hardware. It's 2022 and it's still not a "type in your username and password and you're done" type deal.

But...in hindsight you say.

Hindsight what? Microsoft and Sony haven't doused their ecosystems with gasoline 3 times in a row. Hindsight my ass.

 

[Raonak]

Yeah. Nintendo engineering is generally bad at anything not directly related to games.

Its like they design stuff in a vacuum without taking into account how competitors have done it. It makes them miss the most basic quality of life features

 

[jigglet]

Yeah. Nintendo engineering is generally bad at anything not directly related to games.

Yup. And to be clear I'm not talking about engineering from a quality perspective. What they build is solid. It's just that none of what they build has any long term vision. It's like their engineering architecture and roadmap is 24 months and anything beyond that is like "well fuck it, we'll deal with that shit when the time comes".

 

[PSYGN]

Yes, but I think that's just part of many Japanese software/games in general. They tend to have unnecessarily complex or unintuitive UI and flows.

 

[ReBurn]

Yeah kinda

Like cloud saves. If you have two devices it's smart enough to know that your save is out of sync then they make you sync it manually.

 

[Esca]

I don't trust Nintendo with digital and and online at all. Only buy their games physically while in digital for everything else

 

[nocsi]

These things aren’t because of engineering. There’s a weird design philosophy at Nintendo to prevent common sense systems from being architected. But in a way, I think Nintendo users enjoy obfuscated systems. It fulfills their sense of exploration. Everyone else can do voice chat off their controller, but with Nintendo , you have to connect your iPhone. It’s genius

 

[jigglet]

These things aren’t because of engineering. There’s a weird design philosophy at Nintendo to prevent common sense systems from being architected. But in a way, I think Nintendo users enjoy obfuscated systems. It fulfills their sense of exploration. Everyone else can do voice chat off their controller, but with Nintendo , you have to connect your iPhone. It’s genius

It absolutely is about engineering. Good engineering and software architecture allows extensibility, scalability and business-level change. It doesn't need to be tightly coupled with business-level decisions. Good engineering says we'll lay a foundation that's flexible so the business can come up with whatever stupid shit they want, and if they come back in 2 years and want to change it, we don't need to burn it all to the ground and start again.

 

[jaysius]

Nintendo doesn't understand tech in general, their Online sub is a fucking mess with no dedicated servers, message system or voice communication, they hide behind "BUT THE CHILDREN!!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" but really they just don't fucking get it.

It's about fucking time for Nintendo to get forced into 5-6 years ago, let alone the present.

 

[jigglet]

Nintendo doesn't understand tech in general, their Online sub is a fucking mess with no dedicated servers, message system or voice communication, they hide behind "BUT THE CHILDREN!!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" but really they just don't fucking get it.

It's about fucking time for Nintendo to get forced into 5-6 years ago, let alone the present.

I'll never, ever forget that interview they did ahead of the Wii U launch where they said they went out and bought some 360's to see how they did online.

Holy fucking balls, they were over half way through the generation and only then did they say "ok well let's pull our heads out of the sand to see how others do it". That one interview was the one that helped me understand just how insular they were.

If it were me I would have been deep in that shit on day 1 learning about the competition and understanding the landscape I was operating in.

 

[nocsi]

It absolutely is about engineering. Good engineering and software architecture allows extensibility, scalability and business-level change. It doesn't need to be tightly coupled with business-level decisions. Good engineering says we'll lay a foundation that's flexible so the business can come up with whatever stupid shit they want, and if they come back in 2 years and want to change it, we don't need to burn it all to the ground and start again.

That's not really what engineering means. Maybe you meant architecting/design. Engineering is concerned with implementation. By all accounts, the systems are engineered to specification.

If it is an engineering problem, you’d be able to pinpoint and describe exact engineering faults, not design/system faults. I’ll give you an example engineering problem, there were debug ports enabled on the Nintendo switch that people could leverage to jailbreak. Nintendo never intended on that. But the stuff in the OP is by design and fully intended by nintendo

 

[jigglet]

That's not really what engineering means. Maybe you meant architecting/design. Engineering is concerned with implementation. By all accounts, the systems are engineered to specification.

If it is an engineering problem, you’d be able to pinpoint and describe exact engineering faults, not design/system faults. I’ll give you an example engineering problem, there were debug ports enabled on the Nintendo switch that people could leverage to jailbreak.

While I disagree, why are we arguing semantics, it's beside the point.

The point is - anything that needs to be torched from top to bottom is not well designed - architectured, engineered, whatever word you want to use. Hitting the reset button is shitty design. It's only acceptable in areas where there is regular massive paradigm shifting change that no one could ever anticipate (e.g. the evolution of VR). Not with basic accounts / digital shops.

 

[nial]

But in a way, I think Nintendo users enjoy obfuscated systems. It fulfills their sense of exploration. Everyone else can do voice chat off their controller, but with Nintendo , you have to connect your iPhone. It’s genius

great one man