Console Wars (2015)
PART FIVE
THE TORTOISE
AND THE HARE
60.
KINGS OF THE JUNGLE
In a continued effort to reclaim the fun, and in honor of what Nintendo hoped would be a game-changing surprise, the guys in Redmond decided to do something a little different for the 1994 summer CES. Instead of just writing a straightforward speech for Peter Main or Howard Lincoln, Don Varyu scripted an elaborate skit to perform in front of developers, distributors, and retailers on June 23, 1994. And to finally usher Nintendo out of its dark ages, the performance fittingly began in complete and utter darkness.
BRUCE DONALDSON
Randy, how much further do we have to go?
RANDY PERETZMAN
Relax, Bruce, the map says we’re almost there.
A tiny halo of light appears, and then another, so small it’s hard to determine the source until Nintendo’s Bruce Donaldson and Randy Peretzman move through the audience on their way toward the stage.
BRUCE DONALDSON
You hear them say these marketing guys are pretty far out and out of touch with reality, but this is really far out. We’re in the middle of no place.
RANDY PERETZMAN
Nope, no place at all.
Some lights turn on, still dim but with a bright auburn hue, and the intrepid explorers Donaldson and Peretzman are revealed to be dressed in full safari gear.
BRUCE DONALDSON
You know, I bet there’s not a dry martini within a thousand miles of this place.
RANDY PERETZMAN
Shhh, there’s the tent right over there.
The stage becomes fully lit, revealing an elaborate campsite in the middle of nowhere. And then from the tent emerges Peter Main, a cigar dangling between his lips with just the right amount of nonchalance.
PETER MAIN
Hey hey, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.
George Harrison steps out of the tent next, and then Nintendo’s powers all shake hands.
BRUCE DONALDSON
Dr. Livingwell, I presume.
PETER MAIN
Life has its ups and downs. Whoever said you couldn’t make the best of a bad deal? Come here and sit down for a minute.
GEORGE HARRISON
You know, Randy, we have almost everything we need here. And anything that we want to hear from the States, we have all this equipment.
Harrison tilts his head toward electrical thingamajigs and a large television screen.
PETER MAIN
George has been working on this for five or six months, but the only problem is that we don’t get any sports news. So Bruce, tell me: the Sonics really did go all the way, didn’t they?
The audience breaks out in laughter.
BRUCE DONALDSON
Man, you’re completely out of touch with reality. It must be the heat out here.
GEORGE HARRISON
Heat? Try running the marketing department. You get a second-degree burn these days just answering the phone.
The audience breaks out in laughter again, genuine this time.
PETER MAIN
That’s why we left. The guys in Japan were screaming, the guys in Redmond were screaming, the reps were raising hell; man, it was time to clear out and go to ground.
BRUCE DONALDSON
So this is the solution? To run away from it all?
PETER MAIN
Brucey, running away? You gotta understand, we’re not running away from anything. We just decided to come out here on a little hunting trip. As a matter of fact, there’s some of those little suckers again.
Main grabs a shotgun and fires twice, and suddenly a bloodied image of Sonic The Hedgehog appears on the large TV. The crowd loves it—this is so precisely their humor—and Peter Main picks up a nearby martini as he basks in the adoration.
BRUCE DONALDSON
And that’s what you’re after? Flying hedgehogs?
PETER MAIN
Only in a manner of speaking, my good man. That’s just the small stuff. Let me put it this way. You remember it was about ten years ago when Nintendo took its first trip out here to the videogame jungle, looking for that beast that would put us back on the map. What we came up with ten years ago was that big ape called Donkey Kong, who took us from a single coin-op machine to a company doing over a hundred million dollars in just a couple of months. Well, we’re on the same kind of hunt again. And we’re going to find that next group of eight-hundred-pound gorillas, and I mean big, hairy, muscular games. And I gotta tell you, this expedition is right on track. It’s leading us back to where we belong as undisputed king of the jungle.
Peter Main smiles, nods, and slides the cigar back into his mouth.
BRUCE DONALDSON
Yeah, I heard that before, but I gotta tell you, Peter: a lot of people back in the States think that Nintendo and this whole business is going right down the river. I mean, we all knew it was going to be a transition year, but nobody thought we were going to see numbers like this.
PETER MAIN
Well, no question it’s become a real jungle. The competition’s out there like a bunch of drunken headshrinkers. I mean, there’s a whole group out there saying every day that the current technology is tired and over. But let’s not lose sight of the big picture, guys. First of all, this videogame industry ain’t small potatoes . . .
A graphic appears on the television, indicating the industry has grown to $15 billion worldwide ($6 billion in the United States).
PETER MAIN
And secondly, yeah, Nintendo had a bad year. I mean, what the heck? Sales dropped, profits dropped, but we still made a half a billion dollars in profit, which was about five times what that other guy made, because as he ran around the world trying to buy market share, he gave it all away and ended up barely breaking even.
It dawns on the audience, almost all at once, that this is more than just a silly skit: it’s a satire about the war between Sega and Nintendo.
PETER MAIN
And finally, I gotta tell you the future’s going to be bright. I mean, look at all those big strategic thinkers who are standing in line: AT&T, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, even that guy Schpielberg over there in Hollywood, all waiting to get into this business. It can’t be so bad.
BRUCE DONALDSON
You guys look awfully calm for the predicament you’re in.
Peter Main suavely removes the cigar from his mouth. And at that point, it must also dawn on the audience that Main should never be without a cigar. It just fits him so well.
PETER MAIN
Well, Bruce, old buddy, you’re right. Twenty points ain’t exactly chopped liver. But you gotta be patient. Be patient a little bit. First of all, this is June, and we still got over two-thirds of the business year ahead of us. And I gotta tell you, we’re going to make some really big things happen over these next six months. So why don’t you just cool your jets a little bit. I mean sit back, relax, have a drink. We’ve got some real reason for optimism. And to start out with, I want to have my good man George of the Jungle here fill you in on a couple of discoveries he’s made since we’re out here. And believe me, it’s going to help you relax.
With a spear in hand, Harrison proudly talks about an amazing discovery he made one day while wandering through the outback.
GEORGE HARRISON
It was the “Lost Temple of Pac-Man.” Apparently, it was a sacred cave that had been accidentally covered over when the natives started building condos. But even so, I found a way inside, and there before me was the secret to the lost civilizations of videogames. There before me were the carcasses of Atari and Coleco. And there stood a magic cauldron, still at a full boil. Once I looked at it, I knew exactly what it was. A native crystal ball with all the secrets of the videogame industry.
RANDY PERETZMAN
What were you smoking in there?
GEORGE HARRISON
What the cauldron said was exactly what we’ve been hearing for months in our own market research. I asked the cauldron what the players want, and every few seconds, not surprisingly, the answer was “good games.” But then came a group of answers that probably in hindsight shouldn’t have surprised us. They not only wanted great games, but also wanted to be associated with a system that makes them feel cool. They want to be associated with hardware that’s advanced and up to date. In short, they wanted fun and they wanted image. So I asked, what does all this mean for the Super NES? And the cauldron boiled for a while and it got cloudy. It was clear there was work to be done.
PETER MAIN
That’s right, and that was all the information we needed to get started in a whole new direction.
GEORGE HARRISON
The first thing we did was to set out to try and find a stronger Nintendo message and even stronger delivery. Our TV campaigns have to be outrageous, and they have to be seen in more places than ever before. Places that even your reps might see them. And at the same time, you’re going to see an explosion of Nintendo ads in the gaming magazines. We decided once and for all to break our competitor’s lock on that key media.
Harrison then goes on to talk about everything that the new, postdenial Nintendo has in store for the months ahead: bigger events, better communication, and a recommitment to the fun that made Nintendo a household name.
GEORGE HARRISON
I know this is a real change of attitude, but we can’t afford to miss out anymore.
And just like that, Nintendo awakens and finds a balance between the tortoise and the hare; slow and deliberate, friendly and flashy . . .
GEORGE HARRISON
Finally, we decided to get some street smarts on the whole violence issue. Is there a market out there for more sophisticated games? Of course. So we’ll accept the ability of a ratings system to allow the consumers to make informed choices. From now on, we’ll see no repeats of the Mortal Kombat incident, where we saw customers buy what they thought was a more attractive product from our competitor. Those days are behind us. We’ve modified the internal guidelines, and I can tell you now that Mortal Kombat 2 will be the same whether it’s on our platform or anyone else’s.
. . . and cunning, always cunning. With the newly created ratings board, Nintendo now had a built-in bunker in which it could duck for cover.
PETER MAIN
Hey, isn’t that all right? I mean, thanks, George. All of that good stuff, now that’s quite a start.
Thunderous applause takes hold of the room.
To his left and to his right, everyone applauded except for him. Al Nilsen was impressed by the performance, which exuded an almost Sonic-worthy level of cleverness, but he knew all too well that words were only that. Had Nintendo really learned from its mistakes? Had they finally awoken? Would they really be able to merge that long-term, stay-the-course attitude with the short-term shifts of this post-Sega world?
Nilsen was skeptical, but less so about ten minutes later when Don Coyner, Nintendo’s director of advertising, appeared onstage to discuss the company’s new marketing campaign. “Look who I found thrashing around the swamp,” George Harrison said, introducing the cameo. “It’s Don Coyner, and he said he had a revelation out there.”
“Don, I didn’t know you were out here,” Donaldson added. “What are you doing in the middle of the jungle?”
“Well,” Coyner began, with a long overdue twinkle in his eye, “I got so tired of all those retailers and sales reps complaining about Nintendo’s advertising that I decided to come out here and fix it for myself.”
Finally, Coyner thought, as he finally had the opportunity to speak these words. Finally, finally, finally. After spending a large, stressful portion of the past few years trying to convince Arakawa, Lincoln, and Main to let Nintendo to take off the gloves—tastefully, of course—they were finally willing to do something different.
There were a variety of reasons that Nintendo was now willing to spruce things up, but the straw that broke the camel’s back turned out literally to be a camel. In late 1993 Coyner initiated a series of research studies in which gamers were given a stack of twenty pictures depicting animals and then asked to use these images to answer a series of questions about videogames. Questions like: which animals best represent Nintendo (and which ones best represent Sega)? The results were nearly unanimous: Cheetahs, gazelles, and other speedy creatures were associated with Sega, whereas elephants, camels, and other slow-movers supposedly embodied Nintendo. Arakawa was normally distrustful of focus groups and marketing data, but something about the images made a dent this time, and that enabled Coyner to move forward with what he was now about to unveil. “Kids want more excitement from our advertising. But the answer was not to imitate the competition. We have to do them one better,” he said, and with that he introduced Nintendo’s “Play It Loud” campaign.
On the surface, “Play It Loud” appeared to be exactly what Coyner had claimed it would not: a Sega ripoff. With quicker cuts, louder music, and an aggressive feeling, it had much in common with its competitor’s spots. But upon closer examination, that wasn’t quite the case. The colors were still bright, the game footage was still plentiful, and although there was mischief, there was also a sense of optimism. “We’re going to give the kids an anthem,” Coyner proudly explained, “one that says: ‘You can’t be young forever, so live it large, live it free, and play it loud.’ ”
Good but not great, Nilsen thought. But even with his high standards, he couldn’t help but echo Coyner’s sentiment: finally. Nintendo should have done this, or something like it, several years ago. But better late than never, right?
“Anyway,” Peter Main said, stepping in, “when Arakawa and Lincoln sent us out into the jungle, they said they weren’t going to take no for an answer. They wanted to know if we could put behind us this lily-white image on game content. Well, I think we’ve just shown that the answer to that is yes.”
Tattered applause swept through the room, but still nothing from Nilsen. That guy was a tough one to please. “Then, of course, there are the games,” Main continued. “It’s no secret we were weak on this in the second half of last year. And yes, Griffey and Metroid have started to turn the tide, but they’re not enough. We thought we’d found a great combination of old and new, but when we unloaded the cages back in Redmond, the response was: ‘Gee, that’s terrific, but it ain’t enough, and don’t you come back home until you get one more drop-dead-in-your-tracks killer attraction.’ They reminded me that ten years ago they shook the entire country with the big feet of Donkey Kong. ‘Can’t you guys go out there and find us that one huge hit that will once more make Nintendo undisputed king of the jungle?’ And so that’s exactly what we did.”
Main took a couple of steps closer to the audience, finding his rhythm and then appearing to near a crescendo to this whole performance. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the eighth wonder of the videogame world. The best game ever created by Nintendo or anyone else. The new stunning industry breakthrough . . . Donkey Kong Country.”
With these words, Peter Main introduced a clip of the atomic bomb Nintendo needed to turn the tide in its war with Sega. A game that never would have existed had Tony Harman not willed it into existence on the basis of the scenario he’d presented to Yamauchi of “one less bad commercial.” This was it, the true game-changer that both returned Nintendo to their roots and also took them one step ahead.
Nintendo was back. And as everyone in the room went wild with applause, this time Nilsen was the loudest of them all.
“Bravo,” Kmart’s Senior Buyer said two days later, as he approached Peter Main at Nintendo’s booth. Although he was a famously difficult man to please, on this day his face was filled with nothing but pleasantries.
“Well hello there, old friend,” Main said with an easygoing grin. “I’ll take a bravo whenever I can get one, but to what do I owe the honor?”
“Where do I even begin?” the buyer from Kmart replied, forcing a chuckle. “But really, that game you all showed off at the presentation, it’s out of this world.”
“It’s something else, isn’t it?”
“It’s gonna put you guys back on top!”
“Whoa now,” Main cautioned. “One thing at a time.”
“No, I mean it,” the buyer declared. “And in the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, Kmart is ready to make a very serious commitment.”
Before Main even realized what was happening, several Kmart employees emerged from the trade show’s hubbub and stepped forward with a large check mounted on a plywood frame. The check was made out to Nintendo of America for $32 million.
“We’d like to officially place an order for a million units!” Kmart’s senior buyer announced. “What do you say?”
For a moment, Main was speechless. Not only was the gesture wonderfully surprising, but selling a quantity like this, right off the bat, would make Donkey Kong Country one of the bestselling games of 1994. It would also give them enormous momentum going into the Christmas season (the game would be released in November) and almost singlehandedly propel Nintendo back past Sega.
“I think you know exactly what I’m going to say,” Main said, that grin still sliding across his face. “This is a terrific gesture, and I’m truly honored, but there ain’t no way we can allocate that much product to you guys. Let me crunch the numbers with my guys back in Redmond, and I’ll get back to you with what Kmart’s allocation will be. How does that sound?”
How did it sound? Well, it sounded like although the videogame industry had dramatically changed these past few years, Nintendo was still the same: dedicated to great quality, and even greater quality control.