Nintendo has been a household name in gaming since it entered the industry nearly 50 years ago. According to a former developer of Nintendo 64 titles, the company that was once known for producing nothing but quality games is now focused on cash. In a Reddit AMA, Giles Goddard, a former Nintendo developer, gave his thoughts on how the well-known gaming institution has changed over the years.
Giles Goddard is the current CEO of Chuhai Labs, a game development company, and has a portfolio of work that includes Star Fox, Mario 64, 1080 Snowboarding, and many others. On whether the death of Satoru Iwata affected Nintendo, Goddard commented that the company is "basically run by the shareholders" now. When asked how Nintendo seems to have changed over the years, he responded that he thinks "their primary focus nowadays is money."
Nintendo as a company has seen record profits in recent decades, even considering the significant overestimation of Wii U sales. Nintendo started up a few new IPs in the last few years, such as the Splatoon series and the Switch fighter Arms. However, many of the most popular Nintendo games of the last decade have been part of old IPs, like the Mario and Zelda franchise. Franchises with more of a cult appeal, like Star Fox, have been left behind to make way for more spin-offs from top-performing titles.
Companies as large as Nintendo generally don't take risks when they're not necessary. Satoru Iwata was a well-respected CEO who believed in focusing Nintendo's efforts on innovative games that are simply fun to play – at a game developer conference in 2006, Iwata was famously quoted as saying that "video games are meant to be just one thing: fun." Goddard's interactions with Iwata were limited – they were prominent within Nintendo at different times – but he nonetheless believes his influence on Nintendo was what drove the company to innovate.
Goddard made history at Nintendo for being the first foreigner to work at the company, and also one of the youngest at 19. He is particularly well-known for being the developer behind the stretchable Mario face in Mario 64, and he worked alongside Shigeru Miyamoto on Star Fox right at the start of the company's foray into 3D gaming. While he has not been with the company since 2002 when he left to become a freelancer, his early experience with Nintendo as a company sheds an interesting light on how former employees see it today.