Andrew Webster, The Verge:

For 14 years — starting in 2000 — the Chinese government enforced a ban on video game consoles. Between 2014 and 2015, both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 made their long-awaited and overdue debut. Microsoft described its release as a “monumental day” and celebrated by lighting up the Shanghai skyline in bright Xbox green. Sony’s chief executive Kaz Hirai told The Telegraph that “I think that we will be able to replicate the kind of success we have had with PS4 in other parts of the world in [China].”

The lifting of the Chinese console ban is not news, but the fact it was a thing still blows my mind. Where were you in 2000? Can you imagine your life without console games from then til now? It may sound like a silly question, but video games are a massive part of 21st century culture. Wild.

Regardless, a very cool and interesting story.

Brianna Wu—software engineer, game developer, and South Boston congressional candidate—on the Tomorrow podcast with Josh Topolsky of The Outline:

Josh Topolsky: It seems like we’re in a particularly rotten place in America right now. We have Trump controlling the White House in a way—and with people like Steve Bannon—that seems dangerous. It feels somewhat out of control. I assume you’re following this pretty closely.

Brianna Wu: Steve Bannon—this is the editor in charge of Breitbart—legitimized vast parts of Gamergate. This is extremely personal to me.

JT: He is, in many ways, a major figure in the “alt-right” and Gamergate movements which are linked. I mean, they seem very linked to me.

BW: It’s the same people. It’s the exact same people; same playbook, just on a wider scale.

JT: Let’s talk a little bit about your experience with Gamergate. You dealt with enormous amounts of harassment from these people. Really violent and vile.

BW: Violent. I had to leave my house. They targeted my company’s financials repeatedly.

This is a great listen.

Wu speaks from first-hand experience to the source, damaging effects, and cascading effect of Gamergate and it’s current place in American politics.

It’s easy not to take a term with the word “gamer” in it seriously. But, as Wu explains, the lack of serious investigation into Gamergate and knowledge of tech in general is likely a big part how we ended up in this mess. It’s candidates like Wu—with deep knowledge of tech, engineering, privacy, and security—that will truly revolutionize the US government and make America 21st century ready again.

Simon Parkin, writing for Gamasutra:

It would be too much of a stretch to imply that, five years after the explosion of indie game development, we’re witnessing a widespread return back to large studio development. It is, however, undeniably true that, for every indie success story, there are scores of independently produced games that have failed to make a mark or to provide, for their creators, a viable new career. And as such, many are returning to more orthodox roles within established studios.

Parkin continues to ship fantastic work.

While game development is certainly it’s own beast, the perspectives in this piece will hit home for anyone who has moved from corporate culture to self-employment or startups. I’m also a fan of Teddy Dief’s (Hyper Light Drifter, Square Enix Montreal) faux three hour meeting:

He keeps a daily faux three-hour meeting in his shared calendar in order to ensure he has time to do “deeper work.”

I strongly recommend Parkin’s 2015 book here.

Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima during the Q3 FY2016 financial briefing:

Next I will provide a follow-up report about our software publisher partners. After the presentation on January 13, we have continued to receive requests from more and more software publishers who want to develop games for the system. At the presentation, we announced that there were over 80 titles in development from more than 50 software publishers, but that number has now climbed to over 100 titles from more than 70 publishers. Please look forward to more announcements about the software lineup in the future.

Only 165 Wii U titles were ever released in the US—the least amount of titles for any Nintendo console—followed by the Nintendo 64’s 297.

This third-party interest seems promising.

Nintendo announced their third-quarter earnings for the fiscal year to mixed reaction.

6.45 million 3DS units were sold (10% increase YoY), driven by strong Pokémon Sun and Moon performance with 14.69 million units sold. In a press release, Nintendo points to the popularity of Pokémon GO as helping boost sales of Pokémon Sun and Moon, as well as boost hardware sales outside of Japan.

I’m fairly shocked by the 3DS numbers. The six year old, 240p handheld apparently still has legs amongst the massive mobile market. While I’d say that may be good news for the Switch, a “home” console that’s performance seemingly can’t match that of the PS4 or Xbox One, the 3DS starts at half the price of the Switch, $150 sliding up to $199 for an XL, and boasts a 1000+ game library¹.

I know the Switch is marketed as a home console, but I can’t help but see it as a great handheld. With that perspective, and a guess that the Switch will see a price drop and bundle by holiday, it’ll still have a way to go before challenging the 3DS.

The highly anticipated and advertised Super Mario Run only converted approximately 5% of it’s 78 million downloads—about 4 million paid transactions. For a fantastic game, 4 million feels below my assumed “core” Nintendo base numbers.

Needless to say, 78 million iOS-only downloads is a lot of Mario icons on pocket computers at one time or another. This fits nicely with Nintendo’s renewed focus of ”interacting with [Nintendo IP] every day.” And that’s just iOS. Android will see Super Mario Run in March this year.

Overall, Thomas Whitehead of Nintendo Life captured my feelings about the results quite nicely:

The most recent financial reports can fit whatever agenda you want. They can be construed as worrying and a sign of a company in difficult times, or interpreted as a demonstration of Nintendo’s strength and positive prospects. There are numbers to support both sides of the argument - the reality is that they represent a company still in transition, modernising its approach, utilising and boosting successes, while also dealing with mistakes and failures. The 3DS thrives, the Wii U dies, revenues come for an app in which Nintendo had limited involvement, and all of this with Switch and more mobile games to come.

I remain very positive about Nintendo’s future. Their IP and first-party games can’t be beat and are appearing everywhere, while the Switch seems like the “dream” console, pre-orders of which are already difficult to come by.

This is easy for me to say. I adore Nintendo. I can’t say the same for younger generations who grew up along side Minecraft rather than Mario. Is the new “Nintendo IP every day” strategy too little too late, or did Big-N hold out just long enough?

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¹UPDATE: The 1,000+ number is a combination of all games de-duped by region and format. Seeing as the 3DS is region locked and a fairly slim amount of players would even attempt to play non-localized games, it’s not fair to say 1,000+ games.

Additionally, Polygon’s Brian Crecente stumbled across an interesting set of data in Nintendo’s earnings report:

Stuffed in amidst Nintendo’s quarterly earnings report was an interesting, updated look at the number of games released for every system going back to NIntendo’s first.

I grabbed the numbers, which are broken down into three regions for each platform, and built a little chart with them for easier comparison.

As Crecente mentions in his post, 85 games have already been announced for the unreleased Nintendo Switch— already over half of the Wii U’s US library. If the populous reclassifies the Switch as a handheld console which I imagine it will, the Switch has a big mountain to climb considering it’s home console development costs and Nintendo’s set-top game library trend.