Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom – could you imagine Microsoft making a game like this? (pic: Nintendo)

A reader is unsurprised at the critical acclaim for Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom but thinks Xbox is not learning the lessons it should from Nintendo.

So, Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is a massive critical hit and if you’re surprised by that I don’t know what to tell you. I wouldn’t say I was a diehard Nintendo fan, not in the toy-collecting-and-cosplaying sense, but I have always had a huge admiration for the company and while I’ve often varied whether I buy a PlayStation or Xbox console each generation I almost always get the Nintendo one.

This alone makes a nonsense of comments from Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who recently tried to pretend that high quality exclusive games don’t have a major effect on why people buy consoles. In my experience, both personally and with friends, it’s the primary reason to buy a console, even if there are still lots of other important ones after that.

Whether Spencer was knowingly talking nonsense, because he thought it was what monopoly investigators wanted to hear or not, I’m not sure but it’s been clear for a long time that Microsoft just doesn’t understand the importance of first party exclusives or how to nurture them. Its approach, and end results, are the complete opposite to Nintendo. And yet with Sony, you can see that they’ve learnt important lessons from the oldest video games company in the world.

The idea that Sony has excellent first party games is taken for read nowadays, and with good reason, but this is a very new phenomenon. Their first party output for the PlayStation 1, 2, and 3 was not impressive at all and was completely outclassed by Microsoft during the PlayStation 3 generation.

Back then it seemed as if Microsoft did understand the importance of exclusives, they had Halo and although their other games weren’t as universally loved they had a lot of their own studios that they, for no reason, slowly started to shut down towards the end of that generation, until by the start of the Xbox One they had virtually none left.

Sony, though, were slowly building up their experience, at both overseeing developers and nurturing their own studios. Who would’ve thought, in 2007, that the people that made Uncharted would go on to become one of the most celebrated developers in the world? They didn’t get better by accident but because Sony was supporting and funding them.

Could Xbox learn from Nintendo? (pic: Microsoft)

You can see how Sony nurtured other studios in a similar manner and while it doesn’t always work the quality of the exclusives they were putting out in the PlayStation 4 era was amazingly consistent… almost as good as Nintendo, you might say.

Sony will never admit it, but I’m convinced they looked at Nintendo’s success and used that as a basis for their approach to making games. Or perhaps they just came to similar conclusions on their own: that the quality of the games you make is of the absolute highest importance and while it’s good to give studios creative freedom you also have to manage them properly and take a firm hand if needed.

You certainly don’t hear about Nintendo or Sony having problems with studios like Microsoft has with 343, or them having to get in third party developers to help with games as important to Xbox as Fable and Perfect Dark. Which is ironic, because if there’s one thing Microsoft should excel at its software development, but apparently not.

Microsoft always seems to be looking desperately for approval from everyone, in everything they do, but Nintendo and Sony are a lot quieter and more confident. They don’t make announcements until they have something important to say and when they do it’s usually always worth it.

The bottom line is that while you could, just about, imagine Sony making a game like Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom you could never do so for Microsoft. It doesn’t even have to be the same sort of game, just something of equal quality and innovation.

Until Xbox is able to put out such games on a consistent basis they’ll never truly succeed in the games business and the worst thing is I don’t think they even understand that that’s the problem, let alone have a solution for it.

By reader Campbell

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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A reader is unsurprised at the critical acclaim for Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom but thinks Xbox is not learning the lessons it should from Nintendo.