Nintendo told me (14 years ago) why their new system doesn't use achievements

Plus: The game B4 GTA VI changes dates. And Bungie confirms in court that it doesn't have a time machine.

Mario Kart World. Screenshot: Nintendo.

Earlier this month, a certain subset of gamers was disappointed by a certain missing detail about Nintendo’s upcoming Switch 2.

The new system, like all prior Nintendo consoles and handhelds from the last two decades—and unlike all of the ones made by Microsoft and Sony in that same span—would not have an Achievements system.

If you’re the kind of gamer who likes to get a collective score for the things you’ve done when playing games on Xbox or PlayStation or Steam, that’s a bummer, right?

There are people out there who love achievements, people whose enjoyment of a game is increased when, after maybe killing their 10,000th enemy in a game, some bubble pops up that says, “That’s gotta hurt! – 10 points” — or whatever the case may be. (Am I tipping my hand too much about my own feelings about Achievements?)

Nintendo has picked up on other game industry trends, such as 1) internet subscription services, 2) post-release downloadable content and 3) telling people the size of their digital games in megabytes and gigabytes instead of “blocks” (anyone else remember Nintendo’s bespoke unit of measurement?).

But they’re still not offering a platform-wide Achievements system.

We know this because, earlier this month, an interviewer for Polygon asked Nintendo’s vice president of player and product experience Bill Trinen if the system would have them, and he said “Nope.”

Why?

It’s not clear if Polygon was able to press Trinen for more, but another writer for the outlet noted the contrast between the “nope” and the fact that the Switch 2 will offer a light achievements system in the upgraded Switch 2 versions of Nintendo’s great Legend of Zeld games. Just nothing system-wide, as you’d find on a PS5 or Xbox Series X or on Steam.

Thankfully, I got an answer.

The only problem is that I got my answer in 2011, when I was interviewing Trinenabout a different Achievement-free upcoming Nintendo handheld, the 3DS.

"We're not opposed to Achievements," Trinen, then head of product marketing for Nintendo of America, told me in 2011, when I was working at Kotaku.

I don’t have my notes for this interview handy, but I can clearly remember hurrying the conversation along at one point and him gently pushing back. He told me he wanted to give me something more than a boilerplate answer to the Achievements question. He wanted to give me a window into the thinking of Nintendo’s designers in Japan, people he’d worked with a lot over the years.

As I wrote in Kotaku 14 years back, Trinen acknowledged that there’d been some Achievements-like systems in some Nintendo games, but his read on Nintendo’s game design teams was that Achievements weren’t consistent with their goals for their games.

"When they create their games, [Nintendo's designers] don't tell you how to play their game in order to achieve some kind of mythical reward," he said at the time.

He continued:

"Basically, the way the games are designed is they're designed for you to explore the game yourself and have this sense of discovery...

To that end, I think that when you look specifically at games from EAD [the since-reconfigured Nintendo development group that had long been led by Mario and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto] and a lot of other games that Nintendo has developed a well, there are things you can do in the game that will result in some sort of reward or unexpected surprise.

In my mind, that really encourages the sense of exploration rather than the sense of 'If I do that, I'm going to get some sort of artificial point or score that's going to make me feel better that I got this.' And that, to me, is I think more compelling."

Is that why the Switch 2 won’t have achievements? Is that even what Trinen still thinks regarding Achievements?

I don’t know.

But I was reading Polygon’s coverage and other Switch-2-has-no-achievements laments and needed to ensure people knew that Nintendo had discussed this issue before, just a really long time ago. (For context: Trinen gave me that answer 14 Kirby games ago; or, if you prefer, one GTA ago).

Hopefully we’ll hear more about Nintendo’s thoughts on achievements again. Maybe this decade or so.

A side note: This story touches on a phenomenon that I’ve become more aware of in recent years: The lack of reporting, even at the access-interview level, about the features of video game platforms and the thinking that went into those platforms.

Interviews about video games are common these days, but interviews about the making and functions of the consoles, handhelds and other platforms those games run on are frustratingly rare.

Nintendo itself ran a revealing in-house group interview about the making of Switch 2 (and one for the 2021 OLED Switch), but you won’t find many interviews about the Switch platform with press.

PlayStation architect Mark Cerny has done the interview rounds for recent PlayStation launches, but Sony had done no interviews about its PlayStation Portal until I scored an interview three months after its release. My interview with Sony about the PS5’s system dashboard this past January was, I think, the first interview they’ve done about it (the PS5 launched in 2020!).

Xbox is just about in the same boat.

It’s a priority for me to rectify this, but, in general, you’ll have a tough time finding any of the platform makers talking much about the features that gamers use daily—to say nothing of the features their systems lack.

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Item 2: Release date update raises eyebrows

Borderlands 4. Screenshot: Gearbox, Take Two Interactive

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford announced today that his studio’s upcoming sci-fi shooter Borderlands 4 is coming out on September 12, because development is going really well. But it’s hard not to think that it signals something else about another big game or two.

“Everything's going kind of the best case scenario,” Pitchford said in a social media post about the Borderlands shift. “The game is awesome. The team is cooking. And so, the launch date for Borderlands 4 is changing. We’re moving it forward.”

Games sometimes shift dates due to quality, though a two week move up is rare, if not unprecedented.

Games also shift dates when their publishers are shuffling their schedule, and Take Two Interactive is publisher of both Borderlands 4 and another, way bigger game: the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI. The latter has staked out a vague “fall 2025” window since May 2024. Everyone’s been waiting for a specific date.

The conventional wisdom is that Take Two would space Borderlands 4 and GTA VI apart, hence headlines today interpreting the delay as a hint that something’s afoot with the new GTA. Thus: ‘Borderlands 4’ Just Moved Its Release Date, Raising ‘GTA 6’ Questions.

One theory is that Gearbox’s game moved up to get out of a now-more-solid, as-yet-unannounced GTA VI October launch date.

Maybe.

But there are other Take Two games close to Borderlands 4’s new September 12 date to also consider:

• The publisher typically releases its blockbuster annual NBA 2K game in the first week or so of September.

• And its crime sequel Mafia: The Old Country has been parked at a “summer 2025” date for some time, with Take Two teasing just yesterday that its gameplay trailer will debut on May 8.

Moving Borderlands up would seemingly leave Take Two with a shorter window during which to market the debuts of Borderlands, Mafia and NBA. Why do that? Unless one of those games is about to be delayed.

As for GTA VI, consider how development studio Rockstar and Take Two have announced release dates in the past: Way back in October 2012, Rockstar said GTA V would release in spring 2013, a couple of seasons later. Then, in January of 2013, it announced a roughly four month delay as it revealed a release date that would occur eight months after the announcement: September 17, 2013.

That GTA V delay-and-date announcement was issued by Rockstar a week before Take Two’s February 2013 quarterly earnings report.

Take Two’s next quarterly earnings report will be issued in two weeks, on May 14. That makes this week and early May a prime period for announcements like the ones around Borderlands 4 and Mafia.

And all of that is why it also makes sense to expect a date, a delay or both for GTA VI as soon as next week.

Note: You too can celebrate the rapid passing of time by processing the fact that today is the 17th anniversary of the release of Grand Theft Auto IV!

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Item 3: No time machine for Bungie

Lawyers for Bungie Studios (Destiny, Marathon) are getting colorful–and perhaps frustrated–in their efforts to swat away a lawsuit in Louisiana over whether it plagiarized sci-fi writer Matthew Kelsey Martineau when concocting the campaign for Destiny 2.

At issue: Martineau’s insistence in recent filings to the court that Bungie should not be allowed to use fan-made YouTube compilations of Destiny 2’s original campaign to argue that its work and Martineau’s are sufficiently dissimilar.

“Martineau has now ignored three sworn declarations from knowledgeable Bungie employees about the impossibility of producing a playable copy of the game’s retired campaigns, and as to the accuracy of the provided third-party materials,” the studio’s lawyers wrote in a newer filing last week.

The most vividly-phrased part:

“In continuing to insist on the production of the original game, Martineau essentially demands a time machine, but Bungie cannot produce its live-service game as it existed prior to 2020 any more than one could produce a live performance that occurred prior to 2020.”

In February, I wrote that Bungie told the court that the original campaign for the game had been “vaulted” and that it couldn’t be brought back (indirectly dashing hopes among fans who’d like to see Bungie restore deleted portions of the ever-evolving game).

Martineau’s claims have involved his work (published to WordPress in 2013 and 2014) and Bungie’s game (launched in late 2017) both featuring an enemy force called the Red Legion that is involved in a war against Earth. The writer has not specifically alleged when or how Bungie would have seen or copied those details.

On March 25, the court denied Bungie’s initial attempt to dismiss the case, but did so without prejudice, leading Bungie on April 7 to make a revised motion for dismissal, which has led to the latest flurry of back-and-forth claims.

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Item 4: In brief…

🇷🇺 The Russian government is seizing the assets of Lesta Studios, due to the support that its former owner, Wargaming (World of Tanks), has shown for Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian attacks on the country, VGC reports.

• Wargaming executives are being accused by Russian authorities of extremist activities, Eurogamer reports, citing local media. The outlet noted that Wargaming maintains that it has no business ties to Russia; and Lesta stated that it operates in compliance with Russian law.

🚫 EA is laying off 300-400 workers, and cancelling projects at Respawn Entertainment, including a Titanfall-themed extraction shooter, Bloomberg reports.

• EA cut nearly 700 jobs in February 2024, more than 1,000 in 2023, and about 200 in 2022, according to the unofficial Game Industry Layoffs tracker.

📈 From Software’s Elden Ring, which launched in early 2022, has shipped 30 million copies, according to a social media post from the game’s official account.

• The game was said to have crossed the 25 million mark in June of last year.

📦 Call of Duty Warzone players are jumping out of cardboard boxes, using an emote that costs $24 and that some players say offers an unfair advantage, IGN reports.