The meme being this one:
There's explicit proof of this being a strategy with regards to Intelligent Systems saving Fire Emblem from falling into the scrap heap of forgotten Nintendo franchises (alas, poor Advance Wars). Fire Emblem Awakening was designed around quality of life improvements, but aside from the introduction of casual mode, it's easy to forget that earlier Fire Emblem games had QoL features to them as well, like Shadow Dragon having bonus chapters only accessible if you lost too many units, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn with their Bonus EXP system, or Sacred Stones' gaiden style allowing for out-of-story grinding, Fire Emblem's been trying to go easier on players a long time before the series was "saved" with the 2013 entry.
What set Awakening apart was doubling down on the support convo system and making it into a practical Visual Novel system of being able to marry off almost everyone in your army and getting them to have babies. That along with a user self-insert character in the form of Robin meant (if you played Robin male) you could have your very own waifu.
Not to mention the character designs, which sexualized the women of FE a *lot* more than previous games in the franchise, Tharja and Nowi being the infamous examples for different reasons, but folks like Sumia, Cherche, or how Lucina was characterized made them waifu bait in other capacities.
Then, of course, there's Fire Emblem Fates, especially on the... uh... Nohrian side.
Setting aside what she's wearing and how that even works as armor, Camilla's personality is enough to make Tharja look downright tame. Fates balances it with also starting to sexualize the men a lot more too (fitting, since in Awakening, the child that was born depended upon which mother was married, while in Fates, the father determines which child is unlocked, so gameplay-wise it's a husbando simulator), but that's just two-sides of the same coin: fan-bait for folks attracted to men to supplement the bait for folks attracted to women.
Fire Emblem is important to talk about not only because it was the explicit example (where we *know* that the franchise was in peril before IS took on the changes it did), but because it sits at a time in Nintendo's history before this practice proliferated in other games.
Splatoon gave us the Squid Sisters, who weren't (initially!) sexualized but were built as pop idols, J-pop idols famously having a bunch of bizarre lifestyle rules to conform to because their producers want to milk the waifu factor for all it's worth.
Splatoon 2 (spoilers follow)
, so they take what worked about the Squid Sisters from a fan appeal perspective and amp it up, along with giving us...
And here you see the ramping-up continue, with Marina being unquestionably sexualized compared to either Callie or Marie (at least, Splatoon 1 Callie), and Pearl is also designed to appeal to a sort of jerkass-loli archetype that's more appealing in Japan.
Breath of the Wild goes through this with the Memories, which include two PoV bits about Link with two different girls who have feelings for him, the demure, Hinata-Hyuuga-esque Mipha who has unrequited love for Link or Zelda whose emotional journey is meant to be the centerpoint of the memories. Then you've got Urbosa and the Gerudo tribe as a whole, eye-candy the lot of them (although the subject of many think-pieces asking whether this is good or bad, and Nintendo did a lot of very good things with their representation of the Gerudo both as women and as women of color, but the eye-candy aspect shouldn't be downplayed).
Then there's ARMS, where you've got a diverse group of women fighters, but each appealing in their own way. Ribbon Girl, another idol, Mechanica, an underdog fighter who's also a cute genki girl, Min Min, a Chinese-inspired fighter, and Twintelle.
A lot going on with Twintelle in terms of gender and racial dynamics.
Then there's Xenoblade 2 and Pyra, but Monolith Soft is a special case since they were making waifu-type characters long before the Nintendo acquisition (Kos-MOS is still famous in a certain section of fandom).
Hell, you could even argue Bayonetta was part of this strategy. B2 as a Wii U exclusive was a coup on gaming forums even if B2 didn't do much of anything to help Wii U sell, and then fan demand brought Bayonetta into Smash Bros as one of the last DLC characters. She definitely fits into this story, and the timing of her entry into the Nintendo sphere (2012) fits with the timeline presented here. As does, potentially, Kid Icarus Uprising which brought Palutena into the foreground, as well as spending a lot of time with Viridi, a new goddess made for the game.
All of this leading to the two questions of discussion:
1) Hard to argue Nintendo isn't doing this deliberately, but how much weight are they putting on the waifu factor? It's hard to say that many of these games (aside from Bayonetta or Fire Emblem) would have sold worse without the sex appeal factors because they're still very solid games, so how much is this really helping Nintendo's current business plan?
2) How well do you think Nintendo's pulling off sex-appeal fanservice compared to other Japanese companies?
Concluding image: this was an official Nintendo promo for Smash 4.
There's explicit proof of this being a strategy with regards to Intelligent Systems saving Fire Emblem from falling into the scrap heap of forgotten Nintendo franchises (alas, poor Advance Wars). Fire Emblem Awakening was designed around quality of life improvements, but aside from the introduction of casual mode, it's easy to forget that earlier Fire Emblem games had QoL features to them as well, like Shadow Dragon having bonus chapters only accessible if you lost too many units, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn with their Bonus EXP system, or Sacred Stones' gaiden style allowing for out-of-story grinding, Fire Emblem's been trying to go easier on players a long time before the series was "saved" with the 2013 entry.
What set Awakening apart was doubling down on the support convo system and making it into a practical Visual Novel system of being able to marry off almost everyone in your army and getting them to have babies. That along with a user self-insert character in the form of Robin meant (if you played Robin male) you could have your very own waifu.
Not to mention the character designs, which sexualized the women of FE a *lot* more than previous games in the franchise, Tharja and Nowi being the infamous examples for different reasons, but folks like Sumia, Cherche, or how Lucina was characterized made them waifu bait in other capacities.
Then, of course, there's Fire Emblem Fates, especially on the... uh... Nohrian side.
Setting aside what she's wearing and how that even works as armor, Camilla's personality is enough to make Tharja look downright tame. Fates balances it with also starting to sexualize the men a lot more too (fitting, since in Awakening, the child that was born depended upon which mother was married, while in Fates, the father determines which child is unlocked, so gameplay-wise it's a husbando simulator), but that's just two-sides of the same coin: fan-bait for folks attracted to men to supplement the bait for folks attracted to women.
Fire Emblem is important to talk about not only because it was the explicit example (where we *know* that the franchise was in peril before IS took on the changes it did), but because it sits at a time in Nintendo's history before this practice proliferated in other games.
Splatoon gave us the Squid Sisters, who weren't (initially!) sexualized but were built as pop idols, J-pop idols famously having a bunch of bizarre lifestyle rules to conform to because their producers want to milk the waifu factor for all it's worth.
Splatoon 2 (spoilers follow)
milks this tendency further by having Callie get kidnapped, brainwashed, and turned evil. Corrupted Callie's outfit is... something, though Marie too gets a bit of a waifu upgrade with her traditional Japanese garb going for a Yamato Nadeshiko archetype).
And here you see the ramping-up continue, with Marina being unquestionably sexualized compared to either Callie or Marie (at least, Splatoon 1 Callie), and Pearl is also designed to appeal to a sort of jerkass-loli archetype that's more appealing in Japan.
Breath of the Wild goes through this with the Memories, which include two PoV bits about Link with two different girls who have feelings for him, the demure, Hinata-Hyuuga-esque Mipha who has unrequited love for Link or Zelda whose emotional journey is meant to be the centerpoint of the memories. Then you've got Urbosa and the Gerudo tribe as a whole, eye-candy the lot of them (although the subject of many think-pieces asking whether this is good or bad, and Nintendo did a lot of very good things with their representation of the Gerudo both as women and as women of color, but the eye-candy aspect shouldn't be downplayed).
The Princess and the Queen.
Then there's ARMS, where you've got a diverse group of women fighters, but each appealing in their own way. Ribbon Girl, another idol, Mechanica, an underdog fighter who's also a cute genki girl, Min Min, a Chinese-inspired fighter, and Twintelle.
A lot going on with Twintelle in terms of gender and racial dynamics.
Then there's Xenoblade 2 and Pyra, but Monolith Soft is a special case since they were making waifu-type characters long before the Nintendo acquisition (Kos-MOS is still famous in a certain section of fandom).
Hell, you could even argue Bayonetta was part of this strategy. B2 as a Wii U exclusive was a coup on gaming forums even if B2 didn't do much of anything to help Wii U sell, and then fan demand brought Bayonetta into Smash Bros as one of the last DLC characters. She definitely fits into this story, and the timing of her entry into the Nintendo sphere (2012) fits with the timeline presented here. As does, potentially, Kid Icarus Uprising which brought Palutena into the foreground, as well as spending a lot of time with Viridi, a new goddess made for the game.
All of this leading to the two questions of discussion:
1) Hard to argue Nintendo isn't doing this deliberately, but how much weight are they putting on the waifu factor? It's hard to say that many of these games (aside from Bayonetta or Fire Emblem) would have sold worse without the sex appeal factors because they're still very solid games, so how much is this really helping Nintendo's current business plan?
2) How well do you think Nintendo's pulling off sex-appeal fanservice compared to other Japanese companies?
Concluding image: this was an official Nintendo promo for Smash 4.
