Nintendo Mulls New Business Strategy After Forecasting Loss|General Gaming Discussion|Forum|SNES HUB

Making old Nintendo games available on mobile platforms would destroy one of the primary reasons why people buy Nintendo hardware: Getting access to classic Nintendo software. Unless Nintendo is prepared to go third party (and they should not and will not), mobile offerings are just about the stupidest thing the Big N could do.

That is why Nintendo should just forget about anything that comes out of Gaming Journalists and hardcore gamers mouths (since most of them know jack shit about business), and just focus on making games that people actually give a shit about along with an easily accessible platform.

They have done neither with WiiU, which is why the sales are bad. WiiU is a confusing mess of a console from both a marketing and gameplay standpoint that smacks of the Gamecube and is full of Gamecube sequels. The gamecube was a bomb during economic good times. releasing Gamecube 2 in economic bad times is slaughter.

I do not feel sorry for them. 

Mongunzoo said
Making old Nintendo games available on mobile platforms would destroy one of the primary reasons why people buy Nintendo hardware: Getting access to classic Nintendo software. Unless Nintendo is prepared to go third party (and they should not and will not), mobile offerings are just about the stupidest thing the Big N could do.

 

That is why Nintendo should just forget about anything that comes out of Gaming Journalists and hardcore gamers mouths (since most of them know jack shit about business), and just focus on making games that people actually give a shit about along with an easily accessible platform.

 

They have done neither with WiiU, which is why the sales are bad. WiiU is a confusing mess of a console from both a marketing and gameplay standpoint that smacks of the Gamecube and is full of Gamecube sequels. The gamecube was a bomb during economic good times. releasing Gamecube 2 in economic bad times is slaughter.

 

I do not feel sorry for them. 

I disagree with you about releasing classic Nintendo games on mobile platforms.  What percent of 3DS owners bought the console primarily to play virtual console games?  I’m guessing not many.  I don’t think that Nintendo should release the entirety of their back catalogue on the mobile market (a touch based Mario 3 would suck) but I do think that smart use of the Pokemon franchise on mobile platforms could pay off handsomely.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, a touch based Pokemon Red and Blue would sell like wildfire on the mobile market.  Nintendo could also include some special bonuses in the game for folks who own Pokemon X & Y, encouraging owners of the mobile game to buy the latest 3DS addition.  It would also lend itself well to in-app purchases (pay $1 for a master ball, etc.).  Heck, make the game free to play and litter it with ads for the 3DS and Pokemon X & Y.

The challenge for Nintendo would be to make it clear to the marketplace that a mobile Pokemon game doesn’t mean that they are going third party and that it doesn’t mean they are opening the flood gates for releasing their back catalogue of games.  A challenge to be sure, but again, I think that taking advantage of the mobile market in an intelligent way can improve 3DS sales.  In other words, it is worth the risk.

The biggest change in video games from decades ago to today is that it took much less money and labor to create a video game for the same retail price a video game costs today. Did you know that games like Chrono Trigger and FFII costed $70 or more in the 90’S? Inflation aside, that is a premium price tag. Yet, it only took a few dozen to make them?

Let’s pretend video game software was Godiva chocolates. The chocolate maker would realize that while the chocolate market grew, the price to make the chocolates kept escalating. Thus the value of the chocolates kept going in decline. More and more people would also enter the market to make chocolates, thus competing with market share.

Nintendo has a very interesting observation about the computer revolution. The computer revolution is cheapening intellectual labor. We already know that it is cheapening intellectual property. A video game takes much more money and manpower to make than it did in the 1980s. The trend is for video games to take more money and manpower in the future.

A deteriorating value may be intrinsic to video games. What happens if the market stops rapidly growing(It has)? What if population growth can no longer be relied upon (It cannot)? What if the macro-economic trends of prosperity turn into recession(It had)? Then we come to The Dilemma. Nintendo’s creation of the Wii was in large part a response to The Dilemma.

Nintendo sees its hardware side as creating value to the software. The hardware is to allow the software to remain interesting. The hardware is to fight the deterioration of video game value. In the past, this has been done with ‘faster processors’ and ‘better graphics’. But there are diminishing returns doing that. Nintendo is not trying to come up with ‘fads’. What Nintendo is trying to do is to keep the value of their video game software up. It is through their software where Nintendo makes its money.

Nintendo going third party would radically decrease the value of their software. Their software would also be stuck on the typical industry ‘faster processor’ and ‘better graphics’ which means the costs for making such software would go up and up and up where the returns would keep getting less.

While the criticism of Nintendo being cheap is accurate in many ways, understand that Disney is also very cheap. Nintendo’s strange hardware configurations isn’t so much of a desire to be ‘cheap’ as it is a desire to fight the deterioration of video game value. Today, the market is full of 99 cent games or free games. Gaming is available everywhere. On phones. The macro-economics have turned into reverse. It is getting harder and harder to make video games.

The reason why the ‘Why doesn’t Nintendo go third party?’ people miss the boat is that none of them have noticed the declining value of video games. Nintendo sees hardware as a way to create value to their software. Without the hardware, the value would disappear and the software would not sell.

Nintendo should respond to the ‘Why doesn’t Nintendo go third party?’ people with saying, “Why doesn’t everyone go PC gaming then?” The answer, of course, is that hardware matters. The console hardware, which is inferior in all forms to PC gaming, creates value for the consoles games by providing a simplistic ‘plug and play’ box. If consoles hardware is creating value in software, then it follows to reason that console hardware can be altered to increase the value in software even further. This is the Nintendo perspective.

Chrono Trigger cost $90 CDN when I first bought it way back in 1996…..

I think it’s also worth mentioning that games have, to a degree, become commoditized.  All new releases are expected to be $60, mobile games are expected to be $0.99 or free to play, handheld games are $40, etc.  On the console side of things, this “fixed price” approach to new game prices has been especially damaging to developers and publishers alike, as development costs continue to skyrocket.  The elephant in the room in the gaming industry is that the $60 AAA game business model is no longer sustainable for all but the most successful games and properties.  This is why we continue to see things like day one DLC, since selling the full game at $60 is no longer viable.  I say, why not charge $80 out right? Just last week, Konami released a $30 Metal Gear demo.  My guess is that they needed a cash infusion as the development costs continue to mount for MGSV.  The fact is that publishers can barely break even if they don’t sell millions and millions of copies, something that wasn’t true until the 7th generation of gaming.

With all that being said, I think that game developers need to invest in solid project managers as the industry matures.  Tighter, more focused budgets could honestly lead to better overall games.  Not every game needs a $100 million dollar budget.  I would like to see smaller budget games that offer unique experiences.  We see a lot of this in the Indie side of things, but I honestly don’t know why the bigger budget publishers aren’t willing to release a low budget game or two.