By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Soundwave on 25 August 2016
Edit Thread
JWeinCom said:
Soundwave said:

In a word: kids. 

Remember you were a kid once too, I imagine you probably had a Nintendo system or two (or three). 

Kids today don't. That's Nintendo's main conundrum, that more than any other issue is what keeps them awake at night I think. 

They need to get at least some of the kids playing on tablets to come back. How are they going to do that? I think they have to embrace and allow Android games and apps onto the NX. It's a gaming tablet, full stop, and since Nintendo doesn't need to profit on the hardware, they can undercut many tablet manufacturers. 

If you're a parent would you rather spend $269.99 on that NX that comes with 2 Amiibo toys, or the $399.99 iPad Mini 16GB? One is a hell of a lot cheaper and even doubles as a home game console, Nintendo won't slow Apple but there are plenty of cheap-o Chinese tablet makers they can take sales away from. 

Mind you, I don't know if Nintendo will be successful in this gamble, but I think that is basically their thinking. 

The person who wants a 50 dollar chinese tablet will just buy that.  And between the chinese knock offs and ipads, there is a wide range.  Samsung tablets are under 200 already.  Fire tablets are 50.  They can already connect to your TV, and that technology is going to get better as time goes on.  That's not to mention that there are already plenty of hand me down tablets, ipods, and so on.  Plus, they'll be getting phones between 9 and 13, which leaves Nintendo an incredibly narrow window.  There's no reason for this product to exist if it's just going to do what other products already do... and I don't think that's Nintendo's strategy.

Trying to attack the mobile market head on would probably be the worst thing Nintendo could do, and it would be against their general strategy.  Nintendo tends to favor blue ocean strategy, and the tablet market is the reddest ocean you can find.  If Nintendo wants to compete directly with other companies, they're far better off competing with Sony and Microsoft.  That's not the best idea either, but it's way better than going against Apple, Samsung, and about 50 other companies in a market that Nintendo has little experience in.

Well to be fair there isn't really a tablet that plays "real" games. I can see a lot of 7-15 year old boys choosing this over vanilla Android tablet and parents being relatively happy because at least it was $100-$150 cheaper than that damn iPad. 

I think Nintendo just cannot let the kids market go, it always has been their bread and butter, they have to go after it with NX. 

Nintendo doesn't have the horses to go after Sony/MS. As I noted in my GoldenEye thread ... that game is 19 (19!!!!) years old in a few minutes time. That was the last time Nintendo really ever had a huge hit game that resonated with even the Playstation (and what would become the XBox) crowd. In 19 years they really have not, even on the Wii had a hit game on any of their systems aimed specifically at that Playstation crowd that sold like 3/4/5/6/7 million copies the way GoldenEye did. 19 years, I'd bet half the posters on this board weren't even born when that game came out. That's how far Nintendo is out of touch. 

That and the loss of Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln was devastating to their Western outreach, they've never, ever been the same company after that. They've become a very Japan-centric company and have been for like 15 years now. You would need to have new leadership that actually knows what its doing with the Playstation/XBox crowd in the West and Nintendo simply does not have that. Reggie is just a glorified PR person, nothing more.  

Without any real leadership or vision, it doesn't really even matter what hardware you have ... the GameCube had great hardware and core gamers avoided it like the plague.