I'm a little bit stunned by just how little people have been talking about this. You know that replacement to Club Nintendo that Nintendo announced would be coming out this fall? Yeah - that's their entire unified platform. And it's coming this fall.
This:
Equals this:
They are literally the same thing. Coming this Fall.
Let that sink in. Let the gravity of what that implies take hold, because that is huge. That's the foundation of Nintendo's entire future. That's the core that Nintendo is banking the success of its entire future as a video game company, and company as a whole, on. All with the help of little mobile company called DeNA.
I think we need to remind ourselves that firstly, that isn't entirely news. We've known for months that the rewards program to succeed Club Nintendo would come later this year. In fact, we've known for months more that the first inklings of Nintendo's unified platform would realise itself this year. We already knew that Nintendo was making its own mobile app with the intention of keeping connected with its consumers through smart phones.
But we didn't know about DeNA.
DeNA gives us the final, and frankly most important, puzzle peice to understanding just what this platform is. Many have already said it; you don't spend over $100 million on a company, just to dip your toes into mobile. I'd take it even further; Nintendo wouldn't spend that money just for mobile period. Nintendo didn't invest in DeNA because they wanted to get into mobile; they did it because they want to make a platform.
This is why DeNA was brought in. Not the games; the service. This may as well be Steam for mobile. It's a marketplace where DeNA can maintain control of all its consumer by. That's what Nintendo wants. That's why DeNA is valuable. If Nintendo can have this for it's platform across mobile, PCs, tablets, QOL, consoles, and handhelds, they've just opened the umbrella like no one else could.
And no one else can, like Nintendo can. No one could get away with, successfully, making a marketplace like this on mobile but Nintendo. No one has the brand power. With this, Nintendo doesn't have to compete with mobile games on a game by game basis. All you have to do is download the one, free, singular Nintendo Network app, and you have access to all Nintendo's exclusive games. That's the catch. In order to play Nintendo's games, you must have an NNID. And hey, it's free. Why not?
The Nintendo app may as well be as important to your phone as your Facebook app or your Twitter app. That's what Nintendo wants. They want you to have access to Nintendo, wherever you want. But they want you to constantly have a relationship with your NNID, just like many people have with their Facebooks, Twitter, and Apple ID accounts.
I think that's what they were trying to do with Miiverse, but it didn't work because the audience was to small. That's why Miiverse doesn't work. The only time you really had access to it was when you were on your console, where you were probably playing games instead, or on your computer, where you didn't need to access your Miiverse. This app gives you a reason to need that kind of service on your phone.
You have a relationship with your Nintendo mobile games through your phone, and "Oh look... There are these other games I can't play one my phone..." "Oh look... I now get 15% off a digital copy of Pokemon Z, because I downloaded Pokemon TCG on my iPhone. If I buy it here, I can have the game downloaded by the time I get home..." That's what Nintendo wants.
That's why it's so important to get that first game out this year. Nintendo was using numbers like "100 million people." The point isn't to get 100 million people playing their newest mobile game. The point is to get 100 million people to create a NNID. To get 100 million people tied to an account that they will, in time, grow to care about. Because that simple act of creating a NNID makes confincing them to purchase hardware that much easier. Because they already have a stake in Nintendo. They are already Nintendo customers. They already have a connection with the NX, or the Wii U, or the 3DS.
The rewards program makes things tempting. You're getting all these, likely cheap, to free, mobile games on your NN app, and you notice that you're racking up all these discounts for games you've been made interested in on systems you don't own. The mobile games are merely the gateway drug to the gateway drug.
I can't stress enough how much Nintendo is kind of trying to be like Steam. But they're spreading much farther, and frankly in a more successful way than steam could. Steam is limited to hardcore gamers only interested in hardcore games. This isn't. This is aimed at everyone, from non-gamers to the hardest of hardcore.
It's not like the PS or Live app, because it not meant to merely be a place to check on your gaming info. It's not meant to be a place there you look at your trophies or something. It's literally the portal you must interact with you play your mobile Nintendo games. Nintendo putting out a mobile app wouldn't be enough, because no one without a Nintendo device would care. That's why making mobile games matter. It gives people a real and tangable reason to interact with their NNIDs. And if we go by the things Nintendo is saying, they want you checking this thing every day. Periodically, they say.
A lot of people are wondering what form this new mobile game will take. Something people will play for a long time. What the game will be is anyone's guess, but for my money, it'll be something like this game:
Words with Friends. Not in game mechanics per say, but in principal. The reason why WWF (lol) worked is because you had a very real relationship with your account. People don't think about it much, but that's the genious of that game. When you were playing, your account was your identity, and you used that account, that username, to interact with your friends. The game didn't matter as much as the fun you were having with people you knew. If you wanted to play WWF, you had to make an account. And it made sense within the context of the game you were playing.
An important thing about WWF for Nintendo is that it was a game that got people excited about making a username. It made people want to have their identity attached to this game and it made people want to interact with their friends through this created identity. In a lot of ways, it became almost cool to have a WWF account. If WWF had the brand power of Nintendo, they could have made a completely new game that used those same usernames, and they'd already have the base of everyone who played, enjoyed, and most importantly identified themselves though WWF. Through their usernames.
That's where I see this first mobile game going. It's likely going to be a Mario game, and it's likely going to be multiplayer. It's also likely going to be free. This first game isn't trying to make money as much as it's trying to make an installed base. It'll probably make a lot of money, but this will not give itself any barriers to entry. The point of this game will be to get people wanting to create NNIDs specifically for this game, and getting people specifically convincing their friends to make an account too. Why? So they can play together.
And from there, you'll get your other games. Your Brain Ages and Wii Fits and Nintendogs and yes, even Animal Crossings. All with multiplayer hooks designed to get you connected to your NNIDs, and to your friends' NNIDs.
From there, you'll get your more "core" mobile games. The games more focused on still widely accessable, but much deeper gameplay experiences. This is where you'll see the Heathstone-like Pokemon TCGs or your Puzzles and Dragons: Mario Editions.
Now what do you have? A library and an audience. You have a consumer base. You initially facilitated a fad, which is guaranteed to work simply because their IP is so well known, to sink people into a commited and unified network. A Nintendo Network. Somewhere on their phones lie an identity that they now care about, brought about through Nintendo games. Now they're no longer only Apple users or Android users. Not only Facebook or Twitter users. They are now Nintendo users too. They want this pillar to be that big. And they want it to be long term.
Now these normal people have a connection to Nintendo that they didn't have before, and that connection can bleed into their hardware, through those accounts they now care about. Now parents who played the games with their kids are more likely to get them a Nintendo console, because they can get all these discounts on games through the account they already have. Someone in their 20's who used to love Pokemon and downloaded Pokemon TCG to relive his childhood with his college mates may pick up a new Nintendo handheld to play the next Pokemon game. What's the loss? He already has the account for it.
And that leads into consoles and handhelds. I'm guessing that both the 3DS and the Wii U will both recieve major firmware updates this Fall. They will be done to better unify the interfaces with this new service. Accounts will finally have something to be tied to other than hardware, so cloud saves will finally be possible. I'm sure the Wii U will get themes to be in line with the 3DS, and there will be cross buy themes for the Wii U.
Right. Cross buy will be a thing now. But it will be extremely limited on the Wii U and 3DS. There have already been to many complicated caviots made to give everyone who owns Mario 2 on their 3DS a free copy on their Wii U, so they'll likely skip that until the NX. Cross Save will be possible as well. All of this will be open to developers to do as they wish, so it may be possible to see games like Shovel Knight get updates allowing use of these features.
But most importantly, to Nintendo at least, you'll be able to access a lot more of these features from your phone. You'll be able you buy eshop games from your phone and have them ready when you get home. Nintendo will likely incorperate mobile features to Wii U and maybe even 3DS games. From small things like managing Pokemon Bank on your phone to bigger things like, I don't know, getting in game rupees in Zelda U from playing the lastest Zelda mobile game. You'll be able to check and use Miiverse, correctly, through the app. You'll be able to organize a game with your friend through the Miiverse messages. (which hopefully they fucking fix. Geeze) What ever it takes you keep you wanting to stay connected to your NNID as often as possible.
The move to mobile was a big deal, don't get me wrong, but it feels like people don't really understand where the center of gravity of this whole ordeal really is. No matter how good the game is, no ones going to just play Mario Maker Mobile and simply go "Right. I think I'm ready to buy a Wii U now." That would be stupid for Nintendo to expect. They need to give people a reason to make the move, and the games alone aren't it. They aren't even the most important bit.
It's their new membership program. It's their whole future. It's what shook gaming news over a year ago. Nintendo said it themselves.
They want to expand what it means to be a video game platform. But more importantly, they want to expand what it means to be on a Nintendo platform. This is it. Fall of 2015. Nintendo's forever platform. "NintendOS." All those things. Nintendo "redefining what it means to be a video game platform" is coming out this Fall. The reason Nintendo unified its handheld and console developement teams is coming out this Fall. Everything ends, and everything truly begins, this Fall. Nintendo will either rise higher than it ever has before, or burn more severely than they ever will again this Fall. You'll be able to sign up to the next, in many ways final, yet in many ways infinite, generation of Nintendo this Fall.
Is your body ready?
