Ninty shuns iphone - investors unhappy.

[Ail]

ioi said:

The biggest issue Nintendo faces right now with 3DS and Wii is lack of games. While I absolutely believe that apps are going to be enormous in the next 2-3 years, I don't agree that Nintendo needs to follow that model - they have the core audience that will buy a 3DS / WiiU just to buy the latest Nintendo products - they just need to get the software out there.

I certainly agree that the $10b should be put to use to buy some major studios to help support their existing studios and basically increase the rate of software released.

Look at Wii for example - we had Twilight Princess / Sports / Play at launch - Sports and Play helped lead to initial sellouts and mass market takeup of Wii but it wasn't until Galaxy / Brawl / Wii Fit and Mario Kart hit within a 6 month period that things went crazy for Wii and sales went through the roof. The same happened on DS a couple of years earlier with NSMB, Brain Training, Mario Kart, Nintendogs and Animal Crossing. In both cases they didn't keep the flow of big games coming and things dried up. I have no doubt that 3DS sales will pick up significantly as soon as Mario Kart etc arrive but Nintendo does need to learn from the mistakes from this gen and keep the software coming (1 huge game every 2-3 months) to avoid the same collapse mid-gen as they have seen here.

It is all about software and Nintendo's biggest issue is that they never seem to follow up on things and exploit their own success. DLC is huge right now and they'd be silly not to release DLC packs for games like Mario Kart, Smash Bros. Wii Fit was obviously enormous but Nintendo could have done so much more with the balance board and followed up with a whole suite of games using the same basic mechanics developed in Wii Fit (but maybe aimed at more of a core audience). I just feel with Nintendo that the are great at innovating and introducing new concepts but rarely follow them through and exploit them as much as they could - probably the opposite to how companies like EA and Activision operate with their yearly franchise updates, DLC packs, heavy focus on online and so on.

There's a lot of problem that come from buying a big studio.

I think they would be smarter to go the way Sony has been going for the past 10 years and purchase small studios, it's easier to shift the momentum of those, there is less risk involved in each aquisition and you don't have to handle the headache of multiplatforms games suddenly becoming exclusives....

Clearly even if it was possible, buying something like Activision would not be a good match for Nintendo ( and Activision is not for sale, over 50% of the capital is held by Vivendi , a french conglomerate) and most likely would destroy value, not create it...