| maverick40 said: Unfortunately they don't have money to do such a thing. |
You do know that we're talking Nintendo, right? Not Sony?
Nintendo has massive coffers. They had their first *ever* annual loss last year, and it was a fairly small one. At the end of their last financial year (March 2012), Nintendo had a total equity of 1.19 trillion yen (US$15.08 billion), from a low of 1.14 trillion yen half a year earlier, and down from its high of 1.28 trillion yen at the end of the previous financial year.
For comparison, Sony's total equity is currently 2.51 trillion yen... down from 2.8 trillion yen half a year ago, and down from 2.96 trillion yen a year ago (and down from 3.22 trillion yen a year and a half ago).
Let me put it this way - even ignoring the change in trend with Nintendo's equity in the last half-year, Nintendo would require more than 12 years at the current annual loss rate to end up with zero equity. At the current rate, Sony will have zero equity in a little over 4 years, and the rate has accelerated recently. Sony can't afford to be buying PS3/PS4 exclusive titles, Nintendo has plenty of space to do so.
Of course, Sony includes much more than gaming, so I'm not claiming that it's the PS Vita or PS3 that are the cause of the problem. I just wanted to make that clear.
Side note: Microsoft has even more money to play with. Its total equity (as of March) is US$68 billion (compared to US$15 billion for Nintendo), and that's an increase of more than US$15 billion since the same time last year. Again, though, this isn't because of Xbox division.
Interestingly, it seems that one thing Nintendo has done to reduce its loss of equity is to significantly cut back its liabilities - indeed, its "Total Current Liabilities" has been better than halved. Its Total Assets has also decreased, although its Long Term Assets have actually increased. There's probably some sort of behind-the-scenes restructuring going on.
Anyway, this was all just an aside to the point - Nintendo can easily afford to "buy" exclusives, if they want to. They just don't want to, and for good reason - Microsoft can easily outbid them on any exclusive, and Nintendo would rather offer exclusive functionality and install base than to simply moneyhat publishers and developers. It's better business, in the long run.
