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burninmylight on 19 July 2013
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RolStoppable said:
noname2200 said:

The NCAA is nearly as big a deal as the NFL, and they're not completely overlapping either, so if the NCAA license is available it might be a viable way to start building a valuable franchise. As for the viability of other major sports, NBA 2K averages about four million annually. Sony's MLB: The Show is a more modest series, with a mere million or so units each year. Golf games and hockey games are about on par. I'm not completely certain it'd be the most efficient use of resources, but I have to imagine that good entries in these genres would attract an appreciably-sized new audience.

Maybe.

But I assume Nintendo retired their baseball and basketball games, because the sales weren't good enough. Then again, nowadays there aren't alternatives available anymore, as you said in the OP. Could be worth another shot, but so are many other things too. Nintendo needs to develop and publish more games, period.

So I guess I say yes, Nintendo should set up a new studio in America and try with at least NCAA and NBA. If that works, they can expand into the less popular sports.

I don't see anyone approaching NCAA anytime soon, with it facing a class action lawsuit from active NCAA athletes over the use of their likeness without compensation.

For Nintendo to take on the major task of developing it's own sports sims again, it better set aside a few hundred million in cash to burn away the first few years before they become profitable. They'd have to build new engines from scratch, likely putting their games behind the more established franchises in terms of quality for the first few years. And even if and when Nintendo's franchises could compete with the established sims, they would have a tough battle winning over the notoriously loyal crowd of sports sim fans. The demographic that buy Nintendo consoles to play sports sims is also pretty slim. The only reason I even acknowledge its existence is because my primary consoles come from Nintendo and I enjoy sports games, so I can't discount myself. I'm weird though; others in my position just have a PS3, 360 or PC for that fix.

Between the costs of licenses + development + the aggressive advertising push needed to sway a crowd over to sports games on a Nintendo console, I just don't see it as worth it. The Nintendo fan crowd overwhelmingly doesn't care about sports sims so that's a lost cause too.