Would Nintendo be more profitable as a third party publisher?

[magoghm]

Purple said:

magoghm said:

It seems to me that right now Nintendo isn't doing bad at all as a publisher. Here is the data about next-gen games sold so far by the major publishers:

Nintendo: 0m PS4 + 13.66m WiiU + 0m XOne = 13.66m

Activision: 1.74m PS4 + 1m WiiU + 1.35m XOne = 4.09m

Ubisoft: 1.27m PS4 + 1.98m WiiU +  0.68m XOne = 3.93m

Electronic Arts:  1.82m PS4 + 0.21m WiiU + 1.11m XOne = 3.14m

Microsoft: 0m PS4 + 0m WiiU +2.13m XOne = 2.13m

Sony: 1.7m PS4 + 0m WiiU + 0m XOne = 1.7m

Even with the very low sales of WiiU consoles, Nintendo has sold over 20% more next-gen games than Activision, Ubisoft, and Electronic Games combined.

This is the most cherry picked data I've seen in a while.

1) Wii U has been out for about 12 months longer than the other platforms. The games have had way more time to sell including two christmas periods.

2) Nintendo have released far more games for Wii U than those publishers have for other consoles.

3) You're counting bundled games in that list, which makes no sense whatsoever. That's money Nintendo is losing.

4) Being multiplatform allows publishers to release their games on more systems than just what you've shown there.

1) Activision, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts had the exact same time to sell their games on those 3 platforms.

2) If those publishers had released more games for Wii U then they might have had more sales.

3) Being a console manufacturer gives Nintendo options that other publishers do not have (which, by the way, is the main subject of this thread). I don't know if they are really losing money on those bundles, but they might consider it a marketing expense.

4) Yes, they can publish their games on other platforms but that implies extra development costs, more complex inventory management, and not being able to fine tune the game to get all the possible performance from a very specific hardware.

By the way, I didn't post those numbers to someway "prove" that Nintendo is winning the next gen race. It isn't. I just wanted to point out that Nintendo's peculiar stategy of being game publisher which manufactures its own consoles does have its benefits.