| magoghm said: 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. |
1) Wii U came out in 2012. PS4 and Xbox1 came out at the end of this year... So Nintendo have had a full extra year to sell than third parties have had to sell on the next gen machines.
2) Right... But they haven't. Which shows that Nintendo aren't making as much in royalty as some people like to wish they are.
3) What options? I could say they actually have less options as they are tied exclusively to one piece of hardware.
4) Once again I have no idea where this concept came from that Nintendo would all the sudden become useless developers if they were working with different hardware. The people that make the software are in no way related to the people that make the hardware. They have to learn how to use it exactly as they would if the hardware was made by anyone else.
The dev cost argument is silly because Nintendo could release their games on whatever platform they wanted. If they were worried by dev costs they could go PC or mobile. We still haven't seen much to suggest making games for Wii U is that much cheaper than making them for next gen anyway.
I'm not promoting Nintendo go third party. There are definitely risks, but I don't understand why Nintendo fans argue against it like it would be the end of the world. In financial terms there is definitely the potential for greater profitability as a third party publisher. Just look at how Sega has performed over the last few years since giving up the console business.
