| RolStoppable said: Sony's actions certainly had an impact on Nintendo. The same holds true for Microsoft who aren't mentioned by this Japanese analyst, likely due to Microsoft's irrelevance in Japan. Sony and Microsoft both bought their way into the video game market. They also heavily subsidize hardware to push consoles with higher processing power into the market. Naturally, that changes the expectations of third party publishers who feel entitled to get paid off for delivering content and will use the Sony/Microsoft platforms as the standard. That pretty much puts Nintendo in a situation where they have to choose the lesser of two evils: 1) Stay the course of profitability by sticking to selling hardware at a profit and acceptance that a sizeable chunk of third party content won't arrive on the system due to disparity in processing power and lack of moneyhats. 2) Engage in the arms race and shell out money for third party content, but with the high risk that profitability might not be attained over the full course of a system's lifecycle. |
This is very well said. Sony did court 3rd parties by clearly buying into their development of games for their system at a great cost to themselves. Sony "networked" much more effectively than Nintendo, while Nintendo stayed in its own corner doing what it does best. It's sort of like the best artists: the most elaborate works of art came from shut-ins. Nintendo doesn't get out, but what they manage to create from their corner is anything but the best the industry has to offer.
However, I think Nintendo has a 3rd option: buy up 3rd party developers into 2nd party developers. I believe they've already begun, as I've already read two articles of them buying two indie developers. Nintendo doesn't need to join the arms race and face constant losses and risky ROIs, all they need to do is buy the developers that make the "3rd party" games. Bam, problem solved. You now have such a variety of exclusives that you carve yourself out a spot without an equal "twin" you have to compete with. You only compete with yourself, so your hardware can be whatever you want it to be.
