The truth about Nintendo

[Zod95]

seiya19 said:

For what it's worth, Hudson Soft developed 3 Mario games on several Japanese home computers, between 1984 and 1986 (Famicom was released in 1983 in Japan, NES in 1985 in NA, and a year later in EU). The games were Punch Ball Mario Bros, Mario Bros Special, and Super Mario Bros Special. I was going to post a link to an article about them, but there's a link to the roms in there, so I don't think I can...

And since someone already pointed out the Zelda CD-I games, I might as well point out Hotel Mario here. And never speak about them, ever again...

I still don't see any logic behind criticising exclusivity anyway, and I don't understand how said notion doesn't apply to Microsoft and Sony too, but whatever...

Sure it is relevant. Finally I have examples that I can at least half-count. Although they are not made by Nintendo, they are not just educational software but true videogames. Thanks for your input.

Given the release dates, we can perceive it was in times when Nintendo was about to start the console business. Any games from the 90s onwards produced by Nintendo and launched on the PC or other consoles? If so, then the OP is wrong and I must correct it. If not, then the OP is just fine since it doesn't say that Nintendo has never launched games on other systems, just that they have engaged into such a strategy (at some point).

 

The logic about criticising Nintendo's exclusivity is not simple but it is explained in the OP. Exclusivity alone would not be that much of a problem but it is part of something bigger. Nintendo has created an integrated and long-term strategy based on exclusivity and elitism to inflate the perceived value of their games:

"As mentioned earlier, Nintendo has always tried to keep the perceived value of their products as high as possible. That could only have been done with a solid and long-term strategy based on exclusivity and elitism. Not letting any of their games to be launched out of their consoles (not even on PC) was a way to tell the consumer that, no matter what, Nintendo games will ever only be played on Nintendo consoles. Not dropping their price (even when pure supply/demand logic would demand it) was a way to tell that a Mario game is worth 50€, today and tomorrow.

This strategy could make them lose some potential sales in the short-term but it was a clever long-term arm-wrestling against gamers. It’s not easy to blackmail the market without a monopoly but Nintendo has always tried really hard to do so. And the most scary thing was that the more control they had over the market, the more control they tried to further get.

When NES had around 90% of market share, Nintendo implemented what they called “inventory management”, which consisted of limiting the amount of software units available at sale in order to keep high demand for games and thus put customers on a short leash. Gamers would buy what Nintendo wanted and at the price they wanted, once customers were concerned about which games were available rather than how much they would have to spend. Being able to buy a Nintendo game was a gift by itself. By design, Nintendo would not fill all of the retailers' orders and kept half or more of its library of games inactive and unavailable. In 1988, for instance, 33 million NES cartridges were sold, but market surveys indicated that upwards of 45 million could have been sold. This was a great attempt to get ultimate control over supply and demand."

 

This doesn't apply to Microsoft or Sony because they haven't followed this strategy at all. It's pointless to talk about Microsoft on this subject since they also have Windows on PC, but Sony has been releasing many titles outside of the PlayStation ecosystem. Also, they drop the price of their games and have never created such policies as the Nintendo's "inventory management". Sony has been very far from this inflation strategy and PlayStation Now is another proof of that.