Nintendo's revenue will decrease if it goes third party.

[Teeqoz]

Vena said:

pokoko said:

You do realize that they have to pay retailers NOW?

All you're really saying is that you have no faith that Nintendo games would sell.  That's it.  I think they would sell very well.  We can agree to disagree about that.

I struggling to think of a way to put this to you, to explain what people are talking about.  Nintendo lost money last year.  Why?  Because they're selling hardware at a loss.  Yes, they would lose a lot of revenue streams if they went software-only but they would also lose a ton of expenses.  Business isn't about revenue, it's about profit.

Nintendo has some of the best selling franchises in the world.  Even if they didn't sell as many units on other consoles as on their own, they'd still have a fantastic cost/profit ratio.  Nintendo games would still sell very well and their overhead would be well below that of someone like Activision or Rockstar.  

I can't think of any possible way that Nintendo would fail as a software developer.

Yes, hence why I said 48$ to start? And why I said, originally, 80-100%? That 80% was if they sold at retail.

I have no faith that they would sell *enough*, not that they wouldn't sell. They will sell, will they sell enough to offset billions of Yen in profits that are lost elsewhere? I don't know, and I really don't think they will because we have other examples of what happens when a hardware manufacturer and publisher goes 3rd party: SEGA (alive... sort of), Atari (ya...).

Their hardware is no longer sold at a loss (somewhat fittingly timed with the recent uptick in their hardware sales which, even if bad, is good for them from their previous two financial quarters where they were not only selling at a loss but selling badly), and they also spent a cool 200+ billion on restructuring which is now also over. With the consoles no longer at a loss, software still selling well when released, and their usually baffling low development costs, should see them starting to return to profitability. It will take time to walk off the WiiU/3DS combinatorial disaster but I also think they will not make the same mistake twice. They had 30+ years of selling everything at a profit and pushing it, and maintaining a controlled overall income. This time they cocked up at the start and had to jump through hoops to get back to normal. Nintendo has been looking at long term and spending short term to fix their cock-up. Will it work? It will be years before we find out.

Will they survive as software only? Probably, SEGA Is still somehow alive but the quality of what they produce is... questionable. Will they be the Nintendo of today? No. You'd likely need to see more annualized releases to start regaining sales, and not everyone of their franchises is actually all that big of a deal outside of its own console. Smash, Mario, and that's just about it. The rest of what they provide is niche and I don't see the sales going flipping over mountains. (Heck, I swear the only reason this conversation has even started is because of recent moves by Nintendo to revive franchises and control quality products that cannot be found elsewhere. It's got nothing to do with Nintendo as the company we know of today, it has to do with what people want from Nintendo with no regard to what Nintendo may or may not actually become if they turn into a software-only studio.)

In a software only future of Nintendo, we're probably not going to see things like Bayonetta 2 or Sin and Punishment 2, or any of their other "for the fans" moves that they can afford. They will have a handful of IPs that will maintain sales or exceed them well enough, and everthing esle will fall of the wayside.

 

You don't think Nintendo games would sell better if they were multiplat? okay.

 

Just because SEGA didn't handle the first to third party conversion well doesn't mean that the same would happen with Nintendo. They should get dev-kits for the other consoles a long time before hand, just to get to know the different consoles. Pokemon would still sell boatloads, Mario would still do great, Metroid Prime would sell super great, because the FPS genre has much more fans on PS and XBOX consoles, and their smaller franchises would get a good boost from having the much larger installbase. And then there is the extra $ they would get from exclusive advertising deals and similar stuff. Imagine how much Sony or MS would pay to get exclusive advertising rights to Mario.

They could still sell Nintendo accesories like Pro-controllers and NFC readers for both XBO and PS4.