Expert thinks Nintendo + Disney

[Johnw1104]

Landguy said:

Johnw1104 said:

Can't disagree more with that one... I think Sony has a better chance of heading down that road than Nintendo just from the sheer weight of their other failing enterprises dragging them down, though I sincerely doubt either will.

The worst case scenario for Nintendo one or two generations from now is that they get out of the hardware business which, while certainly shrinking the company drastically, would also drastically lower the overhead/development/operating costs of manufacturing all of those consoles. At that point they'd likely still be able to make a fortune both as a third party and perhaps by porting past classics to the mobile market. Heck, if Sony and Microsoft were still around they could play the role of kingmaker for many gamers (such as myself) if they picked one side or the other.

Basically, Nintendo isn't going anywhere anytime soon... They're in great overall shape despite the poor sales.

Sony is clearly setting themselves up to get out of the console business. So we agree on that part.

As far as the big N goes, they too are not swimming in cash anymore.  They have a shrinking business model and a literal warehouse full of IPs that have tremendous value.  As the company continues to struggle, there will come a time when they will have to decide whether they want to sell an IP or 2 or just get out of the hardware business or just sell out all together.  Most tight knit companies like N fight the inevitable and sell off pieces (see Sony the last 5 years) at first to struggle to stay alive.  Don the line, when the broken business model can no longer be propped up by selling pieces, they make a decision from a bad position.  It will take a few years, but time will prove this out.

We seem to agree that they have a stable full of valuable IPs, but disagree about what they'd do with them. If their business model truly was failing and they were in terrible financial straits, I imagine they'd get out of the hardware business. At that point, rather than selling their IP's they'd become a third party developer, porting and designing games for other consoles and the mobile market. I imagine they'd be back in the black almost immediately.

It's not so much that their IP's aren't making them enough money due to their lack of popularity as it is due to being sold exclusively on Nintendo hardware. Nintendo's problem this generation isn't that no one wants to play Nintendo games anymore, but rather that few want to play ONLY Nintendo games which, with the lack of third party support, is basically the Wii U right now.

In my opinion, then, the worst fate ahead for Nintendo in the next decade or so is to leave the hardware business and become one of the world's top independent third party developers. Heck, just a couple proper Mario ports to the mobile market would probably sell like crazy.

As for Sony, while the company is in danger the Playstation brand is strong enough that I don't see it going anywhere. It does seem possible, though, that the next console might be little more than a streaming device... I hope not :