Should Nintendo Target Adults More With Their Next Handheld?

[DanneSandin]

RolStoppable said:

DanneSandin said:

I think it's a shame that you didn't answer him properly, since I think he had a few good points in there. But I guess you've had similar arguments with others before and have grown tired of answering the same counter-arguments?

Yeah, I've had such arguments before.

Think of a hypothetical scenario where the mentioned flaws didn't exist, so you are looking at a cool black console that has proper sequels to Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time as well as a Perfect Dark 2. Take into account that Nintendo's grip on the FPS market on consoles would dwindle because of Microsoft's Halo and the Xbox's architecture that shifts PC ports away from Nintendo and towards Microsoft; furthermore, take into account that Microsoft's marketing angle would be about painting Nintendo as kiddie which would be easy to do because Nintendo would not abandon Mario while Microsoft has Halo and all those FPS ports of PC titles. Now pretend Nintendo's proper sequels sold just as well as their N64 counterparts and each one of those additional copies sold (compared to the actual GC software sales) would result in an additional hardware sale. It's a very generous way to look at it, but with reasonable estimates you would still be looking at only 30-35m consoles sold.

That sounds acceptable until you realize that this best case scenario is the same amount as the N64 sold, and when you extrapolate this strategy to future generations (focusing on the enthusiast gamer), the ever-increasing development costs for games coupled with the hardware requirements that Sony, Microsoft and third parties have been pushing for, make it quickly clear that it's an unsustainable way for Nintendo to run their business. And that's why I am laughing at such suggestions.

Then again, we are talking about handhelds here. The OP is talking as if EA is a major player when it comes to handheld games. Now that's funny.

You're assuming that future Nintendo consoles would still only sell 30-35m units if they targeted core gamers with GC, which is a fault on your behalf.

Let's except your scenario; GC sells 30m units, MS takes a large chunk of the FPS market and tries to paint Nintendo as kiddie. First of all, with almost 10 more million units sold, 3rd party games would have sold way better (I base this on two reasonings; first, there's 10 more million costumers, and secondly, almost none of them are Nintendo fans - since they already bought GC and are included in the 22m units that were actually sold), which could mean that GC would retain exclusivity on franchises like Resident Evil - which could even mean more 3rd party "hardcore" titles (since 3rd party games would sell more). Nintendo would in anyways almost certainly get more 3rd party games to GC.

Even though a large chunk of the FPS market would go to Xbox, Nintendo would still have PD2, a "mature" Zelda (something like TP), mature 3rd party games and maybe something aking to Mario Galaxy. There is no way for MS to paint Nintendo as kiddie then. Nintendo would simply show more mature titles in their commercials - like PD2, Zelda TP, RE4, Star Wars, Eternal Darkness and other games to debunk MS's claim of kiddieness. They could maybe even get a chunk out of MS's 25m Xbox's.

All of this would probably lead to better 3rd party relationships, so when Nintendo kept up with Sony and MS in the specs wars, they'd also get much better 3rd party support. They'd get multiplats, just like PS3 and X360 would have. They would probably have sold a lot more consoles than 30-35m in the 7th gen. Let's remember that both X360 and PS3 are both closing in on 84m units each. If MS could take advantage of Sony's initial failure with PS3, so to could Nintendo. And let's remember that Nintendo would automatically get 10-20m sales just because of its fan base, and with a competative console with good 3rd party support they could easily have gotten quite a few more millions sold.

While production costs would have gone up, so would also Nintendo's revenue. They'd sell more units of their own games PLUS they'd get a lot more 3rd party royalties, and they would sell alot more extra controllers and stuff and they'd sell a lot more eShop games. Nintendo's potential future catering to core gamers aren't as bleak as you make it out to be Rol. If MS and Sony can run their business' like this, why couldn't Nintendo? They WERE making core games with N64, and had they continued to do so with GC (and been successful with it) they could have kept doing it.

One thing to keep in mind is that A LOT of people want Nintendo to go 3rd party or make mobile games. Why? Because there's a big market for Nintendo games, but they don't want to buy a brand new console to play them. Now, imagine these folks having tree choices of consoles; they have almost the same specs/power, they all have good 3rd party support and gets multiplats of most games, but only one of them have Nintendo games. That's quite easily a few more millions sold of Nintendo's console. Let's say 10m loyal fans, and then 10m more just because of their 1st party line up coupled with being just as good as the competition. That's 20m right there.

Man, that turned into rant didn't it?