| Bofferbrauer said: It could expand their audience, but there's no guarantee to it at all. Worse even, Nintendos own titles could get drowned between the "mature" titles of the other consoles and their "kiddie" image, thus possibly selling even less. Also, I find your calculations a bit flawed: 1. 40$ per third party title/60$ for Nintendo titles: I don't know the situation where you live, but here third party titles don't drop in price at all on the Wii U, or at least rarely. From my point of view here, you could keep them at a higher price. On top of that, not every Nintendo title sells for 60$ at release. So I'd say 50$ each would be more appropriate. 2. You're missing out on the digital sales on the eShop. We don't know how much they sell there but the earnings Nintendo gains there would be lost if going third party. And some of the Indies sell rather well, so this does adds quite a few millions to the balance 3. Could Nintendo still keep their 60$ pricetag for so long on consoles where most games drop their prices after a few weeks or month? Not so sure about that. Since Nintendo games are much less frontloaded than games of other companies, this might be very significant. 4. Would they still produce games from smaller series as they do now to feed their consoles? Very doubtful, just look at SEGA. This would reduce the amount of games and thus sales as a whole. The Lineup would probably be reduced to Mario Jump & Run, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Smash, Mario Kart and the odd other title once in a while, as they will have to concentrate on games which really make them money. |
This post right here pretty much sums up the problems behind nintendo going third party. It would be great for people who only want zelda, mario and pokemon. Absolutely terrible for those of us who are fans enough to buy their consoles, enjoy many of their smaller IPs, and enjoy the projects they fund from third partys in order to bolster their library.
The profit ceiling that Nintendo could make as a Hardware maker is higher than that of a third party.
