My Defense to Nintendo's Youtube Policy

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ToraTiger said:

I actually agree with Nintendo 100% on this Angry Joe B.s.  I don't enjoy L.Ps or any other non-gaming hobby that isn't video games.  I don't watch Youtube at all, but I never got the point of letting gamers make millions using other people's products to make commentary and reactions on them.  Look at it this way, shouldn't a movie company get money where ever a channel on T.V plays their film?  It's the same thing in this case.  They're getting ad money by entertaining people with someone else's copyrighted product.  I think Nintendo did a good job, and I honestly wished other game devs made a similar policy. 

This is only a bad move because Nintendo is now losing a lot of advertising, but they're partner share program is fair imo besides the fact that your channel can only play nintenod games...

 

Also lol@ letting people making millions by playing video games and stream, and worst is letting them take all the proceeds themselves..  

So you haven't got a clue what you're talking about but you're going to venture an opinion anyway.

Youtubers who only do let's plays and make millions you can probably count on one hand. So you are labouring under a hopelessly false assumption right there. Let's plays for someone like Angry Joe are a sideline not his main thing. All of the most financially successful youtubers are putting many hours of production planning and effort into their videos. And there are very few youtubers who are making millions unless they have their own merchandising or live acts.

The movie analogy is terrible and also demonstrates a fundamenatl lack of understanding. Movies are watched on screen / in theatres. Movie comppanies can only make money if people pay them to be able to watch the movie. Therefore the main way a movie studio makes money is through cinema revenue and TV broadcasting rights. They also make some money through DVD sales. A movie broadcast on TV is not an advertisement for the movie, it is providing the consumer with the entire movie experience, there is nothing more to be had other than watching the movie. Therefore the watching of a movie on TV is an end point for the consumer. Watching a let's play is not a consumer end point, because the consumer end point is the actual playing of the game to some degree of completion, and that cannot be achieved by watching Youtube. Sure you can watch 100% of a game's play through on Youtube, but that still is not the complete game experience, and if it's a game like Mario Party, or Mario Kart watching a let's play is entirely inadequate compared to actually playing, as opposed to say The Order or The Last of Us, which being very heavily story driven means watching a Let's play pretty much provides about 70% of the experience of playing.

Game companies make all of their revenue by selling (or renting) their games (and gaming hardware) to people (and selling hardware in the case of Nintendo). If they can't convince people to buy their games they're screwed as a company and no amount of revenue collection through Youtube content will keep them alive. So the ONLY moral justification for demanding a cut of the Youtube pie is if there is evidence to show that Youtube videos are reducing game sales (i.e. there is finanancial harm being done to the producer/publisher of the game). All evidence points to youtube videos having either no effect or a beneficial effect. If there is generally a marginally beneficial effect then youtube videos consitutes informal advertising.  If the youtuber=the advertiser then it is a completely deranged concept that the advertiser should pay the product owner.

Nintendo does have a legitimate interest in trying to make sure its games are given positive coverage. And having no control over youtubers means there is a risk that the Angry Joes of this world will pour scorn on a game and tell everyone it's a PoS and don't buy it, or play it. If Nintendo wants to control the social media narrative to minimise negitivity about a game, then that is an entirely different matter. But they should not be hiding that sort of control behind a revenue sharing programme. And arguably instead of making games that prominant youtubers will shit on, they should make games that prominant youtubers will love, which is generally what Nintendo does, so social media negativity towards a game is rarely Nintendo's problem.

If there is one place Nintendo should go for revenue associated with let's plays and other forms of Youtube content it's Google. Google makes money from Youtube and makes passive money from Youtubers putting up videos of game content. The problem is Google has loads of money and expensive laywers on tap and they will be able to tell Nintendo to feck off with their petty moneygrabbing ideas.

The fact that Nintendo is the only gaming company Angry Joe has a problem with in this regard is proof enough that Nintendo's policy here is backwards thinking.