spemanig said:
And again, I think its more about spreading Nintendo's brand as a whole than raising the sales of software. From this POV, Angry Birds is a perfect example. So is something like Minecraft. Those are two of the most culturally relevant franchises today, from any media. Their brand has been spread far and wide, and now they are titanic. They have toys, AB is getting a movie, kids wear their shirts and hats, and Nintendo wants that back. That immediate cultural relevance and brand awareness that they had in the NES/SNES era. The "games are Nintendo," everyone cares about Mario Nintendo. They want people talking about them again, and in a good way. I think that anyone looking at mobile as merely an advertizement wing is completely missing the point. Nintendo wants to make good mobile games so that lots more people have good experiences with Nintendo as a brand and the mass market's awareness of Nintendo as a brand is raised. They want people to be talking about Nintendo games with the same relevancy as Minecraft and Angry Birds and Frozen and Star Wars and every other brand that isn't hidden behind a $300 experience barrier. That's why I compare Nintendo's mobile decision to their decision to open their IP to TV shows and movies, starting the N-Box loot crate-like service, Amiibo, and the theme park deal with Universal. Donkey Kong wasn't in Pixels to sell Wii U's. He was in Pixels to make Donkey Kong more relevant today. I think there is a difference with Sonic though. Those Sonic games have done nothing for his brand, because they aren't very good mobile games. They were successful, but not Angry Birds successful. Nintendo wants that. Again, Nintendo isn't expecting the hundreds of millions of people who play all their mobile games to to get up and buy an NX, but the positive mainstream relevance and the new found familiarity with their brand will be a huge factor in the success of their platform. It's not about the money, though. Obviously they stand to make money, but this decision was made because it is in line with their future plans. Their monetization isn't even built around maximum profits. It's built around maximum discoverability. It's absolutely not an "if you can't beat them" situation. They've figured out a way to fit mobile into their plans for the future, and the goal behind their platform. I definitely don't think mobile will overtake their core gaming business, though. I think the NX will be massively successful. I think all of this stuff they've been planning the last two years are going to absolutely blow up starting 2017. It starts with the membership program this month and mobile, but the full swing will happen in 2017. I'd be money you're going to see the first Mario movie that year, and that's when their brand absolutely explodes back into prevalance again. You'll have the mobile in full swing, the membership program will already be widely adopted because of the association with the smash hit mobile games, the NX will be out and gaining steam, a CGI Mario movie will likely come out at the end of that year which will be huge if handled correctly, we might see some Nintendo TV shows return, solid details on the Nintendo themepark will likely be out by that point, etc. It's going to be monumental. |
I think it's more likely the mobile games themselves will end up making more money for Nintendo than their traditional game business. As for movies, great. Should have done that 10 years ago, but better late than never.
With DeNA, I've actually heard their mobage service is riddled with a lot of complaints from users. They're nothing special as a company, they're one (of many) companies that make/host a bunch of shitty/microtransaction riddled smart phone games.
My feeling is Nintendo chose them primarily because they're small enough of a company that they can't bully/influence/potentially buy-out Nintendo, so Nintendo notorious for not working well in partnerships and having to have full control likely chose them for that. And they're Japanese.
They would never work with a company like a Google or a Samsung or an Apple that could actually really be a game changer for them in this capacity.
If these games are just "advertisements" why use DeNA at all? Sega and Square-Enix are quite capable of making smartphone apps no problem and Nintendo is bigger than both of them. Nintendo needs DeNA for another reason. Nintendo/DeNA are going to nickle and dime people to death with microtransactions ... that's what Nintendo wants, they want 5-6 smartphone app "cash cow" games like Candy Crush and Game of War that bring in a constant stream of revenue. This is about making money and getting in that trend of big money smartphone apps, not about marketing primarily IMO. That's just a secondary benefit that sounds a lot better in PR terms than "we want to fuck you with constant microtransactions".
They don't need DeNA to make smartphone games that would act as advertisments for Nintendo consoles. They could do that easy and let people download them for free. They need DeNA to make BIG money apps though because those apps are constantly updated with crap to buy.
I also think there probably was a large contingent of people at Nintendo (Miyamoto included) who were against the move to smartphone apps and resisted it for as long as possible, but they lost that vote once negative financials on the Wii U and 3DS started to roll in.
