EA on NX support: "If it makes sense for us - we'll be there"

[Soundwave]

RolStoppable said:

Soundwave said:

So what would stop a Nintendo 1st party game from selling 10 million on a different platform? *crickets*. You falsely frame this as an either/or when it's not.

Nintendo would still have portable hardware, they'd just move maybe the 6-7 console IP they have that really sell anything that noteworthy to a more mainstream platform rather than being stuck on a home console that doesn't sell much. For that I'm sure Sony would likely offer them a fairly nice sweetheart deal and Nintendo could insist on their support for their handheld as a bonus.

If 80% of your own buyers purhcase the handheld unit in a "unifed platform" rather than the home console, a home console that has little/no developer support then really are you even in competetion with something like a PS4/PS5? No, you are basically a handheld company, so I don't see the harm in that scenario in offering some IP to Playstation's massive audience if you can get a favorable deal in return.

Of course licensing fees are the main motivator to have a platform as well, why wouldn't EA just make their own console for example? Why pay someone else $8 of every game you make for no reason?

Receiving royalty fees from developers is what offsets the headaches and risks of making a platform (chipset investement, marketing, manufacturing, etc. etc.). That's the whole point of why Nintendo made the Famicom/NES with its licensing fee model for devs, which is the standard business model that exists to this day in the business.

Why should Nintendo weaken their own ecosystem by putting their premium content on somebody else's console? Your entire argument is incredibly stupid. Even if 80% of Nintendo system owners will have chosen a handheld, it's still better to sell 10m copies of a game on a handheld than on somebody else's console. Not only is Nintendo guaranteed to keep all of the revenue to themselves, but their own hardware will sell better because there are more reasons to own it; that in turn is going to increase overall software sales.

The reason why Nintendo implemented a licensing model is because the video game market crashed in the USA, and because if third parties wanted to make money from Nintendo's customers, it would only be fair that they pay for it. But the Famicom didn't have third party support right out of the gate; that rules out that Nintendo got into the console business to collect royalty fees.

The reason why third parties choose to remain third parties is that paying a royalty fee is a lot less costly and risky than creating their own system.

pokoko said:

Between 5-7% of their total revenue?  That's pretty sweet, actually.  Considering it's a stream with almost no overhead, that should translate to a much higher percentage of their total profit.

Still only a small fraction of Nintendo's profits throughout the years.

The other problem is that more third party support would come at a significant cost. Hardware needs to be sold at a loss to satisfy the needs for processing power while staying competitive with similar options in the marketplace. The investment would be greater than the return.

Lastly, if royalty fees were as big of a money maker as some want to believe, then online multiplayer wouldn't be behind a paywall on both PS and Xbox.

I never said Nintendo would stop making handheld games. It's just if their console is going to sell like complete shit anyway, much like are doing with smartphone games (to "bring" more people to the Nintendo brand), then having some Nintendo IP on say the Playstation could also introduce people to Nintendo IP and they then may buy the NX portable.

No one is selling hardware at huge losses these days, there's no need to unless you make a bunch of stupid design decisions like Nintendo did with the Wii U. The PS4 and XB1 are sold at a profit/cost. I remember even Iwata saying chipsets are not really a big issue for losses because they scale down in cost very quickly these days.