| Nautilus said: 1. First that you could easily create a program that requires a subscription fee in other platforms that has success.Think PS Plus or XBox Live without the paywall for internet use and you got it.I mean, Xbox Live on 360 already did that and was successful.The free games every month, plus the discounts they throw every now and then exclusives to the service is more than enough to make people jump in. 2.Second reason that i think you are wrong is that they dont do it only to get the cut from third party games.You subestimate the kind of profit that you can have from first party game, at the very least for Nintendo. On the Wii, Nintendo has dozens of titles that sold over 10 millions.And that just overshadows the profits done by the cut of the money they make on third party.The same can be said for the DS. 3.If Nintendo were to go third party, the profit/cut they get on each of their titles would fall considerably if they were to publish on other machines, be it PC, mobile, PS4 or XOne. You could argue that they could compensate for increased numbers sold the lack of total profit per unit. 4. They would lose something more important:total control over their decisions. 5. Now, this is a personal opinion of mine, but since Nintendo wouldnt have created their own hardware, they wouldnt know how to take full advantage of their power and as a consequence the games would suffer for it. 6. I think its also important to note that Nintendo is one of the few companies that are not as interest in profit than making great games.I mean, they are still a company so of course they want to make money, but they are not afraid to make high risk choices that could potentially make them lose money, just for the sake in what they believe will make their games better. |
1. I assume when you say Xbox Live already did it on 360, you actually meant to say PS+ did it on ps3 with regards to a subscription service that didn't have online play locked behind a paywall. PS+ was at about 4 million subscribers back in the day when it was nothing but free games (and much better free games then we're getting now) But with the online being behind a paywall that number is up to 21 million subscribers, with the launch of the ps4 (and the start of locking online multiplayer behind a paywall) subscriptions to PS+ SHOT up. I don't agree that you could make a subscription service on PC for example that would be as profitable or successful as PS+ or Xbox Live.
2. Absolutely, Nintendo's main profit currently is by far first party software. That's exactly why they shouldn't be limiting their consumer base.
3. Yes and that's exactly what I would argue, take Mario Kart 8 for example, absolutely phenomenal game. The predecessor sold over 36 million, yet Mario Kart 8 sold only over 7.5 million so far. (I'd post vgchartz numbers but I can't get the site to load.) Mario Kart 8 has been SEVERELY hindered by the very small installbase of the WiiU. If this game was released on ps4/xbo and PC as well I have no doubt it would have sold at the very least 20 million copies. Regardless of the cut they have to give to Sony, Microsoft and Steam it would have made them at least twice as much as it made on the WiiU. As for Mobile Nintendo could very easily create it's own store on android and get 100% of the profits.
4. As Nintendo would be publishing their own games they would have full control over their titles. They would lose no control.
5. With their hardware currently being a fraction of the power of the competition it's irrelevant that they wouldn't be able to squeeze as much power out of the machines. But the difference between what third party's and first party's can get out of a machine isn't that drastic, the greatest looking games on a machine sometimes come from third party's.
6. They make high risk choices because they think it has a chance of being very rewarding in terms of profits. They are definitely as interested in profits as any other company, (amiibo).
Nintendo make the majority of their money from first party software, so why hold it back. They should focus on continuing to develop phenomenal software and not waste resources on developing risky hardware that the software is reliant on selling so it actually has potential customers. If Nintendo's hardware doesn't sell, it's games don't sell. The entire business is reliant on hardware selling, these last few years would have been far far better for Nintendo if they were third party.
The WiiU has some fantastic games that could have sold several times more units if they weren't restricted to Nintendo's platform.
