RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:
I think Nintendo should just accept Windows. They're a rinky dink little company by comparison, they're never going to build an OS on par with that and the OS for all the Wii/DS/3DS/Wii U quite frankly sucked, which isn't unpredicable. Nintendo has a tiny fraction of the employees, their OS division is probably liek 100 people max. Why waste money and resources on that.
Let MS have that. Hell Nintendo should have just accepted a deal from MS in the GameCube era and let the GCN run Windows. What difference would it have made to Nintendo? Instead they allowed another 800 pound gorilla into the ring for no good reason and now they find themselves basically locked out of the traditional console market.
MS doesn't really take a loss on XBox hardware any more so that's not really a big issue.
The point would be that Nintendo would be gaurunteed a decent seat at the table without having to rely on flaky trends/gimmicks. The XBox One even with all the mistakes MS has made is still a stone cold lock to sell 40 million units, with Nintendo's support that could maybe be as high as 60-70 million. That is a stable seat.
The two of them also compliment each other well software wise. Nintendo makes family friendly/nostalgic/fun games, MS would be an ideal fit as a secondary software provider that fills in the gaps present in Nintendo's lineup (Halo, Forza, Gears, etc.). Plus Minecraft and Rareware IP have a natural fit with Nintendo's offerings.
Nintendo could still make Switch systems, could even take over distribution/branding of the XBox brands in EU/Asia and I think MS would even allow them to have a cut of licensing fees.
For MS the XBox brand is kind of like a vanity project, it's something they like to have to be able to show shareholders "see, we do more than Windows" and it keeps the MS brand on some kind of tangiable consumer device. Let them have that. I think they would welcome Nintendo to handle a lot of the other stuff though, I get the sense they don't really *love* running a game division. It's something they kinda, sorta like doing.
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Why is 40 million good when Nintendo sells 70 million? Nevermind Xbox's glaring lack of success outside of English-speaking nations. Microsoft simply wouldn't be a strong global partner for Nintendo.
Microsoft made Xbox as a defensive move to protect Windows, that's why shareholders put up with it. The original reasons to have Xbox around do no longer exist, so Microsoft does not need to keep manufacturing hardware. That they are stripping future games of Xbox exclusivity can be seen as a soft exit strategy from the hardware business. Should Xbox consoles continue to tread water, Microsoft will become a software publisher because it's far less risky from a financial perspective. Xbox Live subscriptions won't be valuable enough to keep making hardware when the hardware doesn't sell at a high enough level, nevermind that it will eventually be feasible to offer a streaming service where subscriptions can live on without Microsoft having to sell consoles.
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Nintendo sells 70 million portables ... but consoles? Not even close, not unless they have a miracle controller to ride on, and they don't have that anymore.
Nintendo could still sell Switch, I don't think MS would have any issue with that. That's a portable centric line of hardware pretty far removed from something like the XBox Scorpio.
40-50 million consoles is still too high for MS to just give up on the brand. That's not "treading water". That's a valuable brand, they have issues globally ... but therein lives yet more incentive to work with Nintendo.
If XBox was selling 20-30 million tops then OK I could see them abandoning it, but if you're doing above Sega Genesis/SNES numbers, that's just too strong to give up on entirely.
