Does It Really Matter How Much Switch Sells?

[potato_hamster]

Barkley said:

potato_hamster said:
It matters to Nintendo as well. They need to demonstrate to their shareholders that making hardware is still the most profitable direction for the company to take. People seem to fail to understand that the amount of money they have in the bank, or breaking even, or even maintaining a small profit is completely irrelevant. Nintendo has shareholders and their executive branch of Nintendo is beholden to those people to maximize the profitability of that company.

I agree, people seem to just say "But if they still make a profit they'll keep making hardware!". But in reality it doesn't work like that. If there is a MORE profitable avenue for them to go down, they may take it. It's about achieving the most success, not enough success to keep doing what you're doing.

It's why they started making iOS games. They clearly weren't happy with the profitability of the Wii U and 3DS and started to look into other revenue streams. If for example, Super Mario Run generates far more profit for Nintendo than Super Mario Odyssey, you can bet your ass Nintendo's mobile game projects are going to see a larger investment than their console game projects. Nintendo's executive will start green lighting more mobile games, and less consoles games because that would be where the money is now. If Nintendo's executive believe that Nintendo's IP will generate more profit for the company on Sony or Microsoft consoles, rather than on Nintendo consoles, then that is the direction they will take.


Why can't people see that? Why are people acting like Nintendo is a privately owned company where the owners can just sit back on their IP and make whatever the fans want as long as it makes a profit? Is it wishful thinking? Did they never take an economics course? Do they not know how investments work? I gave up trying to figure that out.