EA comments on Switch support, says most players also own a PS4/X1 and often play the publisher’s games on those platforms

[DonFerrari]

pokoko said:
I love these threads. "I hate you EA! Nintendo fans would never buy your bad games! But you're wrong not to support Nintendo because that's a bad business decision because you'd be making a lot more money if you did! But I don't care at all! Hmph!"

Honestly, I understand where EA is coming from. The restaurant chain Subway recently realized that they were damaging their own margins by putting too many franchises too close to one another. In the pursuit of volume, they sacrificed efficiency to an unacceptable degree. One in the hand is worth two in the bush, especially when you divide those two with four store locations.

Publishers have to look at the data and ask themselves where and when it no longer becomes a positive to work on developing a new distribution channel. What is the potential gain? Because TOTAL sales no longer paint the full picture when a market is fragmented--they'll be looking more at unique sales opportunities in that situation. For example, if someone buys a game on Switch that would have bought it on Xbox otherwise, then you've just taken a hit to efficiency and lowered your margins.

It's a simple equation. Subtract the sales you think you would have gotten anyway from another channel from the total sales then compare the result against porting and marketing costs and decide if it was a worthwhile use of resources.

I've been saying this for years but I don't think EA is interested in splitting their market with another wedge on the pie chart. I don't believe they think it would be a much of a net positive in the long run. I don't think they're alone, either, as we've seen some publishers put some games on Nintendo hardware but not other games.

Am I saying they are right? I'm not, as I have no idea. However, I have no doubt that they have a lot more data than anyone here, so it's pretty hard to blindly contradict them.

On the other hand, I think they're overlooking something which I've come to think of as "The Bethesda Effect" (or, previously, the "The Ubisoft Effect"). Throw your full support behind Nintendo at the start of a generation and many of those "I hate the games X makes! I hate X for not supporting Nintendo!" comments mysteriously turn positive. Appeal to the ego of Nintendo-only gamers and I think the ratio of unique Nintendo sales will go up substantially.

You pretty much hit the nail on the first party.

In VGC it's something like "If EA change the games they make, how they make, where they launch, etc etc etc.... until they aren't EA anymore they will see more sales in Switch, I swear". EA won't change for the sake of pleasing a market they don't think will give they a ROI that is better than what they already have.