RolStoppable said:
Sounds like you left objectivity at the door. Game Pass is the tough sell which is why Microsoft runs it at a loss to get their subscription numbers up. But yes, NSO isn't the same type of offering. Nintendo's classic games still require the purchase of Nintendo hardware, unlike Game Pass. Therefore Nintendo's classic games increase the value of Nintendo hardware which in turn brings in more people to Nintendo's ecosystem. Nintendo doesn't need to compete with Game Pass because their gaming business actually works and will continue to work because of its exclusive content. |
I think it's pretty known that my allegiance lies with Nintendo, so if I wasn't being objective I would default for them.
Whether or not it's a tough sell depends purely on the price. So, that's kind of a weird argument. PS Plus has nearly 4x on an install base only about 2X the size, so I think it's fair to say NSO counts as a tough sell.
NSO was at 10 million last August. Gamepass hit that about April. So, they're relatively on par, but Gamepass is selling based purely on its game offerings, whereas NSO is also a paywall to online play. So, it's safe to say customers are seeing more value in Gamepass than in the ability to play NES and SNES games. Unless you want to argue that nobody is paying for NSO to play games online.
Gamepass definitely adds value to XBox's hardware. The fact that its available on other systems doesn't completely negate that. By that logic, NSO is worthless to Switch owners, because there are other legal systems that can play all of those games, and also they're very not hard to obtain through less morally upright means.
For me, buying XBox hardware was the easiest and cheapest way to get access to Gamepass, so it drove me to XBox hardware. And even if I did wind up doing it on PC/Mac/Linux/w/e, that'd still be part of Microsoft's ecosystem. On the other hand, buying NSO was something I begrudgingly did to play online games. The SNES and NES games just made me slightly less salty about it. Maybe there were some people really dying to play Super Mario RPG that don't know about emulators/have firm moral values/can't find an SNES Classic/didn't buy it on the Wii, but I don't think NSO is doing all that much for Switch hardware.
Exclusive content is good, but the business model is somewhat archaic. Don't know if it will shift as drastically as TV and music towards some kind of subscription based model, but that's going to be a big part of market by 2030, and Nintendo needs to have some kind of solution in that space whether it's a direct competitor to Gamepass or their own take. NSO as it currently stands is nowhere near that. Or they can just decide to do things how they've been doing them... but that hasn't worked well for that many companies.
Last edited by JWeinCom - on 19 October 2020
