Why do Disk Drives matter?

[Norion]

RolStoppable said:

Norion said:

To get to the gist of the matter why do you think Nintendo would always make more money selling physical games instead of at some point forcing everyone to buy games on their consoles digitally? They make more money from selling a digital copy than a physical one so from a business perspective it seems obvious to me to eventually go in that direction when the physical die-hards get small enough in number which is why the video game industry is increasingly going there. You seem to be arguing that Nintendo will be a special exception in this regard but I just don't buy that.

Also the use of the word always shows you're not looking very far into the future with this. You said Nintendo would lose too many customers but you don't know that there will still be a significant physical video games market a few decades from now let alone 100 years from now. At some point later this century I wouldn't be surprised if some governments discourage stuff like physical video games due to them being more wasteful than the digital equivalent.

Nintendo is already a special exception for many things. You acknowledged this in silence when it comes to microtransactions. You could just as well argue that microtransactions make more money than foregoing to do the practice, but that brings us to the question why Nintendo isn't pursuing the path. Which is something that I already answered in the preceding post: It's bound to hurt Nintendo in the long run. This long term thinking is also something that makes Nintendo a special exception. An example of this is the pricing for their games where they didn't follow the AAA industry model of slashing prices quickly to maximize the amount of copies being sold; Nintendo's reasoning was that this devalues games and of course they were right in refusing to cut prices because it has benefited their profits for generations.

Other major examples of Nintendo being the special exception are:

Nintendo is still making portable consoles.
Nintendo doesn't port their games to the PC or other consoles.
Nintendo still greenlights games in genres that the AAA industry has long abandoned.

The puzzling thing is that you say that physical copies are a positive thing, but at the same time believe that Nintendo will get rid of them. Why is that? The evidence is already out there that Nintendo doesn't chase the quick buck, so customer satisfaction is verifiably built in to their long term business strategy. Why would Nintendo piss off video game collectors and all the passionate gamers with YouTube channels who sit in front of their shelves that are stacked with physical video games? It makes no sense to turn positive coverage of your products into negative coverage that is viewed by millions of people.

As for the look into the future, I am looking just as far into it as you do. The difference is that I extrapolate the future from the facts of how Nintendo does business while you use Sony and Microsoft as your basis.

I don't think Nintendo getting rid of a physical option would cause anywhere near as big of a backlash as pursuing microtransactions. Backlash to that move would already be way smaller than it would be if done a decade ago so it's just about doing it when the backlash would be small enough to not really matter. You're right that Nintendo is relatively unique but at the end of the day they're a company so will chase after money and like the things you listed pursuing digital will make them more money.

It's positive for the consumer but for the console manufacturers digital is better so unfortunately I think it's only a matter of time till the negative impact to customer satisfaction will become low enough for Nintendo to remove the option. They can still make money from things like toys and selling special editions of their games that come with a code so I'm not saying they'll abandon selling physical items entirely. For the negative coverage part Nintendo is no stranger to doing things that piss off their fans and attract negative PR so as long as the benefit of the move outweighs that which I think it will later on they'll do it.

And I'm extrapolating based on both of those things. I think it'll make sense business wise for Nintendo to go in that direction within the next few decades and Xbox and Sony being closer to it with them having a higher digital presence is good evidence that Nintendo is only behind them in regards to it since I don't see a reason for them to not do the same unless the overall trend stops or reverses.

Last edited by Norion - on 03 September 2024