In hindsight, was it always smart for Nintendo to never prioritize or pursue 3rd party support?

[IcaroRibeiro]

I think it's both a positive and negative thing

The lack of 3rd party support is what help Nintendo to sell and grown their 2nd tier franchises

In a world where Nintendo get major third party support those games will be steep competition in Nintendo consoles, which will lead to reduced software revenue overall

This is the key for Nintendo high profits. We can see their revenue is much smaller than Sony's in any given year... ever? Sony sells much more games, earn more from add content and subscriptions, but their slice in each of those is so small they often have pretty bad profit margins

Nintendo sells less than Sony, yet their profits are consistently higher because even if people expend less money on Nintendo, Nintendo still earns full revenue from everything they sell. In this sense they are much more cost efficient and more importantly have high margins, earning more than Sony in every given year... since ever too?


The negative side is Nintendo position can be really dangerous if they made bad consoles, which already happened a couple of times

Sony in other hand having every major third party is king of player engagement and mindshare. That's why generation after generation Playstation sales are high, consistent and with the most loyal userbase of the 3 by far, despite all echhoes of them making bad decisions, the worst possible outcome for Sony as of today was selling over 80 million units, which is just nuts to think about


I'd say Sony strategy is low-risk, produce safe profits and secure long-term stability in the market. Honestly I just can't see Sony out of the market unless people really stop caring about consoles (which I can see happening in few generations, when Boomers and Gen X were no longer playing games anymore)

Nintendo strategy is high-risk high-return, this explains why Nintendo is so conservative with their budgets and rather leave markets entirely than keep operating at loss. They know if their decisions are bad they are essentially out of the market, because they have nobody to rely on. Nintendo have secure a humongous amount of cash to support their own vision on how to sell games, so in case they get another Wii U or Game Cube they are able to bounce back without major issues