RolStoppable said:
Nintendo doesn't need to compete because it's a dead end. Despite Nintendo sales being pretty much at an all time low right now, Sony and Microsoft aren't doing hot either. Their consoles regularly fail to overcome the 200k units hurdle for monthly sales in the USA (by far the biggest software market too, tie ratios are notably higher than anywhere else), so if there were a third console to split those sales, we would be looking at around 100k for each of the three companies. What's more, Sony projected only a profit of $400m for the current fiscal year despite continued dominance in the home console business. There really isn't much money to be made, even if a company seems to be hugely successful. And remember, this is after Sony has introduced a paywall for online multiplayer to increase their yearly revenue by hundreds of millions. Therefore the premise that Nintendo has to compete is fundamentally flawed. It's not even that they don't have the money to compete (they do have it), it's just that even if they succeeded, the profits would be so slim that it isn't worth it. The way Nintendo can be successful is by making devices that sell, and they can achieve this on the basis of first party software. We are on a sales website, so it isn't hard to look up that Nintendo success was always driven by Nintendo games, with third parties being nothing more than the cherry on top. If NX sells, then third parties will either come to Nintendo or choose to miss out on the installed base; that's really up to them and shouldn't be anything that Nintendo forces, because if Nintendo starts to hand out money, then everyone will expect to get money. There's also the premise that a video game system needs third parties to have continued success, but that's a misguided belief. Ultimately, a system needs a consistent flow of quality software to stay relevant, but that doesn't mean that third party support is required. It merely is believed to be this way, because no console manufacturer has ever managed to provide enough software on its own. So in theory, if Nintendo were able to put out 24 retail games every year (so two games per month on average), then that wouldn't be too bad. If this number were to raise to 36, all the better. The idea behind NX is to have a common operating system and development environment for all devices, so this means if Nintendo's current home console and handheld software output ceases to be separate and ends up being combined, then that's already a solid basis for a steady flow of quality software, and one that should make it possible to avoid most of the droughts that the 3DS and Wii U have seen over the years. Since the software output will be available on all NX devices, a low selling home console won't restrict games to sales of only 5m; so even in a case where all NX devices combined sell only 50m (that's less than Wii U and 3DS combined), there is still a good chance to have several games that sell more than 10m copies. And that's a good thing, because first party software is the biggest source of profit in the video game business. So Nintendo doesn't even need to catch lightning in a bottle, because even a failure will give them another chance to forge new strategies. But since they won't compete with Sony and Microsoft for the big third party games, there is obviously nothing stopping them from making an unconventional controller. If it helps to make the system more appealing to consumers, then they should absolutely go for it. |
Pretty much what Zorg and I have been saying for a while.
However if kids continue to be enraptured by $1 smartphone games instead of Nintendo handhelds, then it become an increasingly tougher proposition. They need to hold the portable front even though they are suffering heavy losses on that front. They have to hold that side, the console side is kind of a lost cause in some ways.
If they didn't have iOS/Android to deal with it would be fairly easy and straight forward.
