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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - I've changed my stance. Nintendo needs to go 3rd party

mountaindewslave on 18 January 2017
fordy said:
mountaindewslave said:

you're being deliberately dense if you're attempting to continue to act oblivious to the fact that its a hybrid system, and that's its advantage. You can't take a PS4 or Xbox one away from your TV. 

The Switch docks for the TV and then its a pick up and go and play elsewhere sort of thing.

Also some of you (including the OP) seem to be completely unaware of a thing called INFLATION existing. The Switch is no more expensive than almost EVERY single Nintendo system at launch when adjusted for Inflation. Even the Wii. In fact if memory serves me, I think the only home console to be lower (inflation wise) would probably be the Gamecube.

at any rate- if the OP truly can't understand the advantages the Switch, a HYBRID device, would have over the competition OR over its predecessor, then they're too far gone.

Sucks for you if you want to play Nintendo's games but don't want to buy their system, but simply your own whims have no bearing on whether or not Nintendo should or shouldn't go third party. Anyone who has done any research in the matter would be aware of the loss of control and splitting of profits that occurs for third party developers.

Nintendo's best traits are BECAUSE they have their own hardware and control

 

So you're buying a console that (over here at least) is over twice the price of its competitors simply because you can take it anywhere? Please, do convince me how this is a great deal. Even from the 3DS, the aesthetics of it all is clearly a step back (and I'm not talking in generational hardware here) as I mentioned in the OP.

Inflation doesn't account to a $100 shift in the span of 4 years. that only happens in hyperinflated economies. That's also just the console side. The comparison on the portable side is even greater.

Oh this is saucy. Go ahead. Tell me how Nintendo having control over the PowerPC architecture that nobody else uses is classed as a strength, because if anything that is their biggest weakness. Their strength is actually building robust engines for their GAMES, and it's not like Sony or Microsoft have any rights to hide x64 architecture from Nintendo. It's only the architecture with the most software developed for it...

 

don't know where you are, but currently in the USA all of the three consoles are around or close to 300$. Maybe PS4 and Xone are now at promotional price for like 280$, I don't know. but a hybrid debatably provides more value than a standard home console (again, obviously if you're not someone specifically just prioritizing graphics).

If you want to find somewhere to bitch about prices then maybe you should pick the Vita, which with its memory card ends up being not far from even the Switch price, despite vastly inferior spec wise.

and you're sort of arguing in a circle- you claim you bought the Wii U AND the 3DS. If that's true then more than likely you paid a total for them OVER what the Switch will cost you. So obviously people, including yourself, do find value in both a portable console and a home console that have certain advantages that may not be spec wise equal to their competitors

the difference here is its a COMBINED device and more convenient. I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. You're welcome to your opinion by the way, but the problem is when in the original post you put a lot of speculative nonsense about the battery life, the online services, the third party support- none of that is known for certain yet.

and the $100 shift might be in your market (where the hell are you?) but in the USA the Wii U is still being sold for $300, the 3DS still for like $180. My point being is that the Switch is perfectly in line with the prices for Nintendo systems in the past.

When I bring up inflation I mainly point out that the Wii at 250$ at launch or whatever comes close, something like the N64 at launch in 1996 at like 200$ would end up coming close (in fact it would be over 300$ inflated), etc. etc. etc.

any good PHONE or tablet (and they don't have the fans or capability to run Switch likes games) at new price is going to be over what the Switch costs. 

 

I understand debates about the expensive accessories or the Joycon components being unecessary (or not liking them) but the price is just not that unrealistic, especially when comparing with last gen prices.



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mountaindewslave on 18 January 2017
Soundwave said:

I know some people are upset, and that's their perrogative, but honestly do you really think Nintendo could compete with a traditional home console?

They can't anymore, even if they had tried to, they would have gotten blind sighted by the PS4 Pro and XBox Scorpio which likely would've been more powerful than whatever "a little better than PS4" console that Nintendo would've made.

Nintendo honestly just doesn't have it in them to make a great home console anymore and compete in that space. Every console they've made since the NES has seen declining sales aside from a 4 year stretch of the Wii, and even the Wii illustrates they have no idea what they're doing home console wise as they some how managed to lose 85% of that audience in a matter of 2-3 years.

They're just not good at home consoles, in the 90s/2000s they mismanaged things so badly and allowed Sony/MS to take over the marketplace, and it's just too hard to play catch up for a company that has as many problems as Nintendo.

Merging what was left of their console market into the more friendly confines of the portable market (which even with phones/tablets is still far more cozy for Nintendo ... see: 63 million 3DS' vs. only 14 million Wii Us, 3DS will have sold more than every Nintendo console except Wii).

I will disagree that the Switch is really a 'portable' move, but rather that it is indeed a hybrid, combining everything together. Bear in mind Nintendo has been split down the middle in terms of producing games for both of their platforms in the past, much more so than their competitors (well Sony). I think its less an aim at just doing the portable market as much genuinely wanting a combined platform for home AND abroad that will let them focus their software onto one device.

Obviously their portables have been more consistent and the backbone of the company, but in the end Nintendo's software sells great on both home consoles and portables so the hybrid concept just seems like a no brainer. I'm not sure how someone could label the Switch as a 'portable' priority device when a lot of users will probably basically permanently leave it in the dock and play on their TV



Soundwave on 18 January 2017

Switch isn't a device for everyone ... just like plenty of people didn't own an N64 or GameCube or even a Wii.

It doesn't have to be everything for everyone. If you don't have any interest in playing games on the road, that's fine.

If you like lots of third party support, that's fine.

Switch is probably not the game system for you. And that's OK.

Switch is simply Nintendo moving towards their strengths as a hardware maker .... and that is the portable market. There is no home-only market for them to sustain off of any longer. Beyond that the market doesn't even want another standard home console. 



Nogamez on 18 January 2017

Don't agree at all. I like that Nintendo offer a unique gaming experience to xbox answer playstation. I just buy both.



vivster on 18 January 2017
Renna Hazel said:
vivster said:

It increases from 1 device to 100 devices you can play Nintendo games on.

Well I'm only speaking of the dedicated gaming space that is occupied by 3 companies at the moment. If one of them (Nintendo) left that space, our hardware options would decrease. 

But why would you want to limit yourself to only one gaming device per developer?

If Sony and MS go 3rd party we would have infinite choice of hardware for all games.



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mountaindewslave on 18 January 2017
fordy said:
mountaindewslave said:

the OP makes loads of assumptions and flat out just pulls things from their imaginations in the original post.

They claim that the handheld market is dead (absurd, the 3DS is selling quite well, in fact it sold better in 2016 than 2015, despite being 5 years old), they claim that the Switch is SPECIFICALLY the 3DS successor (when its the successor to both the Wii U and 3DS, its a combination hybrid),

they seem incapable of accepting the fact that it is in fact a hybrid system. Its not rocket science. Maybe bitter about their Wii U purchase. 

they wrote a lot of outlandish stuff, like the concept that someone can just walk in and buy Nintendo's shares of the Pokemon Company (that cannot be done). Nintendo owns a portion of Game Freak, a portion of Hal lab, and a portion of the Pok Company. Also an easily forgotten fact is that Nintendo staff members FOUNDED Pokemon

The OP is just full of so much BS. It claims that the online service does or doesn't provide things when the online service for the Switch most likely hasn't even been finished yet. They claim things about the battery life when it hasn't even been tested officially (note: if you tried to run an open world game on ANY tablet in the world right now, the battery would last far less than normal)

just a load of hogwash. you can be as bitter as you want, but to make a list of things in the OP that are purely speculation and then to deliberately act as if the Switch is not a hybrid just makes it hard to take your opinion seriously whatsoever. Obviously the Switch is the quintessential concept of a hybrid system. On the TV and on the Go

"They claim that the handheld market is dead (absurd, the 3DS is selling quite well, in fact it sold better in 2016 than 2015, despite being 5 years old), they claim that the Switch is SPECIFICALLY the 3DS successor (when its the successor to both the Wii U and 3DS, its a combination hybrid),"

I said the portable market was dwindling. Am I wrong? Take a look at the 3DS sales compared to the DS. Even if it's selling better right now *cough*Sun&Moon*cough*, it would still need to sell significantly more to achieve a similar level to last gen.

 

Nintendo provided the capital in the joint venture. You can't say it's impossible because everything has their price, including a big franchise. While Pokemon might sell 10s of millions on a dedicated handheld, any push from a major phone producer (with the phone base in the hundreds of millions) would still garner interest among stakeholders, especially after Pokemon Go. You seem to forget that Nintendo owned a good portion of Squaresoft, but that didn't stop them jumping ship to Sony. Nintendo sold their stake shortly after the news.

For the online stuff, I'm going by the news that has already come out, on that 1. It will require a subscription fee for online play and 2. The "free" games will be monthly rentals only. Do you dispute these?

 

Tell me, are you going to provide some decent arguments, because that's the reason why I posted this in the first place. I'm not looking for the same kind of stuff that has already been addressed.

 

huge argument flaw to use DS sales numbers as the basis for your argument. The 3DS is actually selling relatively normal for Nintendo's handheld systems. Similar to the GBA and Gameboy Color. The original Gameboy had an extremely long lifetime (from like 1989- to possibly 2000) in terms of software so is a difficult comparison too. The DS was an anamoly, just like the PS2. That'd be like someone claiming the home console market was dying when you compared PS2 hardware sales to PS3 sales (which is a biggg difference)

the Squaresoft comparison is not equivalent, Nintendo owns an undisclosed amount of Creatures Inc or whatever which owns a decent portion of the Pok Company. The odds are Nintendo owns well over 50% of the Pokemon Company. Otherwise the Pok Comp would operate somewhat indepently from Nintendo (which in terms of company big decisions they don't)



Soundwave on 18 January 2017
mountaindewslave said:
Soundwave said:

I know some people are upset, and that's their perrogative, but honestly do you really think Nintendo could compete with a traditional home console?

They can't anymore, even if they had tried to, they would have gotten blind sighted by the PS4 Pro and XBox Scorpio which likely would've been more powerful than whatever "a little better than PS4" console that Nintendo would've made.

Nintendo honestly just doesn't have it in them to make a great home console anymore and compete in that space. Every console they've made since the NES has seen declining sales aside from a 4 year stretch of the Wii, and even the Wii illustrates they have no idea what they're doing home console wise as they some how managed to lose 85% of that audience in a matter of 2-3 years.

They're just not good at home consoles, in the 90s/2000s they mismanaged things so badly and allowed Sony/MS to take over the marketplace, and it's just too hard to play catch up for a company that has as many problems as Nintendo.

Merging what was left of their console market into the more friendly confines of the portable market (which even with phones/tablets is still far more cozy for Nintendo ... see: 63 million 3DS' vs. only 14 million Wii Us, 3DS will have sold more than every Nintendo console except Wii).

I will disagree that the Switch is really a 'portable' move, but rather that it is indeed a hybrid, combining everything together. Bear in mind Nintendo has been split down the middle in terms of producing games for both of their platforms in the past, much more so than their competitors (well Sony). I think its less an aim at just doing the portable market as much genuinely wanting a combined platform for home AND abroad that will let them focus their software onto one device.

Obviously their portables have been more consistent and the backbone of the company, but in the end Nintendo's software sells great on both home consoles and portables so the hybrid concept just seems like a no brainer. I'm not sure how someone could label the Switch as a 'portable' priority device when a lot of users will probably basically permanently leave it in the dock and play on their TV

Making a system portable basically makes it a priority because you can't just choose any chipset, you can't budget the same way, you need to account for LCD screen, battery life, noise, chipset, RAM, form factor, heat dissipation in dramatically different way. Everything has to be designed for the portable nature of teh device. 

Beyond that it's not really a secret where Nintendo's audience is today. Last generation 85% of Nintendo's own buyer base chose not to buy the Wii U. And the GameCube/GBA was a similar ratio, the Wii is the outlier and that took a miracle controller to pull off. The software split you mention is also a big negative for that reason alone ... Nintendo was keeping key games like Splatoon away from 85% of their own audience, which is on the portable side. 

Nintendo just isn't good at making home consoles anymore. They used to be but that was a long time ago now. The Super NES era was 25 years ago now ... we keep thinking this was like just a little while ago ... take your age right now and add 25 years to it and think about how old you'll be. 

Things change. 



mountaindewslave on 18 January 2017
vivster said:
Renna Hazel said:

Well I'm only speaking of the dedicated gaming space that is occupied by 3 companies at the moment. If one of them (Nintendo) left that space, our hardware options would decrease. 

But why would you want to limit yourself to only one gaming device per developer?

If Sony and MS go 3rd party we would have infinite choice of hardware for all games.

SOMEBODY has to make the hardware and have more control over things. So you're suggestion would require Micro/Sony to then have to funnel their games through someone else, sharing proceeds and some level of decisions involving their games.

unless you're suggesting a united platform like STEAM for all games. But I don't see that ever happening, there is a lot of money possible from controlling your own hardware and accessories 



Renna Hazel on 18 January 2017
vivster said:
Renna Hazel said:

Well I'm only speaking of the dedicated gaming space that is occupied by 3 companies at the moment. If one of them (Nintendo) left that space, our hardware options would decrease. 

But why would you want to limit yourself to only one gaming device per developer?

If Sony and MS go 3rd party we would have infinite choice of hardware for all games.

Because for dedicated gaming devices that's what makes sense to me. Simply put, I'd rather game on a dedicated gaming system than any other platform (especially phones). So someone has to make the hardware, and it only makes sense for them to support their hardware with exclusive software. 



fordy on 18 January 2017
mountaindewslave said:
fordy said:

Yes it's a Hybrid console, in that it needs to appeal to both home and portable markets. In terms of home console based software, it will fail merely on the fact that it STILL has the same issue as the WiiU did: it's significantly less powerful than its competitors, and publishers wont spend the time to port AAA titles on a whim that it "might" sell okay on the switch.

The portable side was explained pretty thoroughly in my explanation, considering that's what I've deemed the Switch to be.

I actually liked the 3DS. I thought it was a bit pricey, but I definitely got my moneys worth out of it. The only gripe I had was the placement of the power button, which can be confirmed by looking at my post history.

 

" there's a bit of parallel between what you claim to like and your predictions."

That's called being a realist. As I said, I love what Nintendo have contributed to the industry, and I want them to succeed. However, their hardware model has become uncompetitive. As I explained in the OP, the Switch most likely has no wiggle room for a price drop, unless key features are removed in a later revision of the hardware. They might turn a small profit from hardware, but do you know what turns bigger profits? Selling software on platforms with millions more potential buyers. 

you realize that a portable console hybrid at the levels of Xone and PS4 would probably cost like DOUBLE what the Switch is right? do you have any idea how the interior components of a portable system work? you need space for the battery (which takes up a LOT of space), the graphical components, all the slots for fitting memory cards, cartridges, etc.

The concept that Nintendo could just have magically made the system competitively powerful AND be a hybrid is only suggested by people who know nothing about how a portable is spaced about inside. Its the same reason almost no tablets on the market, regardless of how powerful, have been optimized to play big open world games and remain at a reasonable price point

the 'parallel' part was me pointing out that its irrelevant that you're a Nintendo fan as far as your opinion is concerned. It doesn't make your 'Nintendo doomsday' thread any more relevant than someone who doesn't like Nintendo

as for your last point- if the argument is software profits, Nintendo sells more software than any other company on the planet (as far as in house developed vs. any other company). Regardless of hardware sales.

The reality is if you're third party you're still going to have some level of development costs (getting higher and higher every year for bigger games) AND your'e going to have to split the profit with the hardware developer from licensing fees. You're completely right that Nintendo makes most of their money from software sales- but thats the point- they would be cutting it in half by going third party and would have to sell like double the software (which they already sell a lot) to make up that difference. Its not an automatic success story, look at a Capcom or Sega or any of the biggest third party developers. They're not rolling in cash for the most part 

 

You're missing the entire point of this. Would the average person see it as worth over twice as much just for added portability? Not with the way the 3DS sold at full price. Not with the way the WiiU sold at it's (stuck) price. Ironically, the only way they could sell the original 3DS was to CUT THE PRICE AND SELL IT AT A LOSS! Do you see a pattern emerging?

I never said that me being a fan makes it any more or less viable. However, I have been around the games industry quite a few years, even close to a point of entering it as an indie developer. I'm comfortable in my knowledge of software, hardware and economics to stand by my prediction. And hey, like I said it's a prediction. If it turns out that I'm wrong and the Switch sells well, then congratulations, the justification of the Switch's success will prove to Nintendo that it should just stick with underpowered hardware. 

"as for your last point- if the argument is software profits, Nintendo sells more software than any other company on the planet (as far as in house developed vs. any other company). Regardless of hardware sales."

Yes, and that's IN SPITE of Nintendo limiting themselves to a small userbase. Imagine the amount of software they could sell on a base of hundreds of millions...which nullifies your argument about the licensing costs, because increased sales from a larger sales base would more than cover those costs. 

I already covered Sega in the OP, they were in serious financial trouble when they moved. This is why Nintendo should make the move now and not when they're as broke as Sega was. Ever since the N64, Nintendo's portables have been their firewall, an assured income, but with a dwindling portable userbase, they can no longer rely on that. That's why they only recently made their first loss ever.