Nintendo: Last One Standing?

[Morality Games]

Seems to be that Nintendo strict adhesion to old school console design principles (down to not including DVD and Blu Ray into their fully capable machine) forms part of an effort to differentiate their hardware from PC-a-be's Microsoft and Sony; the theory appears to be that once PC Gaming and Mobile/Tablets have pummelled the latter two company's console to dust, Nintendo's commitment to its classic "game box only" approach to console and game design will allow it to inherit what remains of the console market, with PC/Valve and mobile taking the larger shares of total game sales. They're the only of the three companies in a position to adopt this tactic because of their enormous library of legacy franchises + exclusives.

 

[deuxhero]

They changed the rules based on feedback (still no account system and region locked systems though...).

I really think the fact that Iwata started as a programmer (indeed, most of the Nintendo higher ups aren't professional business mangers by trade) and designer who entered the industry because he was a fan while Yamauchi stressed onto him that entertainment is a very swingy business (so keep lots of cash on hand and don't mindlessly jump on fads) are big influences.

 

[Drakron]

Oh you mean Nintendo forcing the usage of a optical disk format they are proprietary is a effort to "differentiate their hardware from PC-a-be's Microsoft and Sony"

Have you gone full retardo? nigger you NEVER GO FULL RETARDO!

Yes, they get a cut, they been doing that since they existed. its not about "old school" or "game box only", its about getting a cut from distribution since DOL-006 is nothing but a MiniDVD.

 

[DalekFlay]

They certainly differentiate themselves from MS and Sony, that's true. However there will always be people that want big production value games without the hassle and cost of PC gaming. That audience isn't going away, so MS, Sony or someone else is always going to be there to market to it.

Also Nintendo have a real problem with their nostalgia ace card wearing off. All the 80's kids who grew up on Nintendo and Super Nintendo are getting older and older, and Nintendo's subsequent consoles enjoyed less mainstream success. At some point a significant portion of the adults buying video games for themselves and their kids will be Xbox, Playstation, Steam or Mobile fanboys, rather than Nintendo fanboys. Nintendo gets by a lot on their "hey remember Mario! He's back!" factor, a factor that will be completely lost on someone who grew up on League of Legends and Minecraft.

 

[Drakron]

Nintendo have a lot of issues, reason why publishers bailed on the N64 was the PlayStation usage of a CD as a format, Nintendo was very closed and was just forced to open up because they could not compete with the PlayStation and the PS2.

So far Nintendo systems still have a major problem, first party games sell but not third party ... the incentive to develop exclusively to the Wii is not there, especially since its not easy to later port it to other systems to recover costs, even their domination on portable is changing due to the shift of mobile gaming to smart phones.

 

[Morality Games]

They certainly differentiate themselves from MS and Sony, that's true. However there will always be people that want big production value games without the hassle and cost of PC gaming. That audience isn't going away, so MS, Sony or someone else is always going to be there to market to it.

Also Nintendo have a real problem with their nostalgia ace card wearing off. All the 80's kids who grew up on Nintendo and Super Nintendo are getting older and older, and Nintendo's subsequent consoles enjoyed less mainstream success. At some point a significant portion of the adults buying video games for themselves and their kids will be Xbox, Playstation, Steam or Mobile fanboys, rather than Nintendo fanboys. Nintendo gets by a lot on their "hey remember Mario! He's back!" factor, a factor that will be completely lost on someone who grew up on League of Legends and Minecraft.

Eh. That helped them win the last console generation and will probably help them when this one; I don't think their nostalgia can wear off faster than PC/Mobile growth can stop Sony and Microsoft from releasing new consoles. Then Nintendo can set a trend of nostalgia for a new generation.

Lots of things have chipped away at console gaming, but three the biggest was that Blizzard games reintroduced entry-level PC gaming to a huge audience/Valve whetted their appetite with Steam's bargains and deals and every console except Nintendo lost all but one or two of their big exclusives.

We're a razor's edge away from $400-600 "notebooks" that outperform consoles, if we aren't there are already. Gaming as a hobby will have to grow tremendously for all three console gaming companies to survive.

Nintendo have a lot of issues, reason why publishers bailed on the N64 was the PlayStation usage of a CD as a format, Nintendo was very closed and was just forced to open up because they could not compete with the PlayStation and the PS2.

So far Nintendo systems still have a major problem, first party games sell but not third party ... the incentive to develop exclusively to the Wii is not there, especially since its not easy to later port it to other systems to recover costs, even their domination on portable is changing due to the shift of mobile gaming to smart phones.

That's because the rest of the console market are trying to become computers/home entertainment systems; Nintendo thinks that if they stick to "game box only" principles they'll be spared the growth of mobile gaming, PC, etc.

For a console, strong first party exclusives are more important than good third-party support.

 

[DalekFlay]

Eh. That helped them win the last console generation and will probably help them when this one; I don't think their nostalgia can wear off faster than PC/Mobile growth can stop Sony and Microsoft from releasing new consoles. Then Nintendo can set a trend of nostalgia for a new generation.

Nintendo didn't "win" last time by any measure any developer cares about. They sold the most hardware because the Wiimote became a fad with casual gamers, but software sales outside a few Nintendo hits were almost non-existent. Unless they capture that kind of broad market fad again the Wii's success is largely irrelevant to their future business model, and either way it's irrelevant to most developers outside Nintendo.

Lots of things have chipped away at console gaming, but three the biggest was that Blizzard games reintroduced entry-level PC gaming to a huge audience/Valve whetted their appetite with Steam's bargains and deals and every console except Nintendo lost all but one or two of their big exclusives.

We're a razor's edge away from $400-600 "notebooks" that outperform consoles, if we aren't there are already. Gaming as a hobby will have to grow tremendously for all three console gaming companies to survive.

Not sure where you live but a $500 laptop in the US right now would barely run last-gen games, let alone new ones. Outperform new ones? You're talking years and years. Technology will of course always be rolling forward, but there will always be a place for cheaper, more powerful game machines that work at the press of a button due to dedicated hardware. Even if the PC becomes the most popular platform for everything, a tall order, there would still be a minority that want the console experience, and a company that would cater to that.

 

[DragoFireheart]

As long as DRM exists to prevent simple shit like borrowing games and other online-only crap, consoles will have a place in the market. Diss consoles all you want, but they are much less of a hassle compared to PCs.

 

[Morality Games]

DalekFlay Neither of these arguments is worth pursuing aggressively; I will note my $500 laptop (value of $600) can play Battlefield 4 and other Frosbite games on Medium Settings, and the company that made the graphics processors for consoles is adapting console technology to similarly priced notebooks.

Nintendo won at a glance, at least in terms of what made money for the console companies. Their console outsold the next highest (PS3) by 20%, was always profitable, and had few distribution and technical problems, whereas Sony and Xbox suffered losses for years in their efforts to out feature the other. Take a look at the best selling Wii game versus the best selling PS3 games; Nintendo has like 10-20 exclusives that sold between Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim, and Morrowind levels. A game like God of War III sells similarly but most of the profits go to the publisher.

In truth, the real winners of the console wars are publishers; how many in-house Sony and Microsoft games sold at Rockstar levels?

 

[DalekFlay]

DalekFlay Neither of these arguments is worth pursuing aggressively;

Yet you did anyway.

I will note my $500 laptop (value of $600) can play Battlefield 4 and other Frosbite games on Medium Settings, and the company that made the graphics processors for consoles is adapting console technology to similarly priced notebooks.

That's not my experience with laptop pricing at all. They're notoriously pricey compared to building a gaming desktop, and they're temperamental with what they run well due to drivers not being tailored to mobile GPUs. Even if you're right, that doesn't change anything. There are a ton of factors that make console gaming more appealing for a large number of people that have nothing to do with price, convenience being chief among them.

Nintendo won at a glance, at least in terms of what made money for the console companies. Their console outsold the next highest (PS3) by 20%, was always profitable, and had few distribution and technical problems, whereas Sony and Xbox suffered losses for years in their efforts to out feature the other. Take a look at the best selling Wii game versus the best selling PS3 games; Nintendo has like 10-20 exclusives that sold between Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim, and Morrowind levels. A game like God of War III sells similarly but most of the profits go to the publisher.

In truth, the real winners of the console wars are publishers; how many in-house Sony and Microsoft games sold at Rockstar levels?

Microsoft and Sony make money on each game sold, plus they get $60 a year for multiplayer services. GTA5 selling 20 million copies means Microsoft and Sony got somewhere around $8 for each of those, totaling $160 million between them, and that's just one game. The new consoles are selling like hotcakes, even the supposedly disliked Xbox One is selling better than Xbox 360 did at the same time in its cycle. There is consumer demand for consoles and thus they will continue to exist. The fact both are diversifying into more indie, downloadable, MMO and free-to-play titles this generation will only strengthen that demand.

The PC will always have a strong place. Hell, it dominates in certain areas like League of Legends being the most played game in the world, last I checked. However if you think consoles are dying you've got another thing coming.

 

[Morality Games]

DalekFlay The first isn't worth pursuing because most people with practiced analytical skill (professionals) don't work as gaming journalists and most coverage of the issue is affected by fanboyism and click baiting. With a lack of real good data and analysis, the argument can only be perpetuated within limits.

Its true that the overall size and growth of the gaming market might preserve the status quo indefinitely; if PS4 and Xbox One had been forced to make stride in console graphical capability comparable to the leap from PS2 to PS3, they would have hard a much harder time going forward; that graphics have hit a plateau this generation worked in their favor.

However, the success of Blizzard/Actvision games has led a propagation of notebooks by the tens of millions, and the existence of Steam has led to the emergence of a market casual gamers on PC who want to be able to play huge libraries of games on those notebooks; in that way, the plateau in graphics works against consoles in the long term, in that it gives processing circuitry in laptops a chance to catch up (which they nearly have).

Of course, consoles have an ingrained place in the market and useful functions in their own right; however, those functions aren't strongest apparent in the PS4 or Xbox One.

Another thing is that the console market can fail globally because of losses in key markets: Europe is fundamentally a PC culture, America could flip back to being that way, Asia has a huge Internet cafe culture driven by Starcraft/League of Legends/WoW, etc. Even if a console can sell 80,000,000 in lifetime sales, not being able to sell 10,000,000-20,000,,000 in the first 2-3 years because of weak core markets is huge on the overall productivity and focuses of the game industry as a whole.

 

[DalekFlay]

Another thing is that the console market can fail globally because of losses in key markets: Europe is fundamentally a PC culture, America could flip back to being that way, Asia has a huge Internet cafe culture driven by Starcraft/League of Legends/WoW, etc. Even if a console can sell 80,000,000 in lifetime sales, not being able to sell 10,000,000-20,000,,000 in the first 2-3 years because of weak core markets is huge on the overall productivity and focuses of the game industry as a whole.

I'll definitely grant you this, worldwide PC is easily the strongest platform.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Seems to be that Nintendo strict adhesion to old school console design principles (down to not including DVD and Blu Ray into their fully capable machine) forms part of an effort to differentiate their hardware from PC-a-be's Microsoft and Sony; the theory appears to be that once PC Gaming and Mobile/Tablets have pummelled the latter two company's console to dust, Nintendo's commitment to its classic "game box only" approach to console and game design will allow it to inherit what remains of the console market, with PC/Valve and mobile taking the larger shares of total game sales. They're the only of the three companies in a position to adopt this tactic because of their enormous library of legacy franchises + exclusives.

There's one problem with this strategy: you actually need games in order for it to work.

 

[Drakron]

That's because the rest of the console market are trying to become computers/home entertainment systems; Nintendo thinks that if they stick to "game box only" principles they'll be spared the growth of mobile gaming, PC, etc.

For a console, strong first party exclusives are more important than good third-party support.

No.

Nintendo have their fingers in the pie, from licensing to distribution, in the case of the Nintendo consoles if you want to print more copies you dont just can since the entire production is on Nintendo hands, you cannot just do it and you pay royalties to them.

This is why publishers jump ship to the PlayStation because CD was simply far better for them, this followed to DVD and then this is were the "split" come, PlayStation systems with Blu-Ray (were Sony is not the only holder) and the continuation of DVD in PC and Xbox systems, in the GameCube/Wii its still Nintendo.

Also its not odd that Sony gone down that route, a LOT of PS2 were sold BECAUSE it was a DVD player (this is when the shift from VHS to DVD come and when the glory days of DVD sale begun), its was pretty clear to Sony that there was a interest, the continue move into that was because it overall was within Sony own media projects because apparently you forget EXACTLY what Sony is known for, its failure was more due to simply the jump from Playstaiton to PS2 was very significant, the jump from PS2 to PS3 was not and they shoot thenselves in the foot and last console generation nobody won because the Wii sales did not extended to game sales and the PS3 and XBox 360 ended up sharing most of their catalog.

Competition for home consoles will not be from the Wii, it will be from SmartTVs and why bother with a Nintendo console if technically they would be no better that a SmartTV and more important will offer no significant advantages over it, it becomes redundant as this isnt much of a problem to Sony were it will simply be incorporated on their SmartTV line if necessary and Microsoft is still on the Home Console Front because they have patents on them that give them money, its not a question of making a buck on the consoles and games but rather licensing of patents they developed (this is why Microsoft is on Blu-Ray despite Sony even if they dont actually make hardware for it).

And we are going to go digital, apparently you are ignoring that Nintendo have its own service called "Nintendo Network" and that includes the "Nintendo eShop", here is a list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_3DS_games#Download_Software

They have Netflix so what were you saying about Media Center?