Nintendo's Hard Choice
Things are not nearly as bad for Nintendo as they are for Sony, but this is obviously not good:
Nintendo will report on Thursday its first ever operating loss, after estimating a 45 billion yen deficit for the business year just ended.
I will always have a soft spot for Nintendo. In my opinion, they have by far the best game IP ever created. It’s not even close. And that’s why, as much as it pains me to say it, I think Nintendo will eventually have to head down the Sega path and move on from hardware to focus solely on software.
It’s well known that Mario/Zelda/etc creator Shigeru Miyamoto has no intention of letting this happen — like Apple, he strives to set the entire user experience through hardware and software — but it’s hard to see Nintendo focusing on gaming hardware and continuing on. Maybe they pull and Apple and fully reinvent the company, but there’s a reason why such transformations don’t happen often.
On the flipside, maybe I’m letting my dreams blind me a bit. I really, really, really want Mario and Zelda and Donkey Kong and all the other great Nintendo properties on iOS devices.
Tagging in here: I just don’t see the WiiU being a big enough hit this Christmas to turn them around.
I was pretty on-the-record with my thoughts that the Wii would succeed, as I thought it was genius market placement that fixed the mistakes Nintendo made the previous two console cycles. I’ll be equally on-the-record that I think the WiiU will fail and fail hard.
in fact, this may end up being what kills Nintendo, just one console cycle after bringing them back from the edge. It makes me sad to write that, but I honestly think it may end up being true.
users have been wanting nintendo to release their back catalogue on android and iOS for years. rather than give users what they wanted, nintendo forced users to buy either the Wii console or DS-series handhelds to download legacy titles from nintendo’s own proprietary store. by doing so, i believe nintendo has been losing out on a potentially huge revenue source.
what’s wrong with releasing your back catalog on other platforms? other than porting over to another OS, there’s no real work to be done. it’s money lying on the table, waiting to be picked up. and with back-catalog revenue, nintendo could have better invested in R&D to make a potentially better console than the silly WiiU (seriously, what a disappointment).
but, no. like a lot of other old-school japanese companies, nintendo refuses to see things through any other way than its own. and this is why nintendo is in trouble.
