@orochizoolander never.
Here’s the thing though - I don’t disagree with most of what you’re saying, but 3DS sales are NOT predicated on ‘Metroid’. People who buy ‘Dr. Mario’ on 3DS didn’t buy a 3DS to play Dr. Mario. they bought it for the newer 3DS games…and then they spend money on those old games. Nintendo could release that same content at the same price on Droid/iOS and walkaway with more money due to more opportunity - they’ll even get some double buys from people who bought it on the 3DS/Wii U who’d like it even more portable.
Now even I admit, it won’t save the company, its merely an additional revenue stream. I’ll also admit that full on developing new games for phones wouldn’t be the best strategy, its a grey area, Nintendo needs to tap into the market, and to make the best of it, they need to get some new stuff on there - like I mentioned a PVP Pokemon with in-app purchasing, or a freebie Zelda with in-app purchases, but they need to make sure that the scale of it only FEEDS 3DS sales and doens’t take away. It won’t be easy, but I do feel it NEEDS to be done. If you are losing the living room, you’ve got to win somewhere else to make up for it right?
- :bluu:
I personally think that what they mean is a move to produce an actual mobile platform, not become 3rd party. I think we’ll see a Nintendo phone that it paired with a home console. That way they can have their cake and eat it too. I also think that it’ll be a major coin flip (nothing new), one outcome being that it’s a roaring success and we’ll all start carrying the “Nintendo-Flip-DS-Pocket-Boy” with all of our favorite Nintendo titles, the other being that they sink a irreparable amount of money into the venture and are forced into a minor downsize. Perhaps resulting in the fears many of you seem to have.
That’s mostly speculation though, but still a sound theory, as it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. They try to break new ground when they are starting to see current strategies wain and other companies stepping on their toes.
Sony kinda did something like this by integrating features from Playstation into their phones and tablets, the difference is that they don’t throw everything they have at something new, thus spreading themselves thin. Nintendo doesn’t have that issue, they want something done, they focus as much man power as they can on just that. It gets done, published, released, sold. Then they go back to their overall focus and hope it works out, sometimes that works for them, other times it doesn’t. I personally would love to see them succeed.
That’s just my 2 cents though, tear it apart if you’d like.
A Nintendo phone just based on the brand association alone will be difficult to break into the western world market.
I agree, but with the right marketing (and being frugal with the number of units they produce) I think that they could break even in North American sales. Breaking even is all they really need to do to get a foothold with a hardware launch. Like I said I also don’t think the phone will stand on it’s own, it’ll have a console to back it up. The Wii U is already dying and by Nintendo’s recent behavior, they probably know it.
Bump. I’m with this guy. @unreallystic, I agree that Nintendo needs to do SOMETHING with the smartphone market eventually, but I don’t think what you’re suggesting would be healthy to the company in the long term. What do you think about the article? I think the idea that Nintendo should develop games that are tailored specifically for touch screen devices and the way those consumers buy through IAP’s has more legs than just dumping their old catalogue onto IOS/droid.
Maybe you’re right maybe not, we’re all just playing armchair analyst anyways, but the bottomline is there is no quick fix for this problem, it’s a multi faceted issue that Nintendo needs to somehow address successfully quickly and I have faith they will eventually.
Exactly.
nintendo should just see if mario kart will make teh WiiU sell like hotcakes (highly doubtful but it brings more hope than smash bros), if it doesn’t, cut the losses and go for the next thing, they’ll be too far behind at that point to even have a chance
although, maybe making a phone with 3ds capabilities will prove to be a huge spark, they wouldn’t have to do much to the 3ds design to make it happen outside of making it more pocket friendly
That’s why I said it should be under a different brand name. It’s the same with cars, pretty much every car has a regular brand and a luxury brand. They’re owned by the same company. This is true for many, many things. Even fashion designers, many sell to a budget brand and it’s usually the exact same clothing.
You keep Nintendo for the consoles and handhelds, then turn around and sell off some other brand for the smartphones. If at some point the market respects your smartphones, you can start releasing a Nintendo version and then do away with the smartphone branch altogether if you wanted, but that’s in the future and not a big deal.
I’m still of the opinion however that nobody wants to play smartphone games. Does anybody actually have the financials on the smartphone games for the past 2 years and guidance going forward? Zynga, GLUU and EA should all have them in their financials. orochizoolander, you seem to have a lot of time to waste, why don’t you look up the financials and give us a report on what you found?
i used to play rpg games on the smart phone, some of them were pretty good but since my phone kept breaking (Evo 3d) i never got to finish them, and then i found reddit and i now have this wonder $300 reddit device
with nintendo, they truly are innovators, they take risks on things other companies wouldn’t, it’s worked for them (the Wii, the DS) and then sometimes it just doesn’t work (GCN, WiiU)
the game market for phones is still pretty large, it’s for those people who don’t admit that they play games but are constantly playing games on their phone and i feel that nintendo can take advantage of this and in a big way if they really wanted to
i honestly think they should hire us younger folks for some business collaboration as they seem stuck in the past, hell, square enix has every final fantasy up to 6 and including tactics on both android and apple phones and tablets, why can’t nintendo do the same thing?
A few choice links
2012 (nothing for 2013 yet since that year just ended) Japan C+H game sales=$4.6B, Japan mobile game sales=$5.1B
Japan leads world (topping US) in smartphone app sales, driven by games http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/japan-passes-u-s-as-top-app-spender-on-smartphone-penetration.html
The problem is cost. Too much money has been sunk into the WiiU for them to abandon ship and recover. The WiiU will have a short life cycle, but it can’t just be abandoned. Nintendo just doens’t have the funds for that anymore. The worst part about it all is that new console won’t even FIX the problems Nintendo has. To be a ‘next gen’ console, its OS is worse than both the 360 and somehow the PS3, and it being worse is tied to philosophy more so than ability. They could fix the setup on the WiiU, but it won’t change anything from a sales point. Third party devs? They’ll only get on board if they think its going to do numbers, and after the WiiU’s current performance, I wouldn’t anticipate anything different than what Nintendo has ‘now’ on the WiiU.
Nintendo has to find away to ‘save’ this generation - period. I don’t think a price slash will do it. I think they need to buy a 360 and study it’s interface. They then need to look at their big IPs and figure out how to turn a couple of them into cash cows. They try to be inventive, but for right now they need to just make money. I’ve said it several times, look at Skylanders and disney Infinity - both entities are HUGE cash grabs with Activision netting like 1/2 a bill last year in sales off Skylanders. Nintendo’s response? They release like 6 pokemon characters. That isn’t going to do it. They need a pokemon branded Wii U with skylander style pokemons, or something similar with Monster Hunter series, where you can collect different hunters, and then there are items you can place on the ‘portal/device’ that act as mods. Add collectible variantions. Due various things to build hype. They aren’t going to pull in 3rd party devs easy - so just ignore tthem and power on with their IPs. But they HAVE to pay attention to how the big boys are playing it. In App Purchases, Expansion packs, DLC, strong ‘forced’ multiplayer aspects that increase the longevity, yearly releases. Think about it, Activision does a CoD every year, has multiple expansions for them, AND they are based on the same engine (recycling). It irritates some of us, but we still buy it. Nintnedo is missing all that money. they need to prove to 3rd parties by doing it themselves. What’s to stop them from doing a Mario Kart every year? Or if not that, expansions to it?
- :bluu:
So Nintendo needs to add microtransactions to Pokémon, eh?
Yep, time to quit gaming…
What nintendo needs to do is make a Kantai Collection game for the WiiU. Just put the cards on the tablet or something.
There you go, you’ve dominated the Japanese market.
In fact, all they should do is pander to Japanese otaku, open up the flood gates to doujin developers and then just sell the good stuff to the west. All of sudden you are quirky and fun again…making games…for your game system.
The problem with microsoft and sony is that they are so invested in NOT making games and great GAMING consoles…they want experiences and social networks and media centers.
Well, judging from the sales and all the “Nintendo needs to do this” posts, that’s EXACTLY what people want too… SMH…
their IPs will always be cash grabs, look at the top selling games for each generation. it usually has mario attached to it, they will have no problem selling the games if the console sells. they just need the console to sell
outside of pokemon, nintendo cannot afford to release a mario kart or a smash bros each year nor would they ever, they don’t have the resources to and they wouldnt’ make as much money off the games if they were to do so (in percentage points)
basically, because nintendo releases only 1 mario kart per console, people are going to be less likely to trade the game in, unlike call of duty in which a number of people trade the game in once a new one comes out to get a discount on the new game, why play the old one when i can play something new and shiny. nintendo has never followed this format nor will they ever outside of pokemon (and even then, they make you pull your hair out by only having moves and stuff only obtainable from older generations…fuck you trollfreak)
the WiiU isn’t selling, mario kart is the biggest seller for their home consoles. has been and always will be (you’d be surprised to find out that mario kart wii had almost triple the sales of smash bros and was the number 2 selling game on the wii after Wii Sports)
if that doesn’t sell the WiiU on top of smash bros, then it’s literally doomed and they should move on to something entirely different. they tried being safe but you can’t be safe with a gimmick and that’s what the wii really was, a gimmick
believe me, nintendo has the money, they made a fuckton of money off the wii that made up entirely for the GCN (which i also think they made money off of, which in told did make up for the n64), they are losing so much off the WiiU that it might be better financially to just scrap it and move on, especially if their big sellers to sell teh console
I don’t think Nintendo’s starving. They sold more than enough Wiis (more than they should have) and DS to keep them hungry. Are they Capcom broke or SNK broke?
i don’t think they’re either, they’re definitely not as well off as sony and microsoft, but that has more to do with nintendo being just pure video games and the other two having other divisions to make money off of (computers, software, tvs, music, etc)
they’re probably about as well off as ubisoft i would assume
Smash day 1 DLC characters/skins!
Call me naive, but I’d be shocked if Smash didn’t sell at least 4 million or so. A lot of fence sitters including me out there.
if history holds up, expect it to have a hard time selling 1 million games, especially when there are only 5 million consoles sold and the rate at which they sell is slowing down