Nintendo going software only.

[omega 616]

I hope not. Competition is a great thing.

Are they in any competition? Sony and microsoft certainly are but Nintendo? They produce games that only come to their console, they aren't even in the arms race, like Sony and microsoft are 'cos they aren't doing the half step or ever really tried to produce horsepower since like the N64 days.

 

[Yoshi178]

I started out as a baby, am I still a baby?

i'm assuming this is a rhetorical question. :3

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

I think that they will do it eventually and when they do, they're going to be making more money than ever before, since there are millions of people all over the world who would love to play all of their games but don't want to buy any of their consoles.

 

[Yoshi178]

they will do it eventually and when they do, they're going to be making more money than ever before.

like mobile phone games have made them?

 

[Dollabillyall]

You'd have to look at what makes Nintendo a succes today and what is holding them back.
First off, the Wii and the whole casual gaming / broadening the audience thing was a stroke of genius.
The 3DS also showed a pretty good innovative technology.
So what else do they have? IP... shitloads of massively popular, iconic and easy to market IP.

What is holding them back?
The latest console bombed so hard I don't even know the name of it.
The "gimmicks" they use in their consoles define what developers have to work with and cause the big cross-platform titles to pass up Nintendo.

Really they are already slowly moving into the software only direction. The way Nintendo makes its consoles is both a strength and a weakness but would be ONLY weakness if they didnt have their IP stable to make people want to buy the console anyway. Instead they are now moving to mobile phones with the next Pokemon. If they put their games onto phones and PC instead of a console they could keep raking in the dough with their IP, make peripherals like motion controllers that have uses beyond the single console and become available to a wider audience.

 

[deadish]

Nintendo has money... LOADS of money, more money than they know what to do with. You can't quite measure their overall corporate health solely by the success and failure of a single platform. They are one of the last remaining console makers where the term "first party" really carries weight, and they have achieved some measured success in every generation, albeit perhaps not comparatively in the console-share market, but taken on their own, as they prefer to do, each generation of consoles has found it's audience and sold well.

Just because a company has "LOADS of money" doesn't mean they can waste it.

It really isn't their money. It's shareholder money. Shareholders will want to maximize return on investment.

Shareholders thus far have been very patience with Nintendo's management ... but for how much longer ...

 

[Longview]

Nintendo has money... LOADS of money, more money than they know what to do with. You can't quite measure their overall corporate health solely by the success and failure of a single platform. They are one of the last remaining console makers where the term "first party" really carries weight, and they have achieved some measured success in every generation, albeit perhaps not comparatively in the console-share market, but taken on their own, as they prefer to do, each generation of consoles has found it's audience and sold well.

Just because a company has "LOADS of money" doesn't mean they can waste it.

It really isn't their money. It's shareholder money. Shareholders will want to maximize return on investment.

Shareholders thus far have been very patience with Nintendo's management ... but for how much longer ...

I'd be more worried about the moronic nature of Nintendos shareholders rather than the patience they hold