Sarge034 said:
You don't know they can't. Just as I don't know they can. However, this is irrelevant because I never advocated Nintendo going to software only... I'm just fine with Nintendo doing it's own thing, but I said if they want my money they will have to cross platform.
This right here is where your argument loses the plot.
Nintendo releasing games on multiple platforms while still trying to push their own hardware is the stupidest thing they could ever do. Hypothetically,
if Nintendo ever went third-party, they could survive as a software-only company. But trying to sell their own hardware while releasing on the competition's hardware would be business suicide. The very notion goes against every established rule of business and economics out there.
When Sony tried to push Betamax as a medium, they didn't concurrently try and support the competing VHS medium. When they were pushing Blu-Ray, they didn't also put out their Sony Pictures films on HD-DVD. Reason being, putting out your products on competitors products gives people reasons not to buy your own. For the same reason Pepsi don't sell Pepsi Max in Coke cans. Why Apple don't also make Galaxy S phones. Why Google hasn't put the Google Play store on iOS.
If Nintendo put out their games on Playstation and Xbox, they might get gamers to pick them up on those platforms...
at the cost of gamers not buying their own platforms. Whatever sales they made selling on Xbox and Playstation would be negated by the huge losses they'd incur trying to sell hardware without exclusives. No-one would buy a Nintendo console if they could play its games elsewhere. Your strategy would utterly ruin Nintendo's hardware division, whether you know it or not.
Look at it this way: Let's say all the Nintendo games come to the 360. Gamers with a 360 can play Mario, Zelda, and all the rest. However, they can also play games that are still exclusive to the 360, such as Halo, Gears and Forza. Which would be a better deal, do you think: A console that can just play Nintendo games, or a console that can play Nintendo and Microsoft games? That's a pretty good deal for Microsoft? It's a terrible, utterly terrible deal for Nintendo. Gamers would not buy their hardware any more, and whatever millions they gain in 360 and PS3 sales would be outweighed by the cost of their hardware division tanking.
Well done. Your business plan just killed Nintendo.
People go into economics blah blah blah, yeah right. That's a shoddy excuse to cover up the fact that you just want Nintendo to FAIL so you can play their games on your terms.
I want Nintendo to fail? LOL WUT? How can I play Nintendo games if Nintendo is no more? I said I want Nintendo to expand their business model.
Making their own hardware division an unprofitable, loss-making mess is not expanding their business model. You've essentially traded their entire hardware division for a few extra sales on other platforms, sales they'd then have to pay royalties on. There is no way Nintendo would be more profitable going such a route, their revenue would absolutely tank.
Using economics. You aren't business majors. You aren't economic analysts.
Are you telepathic? Do you know me? I may not be an analyst, but last I checked I did have all the classes required for a Bachelors of Business Administration degree... That would include; Business Law 1, Business Statistics, Micro Economics, Macro Economics, Accounting, ect, ect, ect.
Don't you feel like a fool now?
Not as foolish as a guy touting his business credentials, yet coming up with a ludicrous business model that would cost Nintendo more money than it made them.
Sorry that Sony and Microsoft don't make their own in house games and rely on buying out studios and developers to make their own first party titles. You don't want Nintendo products? You don't get Nintendo games. Simple as that. Sony and Microsoft would do the same thing if they could.
You are really confusing. MS and Sony DO have exclusives, but that does not make it any less of a dick move. Why are you attacking this with the fervor as if I kicked a baby holding a puppy right in front of you?
Because it's foolish and small-minded and completely ignorant of how the industry works.
Any company which holds a platform of some kind is going to create exclusive content to try and drive that platform. That goes
way beyond game consoles. That applies to phones, operating software, film formats, music formats...
Are you going to start berating Microsoft for not making Windows Office available on Mac or Linux? Are you going to berate Apple for making software like GarageBand and Logic exclusive to Macs?
Christ, are you going to start berating Edison for pushing DC voltage over AC back in the War of Currents? That's how ludicrous you sound.
Competition is an integral part of modern capitalist economics. Part of what makes competition is exclusivity- companies create exclusive products that consumers can only get from them, not their competitors. This entices people to give them their money. What do you think the bloody
patent system is based around? Nintendo have exclusives. They entice people to pick up their consoles and buy their games. Nintendo makes money. They are not going to make
more money by getting rid of the very thing that causes people to buy their consoles in the first place.
Cannibalize...? You should look up that word sometime. But to counter your argument if Bethesida, Valve, and EA are companies that could survive Nintendoe's "cannibalism" (snicker snicker) of the market then how do other companies survive with them in the mix?
...they don't? Your question is incredibly poorly worded, making your meaning unclear. The argument I and Dragonbums made was that by releasing all their exclusives on all the same platforms as other publishers,
Nintendo would as a result squash or drive out other companies just through competition. I already listed the reasoning very clearly in a previous post: Nintendo has the highest selling franchises of any videogame company. They also have the
largest number of high selling franchises of any videogame company. Therefore, by releasing all their games on other platforms, they would put out a lineup of games that no other publisher could compete with.
We have already seen examples of videogame publishers diving out of the way of juggernaut releases with games like Modern Warfare 2. No-one wanted to compete with that, so release dates were reorganised and pushed back to emptier calendar spots. Nintendo has a huge number of franchises that have just as much, if not more, brand power: Mario, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Zelda are the big four, but even their smaller franchises have sold huge numbers (DKCR sold over 6 million copies, more than any Mass Effect or Dead Space game). With Nintendo constantly releasing games on other platforms, companies like EA or Ubisoft would be hard-pushed to go up against them. Smaller companies would die out. If a niche game like Dark Souls goes up against a blockbuster like Mario Kart, it is going to get destroyed at retail.
So the answer is, game companies
don't survive. They get crushed trying to go up against the juggernaut that is Nintendo's franchise line-up. A line-up you yourself argued would only become
more popular[/i] if it was made available on competing platforms. By your own logic, Nintendo's franchises would be even bigger than they are now, making things even harder for other publishers to compete with.
Ubisoft's CEO went on record as saying that there's only room in the games industry for around 10 AAA titles a year or so. If Nintendo starts swinging its weight, how many of those 10 games a year do you think they're going to grab for themselves?
We are entitled and selfish? Your points come off as, well frankly, pretentious fanboyism. You argue as if we want Nintendo to be swept from the Earth. You use straw men and other logical fallacies in your replies, but they don't even address the points "we" bring up.
I have merely responded to the arguments you've made. Arguments which, if taken to their logical conclusion, end up killing Nintendo's hardware division and destroying smaller third-party publishers. No straw-men, just the very logic you've argued for applied to basic economic theory.
I was trying to think of the right word to use and "Exploitative" is perfect.