008Zulu said:
Nintendo acknowledged their mistake with the Wii U by saying they didn't communicate properly regarding it. Thing is, they are making the same mistake with Switch. Yeah they released a nice trailer showing what it can do. Here's what it can do; Play games. Big revelation I know.
What they need to tell people is what games have been confirmed (even if it's just launch titles), and maybe system specifications. Lots of people, alright me, love that kind of technical stuff. But it's mostly what games will be available at launch, and if they are aiming for a more adult gaming environment, make games beyond Zelda and Mario related. I know that the trailer showed some random dude playing Skyrim, but both Bethesda and Nintendo have both all but denied the game on Switch. Even if it will have Skyrim, it will at launch be a 4 or 5 year old game by then.
Nintendo needs to tell people what they want to hear, not what they think they want to hear. That was the mistake with the Wii u, and thus far, it looks like they are making the same mistake twice. This is why I think it will fail.
They do that already. I mean EB games in Australia is taking preorders on games that will take a year in advance to finish and release based solely on Nintendo Direct news. The information is out there and retailers are responding to it and in the age where most news is consumed online Nintendo should perhaps revamp old concepts such as the Nintendo Power magazines, but for the digital era. I mean most third parties on other consoles have to manage their own advertising. Nintendo does it for them through Direct. The problem is those third party devs are confronted with the idea of advertising additionally ontop of that when retailers are already using Direct to determine preorders on games that haven't even got a release date beyond some arbitrary quarter... or simply relying on Direct and online retailer adverts to promote better.
People rip on Nintendo for not putting out enough advertising, but I find in the last 6 to 12 months they've been really good at drumming up support for both 1st and 3rd Party games through clever use of consolidated marketing strategies like Nintendo Direct. Could they do more? Certainly, but who should weather the cost burden is also an important question.
As for the Switch failing, people need to be clear whst failing means. Nintendo rarely release products without surety against loss. Meaning unlike Microsoft XBox division, they don't preclude magically that 200 million XB1s will be sold and direct their efforts to meet that sort of volume at loss on every console sale. The Switch will be profitable by next year assuming a continued decrease in manufacture costs relative to their usual models of console price decreases. In thst respect, purely economic, Nintendo Switch has succeeded.
This is why Nintendo stock took a hit when they released and promoted the Switch... because many were concerned about short term losses... and Nintendo bills itself as fiscally conservative with a *massive* capital to debt ratio. They have oodles of money and sound investments to guarantee their continued financing without regular loans. But when Nintendo talked about hardware and manufacturing data, as well units sold, and cautiously optimistic consumption projections ... suddenly Nintendo stock spiked.
Nintendo with one game pulled an Atari's ET without trying. Atari made the gambit that, somehow, E.T. would sell more copies thsn their compatible consoles. Zelda did that in a month. And after dev costs, that's pure profit into Nintendo's coffers. That's not merely money on licencing like on other consoles ... that's in-house revenue straight into their other operations.
Z:BotW cost about $100M in development ... it is already turning a profit after a month in circulation. Its success alone is also helping to push original sales projections of the Switch even higher. That's off-holiday sales. And keep in mind ... Nintendo is the only console maker to make a profit off sales of their hardware alone at day 1. It's hard to call a company making first month profits on their products with a wealth of explotable revenue streams at their fingertips a 'failure'. As a business they are anything but. If Sony and Microsoft demanded the same level of consumer support to charge more on their products than they cost to manufacture, their sales figures would be a hell of a lot worse. Only until Q4 last year each PS4 was costing Sony money. Now they're breaking even when you take shipping into consideration.
In short, Nintendo will not stop selling consoles as long as it knows it has fans that will cover dev and manufacture costs alone through systems purchasing. It's the Apple of console makers ... dedicated fans who will continue to buy their products
regardless simply for that 'Nintendo-ness' of their products and IP. Their sale of Amiibos alone is enviable. The pointis, that Nintendo has solidified itself as
desireable on so many fronts.
They use self-profiting promotional aids of products that make money themselves and help drive up consumption of associated products through direct interactivity (the aforementioned Amiibos) ... which is a stroke of genius. Stealth advertising that makes a profit on its own? 5 years ago I would have said that was a barmy concept. Getting people to *pay* wholesale sums for what are essentially advertisement devices for associated games? They basically outdid McDonald's happy meal toys to sell cheap light meals.
I mean in any other case of it happening, it would be called a "pay to cheat gimmick" and "withholding game content to ransom", or "Day 1 DLC(ish?)" ... but how often do you see that argument? It's Machiavellian genius that they got away with it.
So I don't buy the idea Nintendo don't advertise well ...I mean they effectively get consumers to pay for their own stealth advertising, and people keep giving them money to do it. Nintendo is the only company I know where a cheap bit of plastic promotional aids that make ridiculous sums of money send people like Jim Sterling into 20 minute long tirades on the internet about their manufactured scarcity. The manufactured scarcity is precisely the fucking point of them to drive up preorders on Amiibos they haven't even made yet.
What company on Earth that isn't Nintendo enjoys that level of mindnumbingly uncritical support? It's a piece of badly molded plastic that you are paying 13+ USD for! Forget pirating their games, Amiibos have created *pirated pieces of molded plastic* a viable criminal industry. So they now, actively, have criminal syndicates stealth advertising their other products for them. Honestly I want to meet the guys behind the Amiibo idea and just shake their hand.
I could write an essay on how Amiibos are one of the greatest advertisement achievements of the 21st century.
