I worded it in a dumb/certain/silly way but, unless drastic changes happen, I do find it likely to happen.
Look at how often Nintendo is surfacing negatively on the news:
harassing a small dev studio over patents,
trying to kill emulation while profiting off it,
bricking hardware already sold to customers,
demanding unreasonable prices for new games,
dictating if you shall be allowed to feature one of its games in a speedrunning event…
Nintendo stopped being seen as a company that enables your fun, to become one that gatekeeps it. That’s brand damage - and really bad for Nintendo’s console sales; people are only willing to invest in a console if they’re reasonably certain they can have fun with it.
And at the same time, there are voices within and around Nintendo pushing the company towards the mobile market. Remember Pokémon Go? Or Ishihara saying the Switch 1 would flop, because of smartphones? If Nintendo console sales decline meaningfully, those voices will become louder and louder. Eventually Nintendo will focus primarily on the mobile market.
However people don’t typically buy mobile games; the monetisation strategy is completely different - microtransactions, gacha, lootboxes, all that crap. Most players (the “minnows”) won’t drop a penny on the game, but huge spenders (the “whales”) compensate for that, so it works.
The minnows aren’t just freeloaders, mind you; they’re required to keep the game alive. So mobile game companies need to fine-tune the pressure in their games - it should be just enough to encourage people to spend some money on the game, but not enough to shoo the minnows away.
But we’re talking about Nintendo here. A company willing to damage its own brand for a few additional pennies. Nintendo would not be able to see all those minnows and say “hey, that’s cool”, it would go full “ARE THOSE FREELOADERS STUPID? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BUY STUFF?”. It would tune the pressure way up, and ruin its mobile market, after it ruined its console market.
…perhaps it should go back to selling playing cards.
I worded it in a dumb/certain/silly way but, unless drastic changes happen, I do find it likely to happen.
Look at how often Nintendo is surfacing negatively on the news:
Nintendo stopped being seen as a company that enables your fun, to become one that gatekeeps it. That’s brand damage - and really bad for Nintendo’s console sales; people are only willing to invest in a console if they’re reasonably certain they can have fun with it.
And at the same time, there are voices within and around Nintendo pushing the company towards the mobile market. Remember Pokémon Go? Or Ishihara saying the Switch 1 would flop, because of smartphones? If Nintendo console sales decline meaningfully, those voices will become louder and louder. Eventually Nintendo will focus primarily on the mobile market.
However people don’t typically buy mobile games; the monetisation strategy is completely different - microtransactions, gacha, lootboxes, all that crap. Most players (the “minnows”) won’t drop a penny on the game, but huge spenders (the “whales”) compensate for that, so it works.
The minnows aren’t just freeloaders, mind you; they’re required to keep the game alive. So mobile game companies need to fine-tune the pressure in their games - it should be just enough to encourage people to spend some money on the game, but not enough to shoo the minnows away.
But we’re talking about Nintendo here. A company willing to damage its own brand for a few additional pennies. Nintendo would not be able to see all those minnows and say “hey, that’s cool”, it would go full “ARE THOSE FREELOADERS STUPID? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BUY STUFF?”. It would tune the pressure way up, and ruin its mobile market, after it ruined its console market.
…perhaps it should go back to selling playing cards.