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With Sony building a PC presence do you think it's a matter of time until Nintendo switches?

Holammer

Member
I imagine Nintendo see no reason to have a presence on the PC marketplace. Most of their mobile offerings are pretty offensively bad.

Jeez, can you imagine if Nintendo, in a bid to retain all profit margins, launched their own digital storefront akin to Steam or Epic. I can't even begin to believe how bad their launcher would be when they can't even get their shit together offering basic online services.
Nintendo would never do it alone, they would partner up and mix blood like they did with DeNA.
 

Shut0wen

Member
Nintendo has yet to figure out VOIP voice chat on a console and you expect them to start porting games to the PC?
Nintendo wont make the jump until they rely over 5 million in sales to hit profit, nintendo making inferior console means games are cheaper to develop, plus nintendo will use any technology it can get its hands on to make games cheaper, maybe if the switch 2 becomes a wii u then possibly (they made the jump to mobile because of it) but i cant see it happening any time soon
 

ManaByte

Member
Nintendo wont make the jump until they rely over 5 million in sales to hit profit, nintendo making inferior console means games are cheaper to develop, plus nintendo will use any technology it can get its hands on to make games cheaper, maybe if the switch 2 becomes a wii u then possibly (they made the jump to mobile because of it) but i cant see it happening any time soon

Nintendo will never make the jump. They are, and always have been, a toy company. The toys they make now are just videogame systems and games. If Yamauchi really had his way there wouldn't have even been third-parties making titles for the Famicom and Super Famicom. Nintendo's entire existence is built around their games on their hardware done their way.

Nintendo doesn't make an "inferior" console. They make hardware that is 100% profitable from Day 1. People on forums and social media keep wanting to force Nintendo into the Sony/MS mold, when Nintendo abandoned any ambitions of being like them a long, long time ago (with the Wii). The Switch's success has shown them (and should show everyone else) that their way works for them. They're rolling in mountains of cash and they don't need to spend billions and release a console that is sold at a loss for a year just to be the same as Sony and MS.

Likewise they have no reason to release games on PC. They're back to where they were with the NES in terms of the games for their system. They control the medium, so third parties have to pay a cart tax to them, and their games are pulling in mountains of cash.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I feel like any attempt to predict Nintendo’s future plans is pointless. They have a history of decisions that defy logic and surprise us all. Sometimes that revolutionizes the industry and other times it falls flat.

“Nintendo always does X… until they don’t”.

No amount of speculating and looking at data will get you any closer to an accurate prediction. I put zero stock in anybody’s prognostications. (Sorry GAF)
 

ManaByte

Member
I feel like any attempt to predict Nintendo’s future plans is pointless. They have a history of decisions that defy logic and surprise us all. Sometimes that revolutionizes the industry and other times it falls flat.

“Nintendo always does X… until they don’t”.

No amount of speculating and looking at data will get you any closer to an accurate prediction. I put zero stock in anybody’s prognostications. (Sorry GAF)

Nah it's pretty easy to predict what Nintendo will do, because they operate out of their best interests.

Lets use mobile as an example. Nintendo got into mobile because, especially in Japan, mobile gaming was seriously a threat to their handheld gaming business that's been a pillar of Nintendo since the Game & Watch days. But Nintendo isn't really porting Switch games to mobile, they're making mobile exclusive titles using their IPs or licensing their IPs to mobile developers and are being extremely "Nintendo" about the whole thing and quickly killing things (Dr. Mario) they don't see as working or profitable.

PC will never threaten anything Nintendo does. People thinking the $400 Steam Deck is a threat to the Switch are having their opinion clouded by Steam fanboyism. The Steam Deck is as much a threat to Nintendo's Switch as the Turbo Express was a threat to the Gameboy. It's all about price with handhelds, and Nintendo has a $199 version of the Switch that the Steam Deck will never get close to.

If Valve made a Steam Deck that was $150 and released it in Japan, maybe Nintendo would take notice. But Nintendo's been through this before against the GameGear, Turbo Express, Lynx, Neo Pocket, WonderSwan, PSP, Vita, etc. They know how to fight and win the handheld war and that's one reason PC will never be on their radar.
 

Impotaku

Member
This just sounds like port begging with extra steps, nintendo don't need no other platform they are holding their own against even next gen at the moment. All nintendo need to do is keep a regular stream of releases along with the 3rd parties doing the same.
 

Tams

Gold Member
Nintendo's philosophy at the moment is different than Sony's in that they rely on a integrated hardware software business model. Also unlike Sony they rely heavily on their first party output with the former responsible for two thirds of their Switch revenue. The Switch isn't a exactly a powerhouse and is designed that way for a number of reasons this however goes against how many PC gamers might think their gaming experience should go. Also it's worth noting that a number of Nintendo games are couch coop based something that would not fit the PC gaming experience.

It's no secret that Nintendo too has been following the "remaster" trend and has an extensive list of first party remasters and has been rewarded for it.

With the Valve's Steam Deck clearly setting itself up as a competitor and assuming it has a high adopt rate do you think this is a good opportunity to enter the PC market? Is Nintendo's business sustainable considering the gaming industries future outlook without slowly introducing a "game pass"?

Congrats. You've already taken the title for the dumbest post I've seen this month.

No, they won't.

  • They are doing just fine with the Switch.
  • It would take at least two entire consoles to fail for them to even consider it.
  • Sony haven't switched to PC. They're just using their older exclusives to get a bit more income and promote PlayStation (so you go and buy a PS(whatever generation) console so that you can play the latest installment/exclusives now and not in 3-4 years).
I swear, some on this forum really need to grow up*. Learn to use some basic logic and not rely on emotions and wishful thinking as much.


*If you actually are an 11-year-old, then I forgive you as many of us thought we knew a lot back when we were that young.
 
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Shut0wen

Member
Nintendo will never make the jump. They are, and always have been, a toy company. The toys they make now are just videogame systems and games. If Yamauchi really had his way there wouldn't have even been third-parties making titles for the Famicom and Super Famicom. Nintendo's entire existence is built around their games on their hardware done their way.

Nintendo doesn't make an "inferior" console. They make hardware that is 100% profitable from Day 1. People on forums and social media keep wanting to force Nintendo into the Sony/MS mold, when Nintendo abandoned any ambitions of being like them a long, long time ago (with the Wii). The Switch's success has shown them (and should show everyone else) that their way works for them. They're rolling in mountains of cash and they don't need to spend billions and release a console that is sold at a loss for a year just to be the same as Sony and MS.

Likewise they have no reason to release games on PC. They're back to where they were with the NES in terms of the games for their system. They control the medium, so third parties have to pay a cart tax to them, and their games are pulling in mountains of cash.
When i meant inferior console i meant as in profitable and again i agree with you 100% if anything they have been following sonys trend with the ps2 and so far its worked massively but nintendo did agree to port some games for them for the chinese market, i think Nintendo would do it as a last resort, them making mobile games was something i thought id never see nintendo do and so far they are making less mobile games because the switch is successful, i think if nintendo made 2 consoles that performed like the wii u and werent making much on mobile they would 100% consider making ganes on other consoles exactly like sega did
 

ManaByte

Member
i think if nintendo made 2 consoles that performed like the wii u and werent making much on mobile they would 100% consider making ganes on other consoles exactly like sega did

The only reason the Wii U performed the way it did was because they called it a Wii. People like to pretend that people will confuse the Xbox Series X for the discontinued Xbox One X, but the Wii U WAS confusing for people. It didn't perform well because the mass audience that bought a Wii to play Wii Sports Bowling with grannie thought that the Wii U was just an expensive new controller for their existing Wii and not a new system. Hell, retailers were equally confused as I vividly remember a Best Buy stooge telling someone that they could play all the new Wii U games on their existing Wii.

Had they branded the Wii U something different, like they did with the Switch, it would've performed completely differently.
 
It's not like they're forcefully limited to one or the other.
They could absolutely do both and increase their sales even more.

I disagree. Maintaning their IP brand status is far more important and valuable than short term pocket change they would get from PC ports.

Mario, Zelda, Pokemon are trademarks of Nintendo. There's a reason why those names are iconic, household brands, compare to Sony's IPs who are not known outside gaming community
 
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Probably not. Nintendo is actually doing really well, so I don’t think they will do anything to screw that up. If they release games on PC, what would be the point in buying Nintendo hardware?
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
Nintendo trying to follow Sony model never worked for them, I doubt they will ever make their games available on PC. No doubt they would be successful, but they would also change their brand perception, and like Apple, I think Nintendo has an ecosystem well-defined.
 

Fare thee well

Neophyte
I think nintendo would rather go bankrupt. They seem to have an extremely tight leniency for what their platform is and who has rights to it. Hell they still legally nuke streamers and content creators that cover their games. Nintendo doesn't ever seem to bow to business trends.

I don't get their methods personally, but they're still here I guess.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Nah it's pretty easy to predict what Nintendo will do, because they operate out of their best interests.

Lets use mobile as an example. Nintendo got into mobile because, especially in Japan, mobile gaming was seriously a threat to their handheld gaming business that's been a pillar of Nintendo since the Game & Watch days. But Nintendo isn't really porting Switch games to mobile, they're making mobile exclusive titles using their IPs or licensing their IPs to mobile developers and are being extremely "Nintendo" about the whole thing and quickly killing things (Dr. Mario) they don't see as working or profitable.

PC will never threaten anything Nintendo does. People thinking the $400 Steam Deck is a threat to the Switch are having their opinion clouded by Steam fanboyism. The Steam Deck is as much a threat to Nintendo's Switch as the Turbo Express was a threat to the Gameboy. It's all about price with handhelds, and Nintendo has a $199 version of the Switch that the Steam Deck will never get close to.

If Valve made a Steam Deck that was $150 and released it in Japan, maybe Nintendo would take notice. But Nintendo's been through this before against the GameGear, Turbo Express, Lynx, Neo Pocket, WonderSwan, PSP, Vita, etc. They know how to fight and win the handheld war and that's one reason PC will never be on their radar.
People will say “Nintendo will never do X”, then after the fact they’ll pretend like it was obvious all along. “Nintendo would never release a 3DS without the 3D screen”, “Nintendo would never put their games on smartphone” etc

And yeah PC isn’t a threat to them NOW. What happens if they release another Wii U-like flop and this time there’s no separate handheld line to keep them afloat? You never know.

Not saying it will happen or even that it’s probable. Just saying I put zero value in this kind of speculation.
 
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Knightime_X

Member
I disagree. Maintaning their IP brand status is far more important and valuable than short term pocket change they would get from PC ports.

Mario, Zelda, Pokemon are trademarks of Nintendo. There's a reason why those names are iconic, household brands, compare to Sony's IPs who are not known outside gaming community
I don't see how being iconic and a household name has anything to do with reaching a larger audience.
Being on PC doesn't change that at all.
 

Shut0wen

Member
The only reason the Wii U performed the way it did was because they called it a Wii. People like to pretend that people will confuse the Xbox Series X for the discontinued Xbox One X, but the Wii U WAS confusing for people. It didn't perform well because the mass audience that bought a Wii to play Wii Sports Bowling with grannie thought that the Wii U was just an expensive new controller for their existing Wii and not a new system. Hell, retailers were equally confused as I vividly remember a Best Buy stooge telling someone that they could play all the new Wii U games on their existing Wii.

Had they branded the Wii U something different, like they did with the Switch, it would've performed completely differently.
True but the only people who brought it were the die hard nintendo fans, dont get me wrong i quite liked it but i think most of the confusion came with the cobtroller, most people i knew thought the wii u was going to be like
 

Holammer

Member
I don't see how being iconic and a household name has anything to do with reaching a larger audience.
Being on PC doesn't change that at all.
In the current attention economy they need to reach as may eyeballs as possible for TV and movies and other entertainment/merch outside the game sphere. Especially as kids don't bring handheld consoles to school anymore. For example, my own 9 year old niece had no idea who Mario was when I asked. Imagine that? I did what every responsible uncle would do and booted New Mario Bros in Dolphin and showed her.

She thought it was lame and started talking about Granny and Roblox.

cover1.jpg
 

Barakov

Member
This is the one thing Nintendo will ever do. Nintendo is a console company first and formost so they will never ever start porting games to PC. The only reason they're releasing mobile games is because it's beneficial to them and they can do it the way they want.

It would take a monumental disaster for Nintendo to start releasing games on PC. Even if the industry had another crash I think Nintendo would still be around making consoles and putting out games.
 
by constantly releasing on ten year old hardware...they have already been releasing all their games on PC...they just arent making money off of them.
 

tusharngf

Member
90% nintendo games can be played on PC via emulator. WII U was a disaster to begin with and sold around only 13 million units. Nintendo even stopped going to e3 after the failure of wii u. When some company is in dire situation they adapt to the new changes. For ex microsoft took a hit with kinect promotion and lack of games and it took them full 10yrs to recover from that. Sony lost billions during ps360 era and came back strong with first party games and compelling hardware. Nintendo never took that kind of hit even during wii u days they got 3ds games selling like hotcakes. Nintendo also doesnt even allow their games on youtube freely and they love to control every aspect of their first party titles. This is their weakness and sometime the nintendo management misses on what people want. Switch was massive hit but who knows what will happen next if do something crazy. My nephew has no idea what pokemon is or mario but he knows how to play PUBG mobile and freefire on mobile. Jim ryan is doing great by approaching more people on different platform. I am betting he will put ps3 titles on mobile if the SOC gets better in upcoming days and sometimes in near future ps4 games as well. He will get people talking about their games. People curse jim for destroying playstation platform but they forget the future is service model that is PSN plus or gamepass like service. You need more devices and people into your ecosystem. If you dont put your game on more device how will others notice what's happening. I have played nintendo games on NES and SNES but later i switched to ps1 direct and never looked back. I was tempted to get switch lite but the prices of older games like zelda kept me off from buying it. Nintendo also doesnt offer edge hardware to its audience and sometimes they miss on 3rd party games as well. What they really need at this moment is a device that can run 1080p ultra games at 60fps in handheld mode plus full 3rd party games support. Online service with 100% backward compatibility with all older games. Let people share and stream their games without any restrictions.
 

ButchCat

Member
Congrats. You've already taken the title for the dumbest post I've seen this month.

No, they won't.

  • They are doing just fine with the Switch.
  • It would take at least two entire consoles to fail for them to even consider it.
  • Sony haven't switched to PC. They're just using their older exclusives to get a bit more income and promote PlayStation (so you go and buy a PS(whatever generation) console so that you can play the latest installment/exclusives now and not in 3-4 years).
I swear, some on this forum really need to grow up*. Learn to use some basic logic and not rely on emotions and wishful thinking as much.


*If you actually are an 11-year-old, then I forgive you as many of us thought we knew a lot back when we were that young.
Your post amused me. Must be hard for you to stay objective when you're a triggered Nintendo fanatic. Judging by how colourful your words are I'm gonna assume you're that 11 year old and move on.
 
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ButchCat

Member
by constantly releasing on ten year old hardware...they have already been releasing all their games on PC...they just aren't making money off of them.
Another reason to capitalize on this. There are emulators out there but a lot the games go through many revisions before they get close to a proper playable release that doesn't have any missing features. If Nintendo didn't like money they wouldn't entertain mobile as a platform so it begs the question why are they throwing that potential money away.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Who knows. Nintendo dipped into the mobile market, and by all accounts that's been financially successful for them.

Could you imagine how much money they'd make if they ported some older Pokémon game, or an older Mario Kart on PC?
 
Who knows. Nintendo dipped into the mobile market, and by all accounts that's been financially successful for them.

Could you imagine how much money they'd make if they ported some older Pokémon game, or an older Mario Kart on PC?

LOL nope, they have been shutting down their app games


“….Mamma mia! Nintendo announced today that it’s killing another mobile game. Dr. Mario World, which launched two years ago, will be discontinued on November 1, 2021, at 6 a.m.


Dr. Mario World is one of a few mobile games Nintendo discontinued over the years. As for now, Miitomo (2016), Pokémon Duel (2016), and Pokémon Rumble Rush (2019) have been discontinued by the company.

It’s also worth noting that Pokémon Shuffle Mobile (2015) and Pokémon: Magikarp Jump (2017) haven’t received any update in years and their developers don’t plan on adding more features for these games….”

At this rate, looks like Pokémon Go, the only one that will survive
 

Tams

Gold Member
Your post amused me. Must be hard for you to stay objective when you're a triggered Nintendo fanatic. Judging by how colourful your words are I'm gonna assume you're that 11 year old and move on.
If you think that's colourful language, then you need to get out more.
 
I think it could happen. I mean, Nintendo is still making mobile games, so I don't think it's that farfetched that they'd also put their games on PC. I hope investors put pressure on Nintendo to put their games on PC.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Nintendo make more profit on hardware then the other two. So I dont think it will happen anytime soon.

And this is nintendo we are talking about, they would probably do something wacky like a Nintendo graphics card that is required to play Nintendo games on PC or something.
 
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V4skunk

Banned
Out of the 3 console manufacturers Nintendo is the one whose revenue from hardware represents a bigger % of their total revenue. And they sell it at a profit.

Maybe don't have other non-gaming giant divisions as MS or Sony, but they also have other areas of revenue: they sell toys, cards, mobile games, recently opened a theme park, are working on movies based on their IPs, etc.


The incentive would be to sell even way more copies, so to generate way more revenue and profit.

1st part games that sell ~20-30+ million units are only a small part of their entire business. As an example, Sony makes way more revenue than Nintendo from gaming having way less of these games.

To ask someone to port some of their several years old games to PC as Sony does would give them way more revenue and profit, increasing the units sold of their games without negatively affecting hardware sales.
Nintendo make more money than Sony.
 
I think it could happen. I mean, Nintendo is still making mobile games, so I don't think it's that farfetched that they'd also put their games on PC. I hope investors put pressure on Nintendo to put their games on PC.

sighs…..only a couple posts above I posted how they are getting out of mobile market slowly
 

yurinka

Member
Nintendo make more money than Sony.
No, Sony's gaming division (it doesn't include their mobile games) made $25B this FY and Nintendo (including mobile games) made $15B. And the difference in profit between them is only like 10% of Sony's revenue so if they wanted to have more profit than Nintendo this year they could have achieved it by reinvesting a bit less. They are reinvesting aggresively, specially to get more games (hiring a lot in all their studios, acquiring studios, securing many big 2nd and 3rd party exclusives etc)
 
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Rykan

Member
sighs…..only a couple posts above I posted how they are getting out of mobile market slowly
But it's wrong? They aren't getting out of the mobile market just because they shut down one underperforming game. Every large mobile publisher shuts down underperforming games. Fire Emblem Heroes is by far the most profitable FE game and they only just launched a new Pikmin Mobile game.
 
Nintendo are doing their own thing. They will continue doing it too until people stop buying their consoles, which isn’t going to happen in probably our lifetime.
 
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