Thanks for the responses everyone
anth0ny, i read your entire post. i'm not going to selectively quote it or anything, but i believe your argument breaks down into:
-nintendo once had a grip on gaming's biggest demographic
-they threw it all away
-they found a new demographic but that demographic left
-they currently have no fanbase
well, i think it would be wise if nintendo expanded westward. they shouldn't have ended every single deal they had with western studios during the gamecube era and turned nst into what it is now. they could deliver different game experiences the japanese studios aren't developing.
Right on the money!
however i think it's a mistake to go after the xbox and playstation audiences now. if there was ever a chance to go after them, it was with the wii u. the wii u needed to be more powerful, have a far better online infrastructure, and far better marketing from the word go. with this upcoming gen and both microsoft and sony embracing paywalls, audiences are only going to become more entrenched. it will be nearly impossible for nintendo to steal away that fanbase without doing something drastic like paying for madden exclusivity or getting call of duty for a year. you're not going to see those people ditch their friends and trophies/achievements just so they can play some nintendo games too.
Thank you for bringing this up, because I think this is the number 1 reason why a plan like I've outlined could not work. It's basically too little too late: Everyone in that audience is already integrated into the Xbox Live/Playstation Network infrastructure, their friends are all in there, so why would they jump to another platform, let alone a Nintendo platform?
It's tough, but I do think it's possible. Right now we are in the very early days of this new generation, but from what I could tell, I think Sony wants to take that Xbox audience that dominated North America during the last gen. The same Xbox audience that has been integrated into the Xbox Live infrastructure for the last
8 years, and win them over to Playstation 4 and PS Plus. Sony has been pushing all the right buttons since they unveiled the PS4: their marketing has been great, their console is clearly more powerful than the XBox One, and it's $100 cheaper! Thanks to all of this good will they've won from gamers, they were successfully able to implement a paywall for their online multiplayer. Not to mention all the great stuff they throw in with a subscription, such as free, retail games on a monthly basis. A month of PS Plus is a greater value than a month of Xbox Live Gold.
With this, I think it's simple: Give gamers the greater value, treat them with respect, market yourself well, and "brand loyalty" will only take them so far. I honestly believe that Sony is doing such a great job of this that players who only owned 360s for the entirety of last gen will drop that shit and flock over to Sony and the PS4 when they realize not only is it a better deal, but all of their friends are over there too.
Nintendo needs to do these things, and I think they can. Create an online, paid system that offers a greater value than Sony provides with the PS4 and PS Plus. Market yourself better. A LOT BETTER. If they have all the games, and the infrastructure is better than the competition, and they market this to the masses properly (as Sony did the PS4), then who's to say whether the Xbox or Playstation audience won't make the jump over to Nintendo?
Easier said than done, of course...
i think nintendo's biggest mistake was trying to go after this fanbase in the first place. they tried it with the 3ds, supposedly giving third-parties a window to release mature games like street fighter iv, metal gear solid 3, resident evil revelations, etc, but that fanbase doesn't buy handhelds. nintendo tried it again with the wii u, publishing ninja gaiden 3, and getting some ports of last-gen games for launch that traditionally appealed to that market. the gamepad and cc pro were both designed to appeal to the traditional gaming audience (instead of making the gamepad just a tablet or something). marketing campaigns were bright lights and dubstep- an attempt to be cool not unlike the gamecube launch commercials.
Well, of course, these are two completely half assed attempts that trying to go after that fanbase.
Number one, the portable market is irrelevant. Honestly, I think they are doing fine in the portable market. As well as they could be doing considering the circumstances (mobile/tablet gaming domination). Third party support won't really make a difference there, because, unlike the console space, in the portable space, the biggest games are Mario, Mario Kart and Pokemon (and in Japan, Monster Hunter). They have the biggest portable game franchises, so they will continue to be successful.
This isn't the case in the console space. Like I've said, Mario and Mario Kart aren't the biggest games in the console space. It's COD, GTA, Minecraft, Skyrim, FIFA, Madden... all games that they simply don't have. They can't find success with the 7th and 8th biggest games in the world driving the console forward, when the competition has #1, #2, #3...
Ninja Gaiden 3 and those late ports are proof that Nintendo had no idea what the fuck they were doing when going for the "hardcore" audience. Late ports do absolutely nothing, especially when they perform worse than the 360/PS3 versions. Nintendo was getting Mass Effect 3 and selling it for $60 when PS3/360 was getting Mass Effect Trilogy for $40!
The clean, sterile, dubstep commercials with children and a narrator reading a PR statement were NOT cool, and did a terrible job explaining what exactly the Wii U is.
What I'm saying is, maybe they did try to capture that audience with the Wii U at launch... but they did an awful, awful job. Any idiot could look at what they did and tell you that's not what you need to do to capture the 18-35 male demographic. I don't think you just give up on that audience because the Wii U approach failed. Iwata needs to go, Reggie needs to go, and the entire fucking marketing team in North America needs to go. The tone of marketing needs to shift, like when PS3 commercials went from
this to
this.
what should have happened was during 2009 and 2010, nintendo should have released the vitality sensor and marketed it. i think they lost that fanbase specifically because they stopped catering to them. those people wanted new experiences to improve their lives, whether it meant exericise, increased family time, or better ease of use. nintendo instead focused on more complex titles. where you or me might have seen wii output drop off in 2011, it happened for this audience right after wii fit plus came out, with only wii party a year later to pique any interest.
While this is true, I think it was inevitable that a large portion of the audience they captured with the Wii was going to move on to 99 cent/free games they had on their phones. They may have extended the Wiis life, sure, but the successor? Do you think that audience would have been willing to spend $350 on a new Wii? $250?
i think that instead of going after an entrenched marketplace, nintendo should branch out. wii wasn't lightning in a bottle- it was a good idea backed with quality software. their problem was assuming the fanbase they built with the ds and wii was with them all the way when they launched their current systems- that they were just waiting for new hardware, and they could also grab the aforementioned entrenched userbases from microsoft and sony.
Exactly. That Wii userbase isn't coming back, nor did they really want a successor to the Wii (or the DS, to an extent). The half assed attempt to capture the MS/Sony userbase obviously did nothing, too.
there's a thread in off-topic right now about how paul dini couldn't get a second season of tower prep because the female audience was growing too big and executives didn't like that because girls don't buy toys. the reaction was 'then make something they'll buy!'
i feel that's similar to what you're suggesting, that nintendo has to sell to boys. there's 51% of the population that is increasingly marginalized by the westernization of the video game industry. nintendo should be trying to reach out to them. they should be trying to forge their own userbase. will major third-parties join on? probably not- they're too invested in the current userbase. it's nintendo's job to figure out how to effectively sell to everyone, to filll in their lineups.
So what you're suggesting here is basically that they double down on their current ideology. "Fuck third parties, we can handle this ourselves". Except
actually handle it, and not just release 100 Mario games and hope for the best.
I think, while this is possible, is it not more risky than just getting on the good sides of third parties? They need to look at the market right now. What are the biggest selling games?
1. First Person Shooters
2. Sports games
3. Open World games
4. NFC Figure games
5. Fitness/dance games
6. Platformers
I think we can agree on this.
Nintendo has ZERO first party games that fall into the genres described by 1-4. 5 and 6 they have covered, for sure. I guess Skylanders and Disney Infinity is on Wii U, but how are they selling? 1-3 they simply don't have, and without the help of EA, Activision, Rockstar, 2K, Ubisoft, Bethesda... they'd have to do it all themselves? How?
First thing's first, they'd need to spend that Wii/DS money, big time. What is there, 5 EAD teams? If they're going to do this all themselves, there needs to be 15. They have Retro Studios in America? If they want to take a serious stab at capturing the largest audience for games in the world, AMERICA (and Europe, really), they're going to need 5 Retro Studios. Obviously I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but my point is THEY NEED TO EXPAND. Big time. It is
not enough that their only Western Team has pumped out two Donkey Kong platformers over the span of 4 years.
Can they buy the James Bond license and get Retro to start working exclusively on AAA, high quality James Bond games (instead of fucking Donkey Kong platformers that cover the same audience as Mario platformers)? Bond being Nintendo exclusive would be pretty huge. The films are more popular than ever (Skyrim did over $1 billion at the box office), and many players have nostalgia for playing Goldeneye on their old Nintendo 64. The connection between Bond and Nintendo makes sense.
Can they effectively create a new, Uncharted style third person shooter? Would a Japanese team work on it?
Sports games. They're boned without EA support on Football games, unless that contract isn't renewed in a couple of years. However, this is a space where I think they could make some noise. Bring back 1080 Snowboarding. Bring back NBA Courtside. Bring back Wave Race. Bring back Excite Bike. Of course, you still have Wii Sports, for that other crowd. If they're good enough and well made, who's to say Nintendo can't be the home for sports games? NBA Live dominated the basketball gaming world, until 2K picked up their shit and started releasing better and better games every year. The sales were representative of this. Then they got Jordan involved, and now look at the last two years. 2K KILLED LIVE, and while Live came back this year, it was basically a zombie.
Look at Sony's MLB The Show. A new IP that is exclusive to a single platform pretty much came from out of nowhere in 2004 and is now the best selling baseball game on the market.
Why can't NBA Courtside do the same for Nintendo? They just have to want it. Clearly, right now, they don't want it.
Open world games seem incredibly difficult without the help of Ubisoft and Rockstar, who utterly dominate this genre. They would need to expand BIG TIME to have the resources to develop an open world game, yet still get Mario, Zelda and the rest of the first party games out every year. Again, this is a world where Nintendo has little/no third party support!
To me, that sounds a little risky. And a little expensive. What makes more sense for Nintendo: trying to take on EVERY genre themselves, or just playing nice with third parties for once and getting the third parties to work with them? Ideally, there would be a combination of both. Nintendo sleeping on all of their sports franchises is a travesty, as
Emily Rogers explains in this article. They should really invest in a shooter or two, considering the popularity of the genre.
I just really don't see what other direction they could go in. Is there another massive, untapped market just waiting out there? Just because the market has been cornered by Microsoft and Sony doesn't mean they should just give up on it. I'm not sure how far "being unique" is going to get them at this point.
