Some Nintendo What Ifs

[Infinisearch]

I was thinking about nintendo and thought up some scenarios and wanted opinions in regards to them.

1. Nintendo releases the revolution at $100-150, not near as powerful as either PS3 or X360. Its actual purpose is more like the DS, its not a GCN2, while it is marketed to more casual gamers and games, it also to help keep consumer faith in Nintendo while giving them more time to build a power console cheaper than its competitors while being late to the game and seeing its competitors cards.

2. Nintendo scraps revolution, decides to release a power console a year or two after PS3 releases. However in the interim (asap) releases the revolution controller as an addon for the PC, and GCN. (and maybe even the other consoles) At this time they become an addon, and software company that releases game using the revolution controller for the other consoles. This would allow them a period to truthfully test the waters for the controller and refine it for their power console release. (and it is my understanding that the addon market is where the money is, and it allows nintendo engineers to work with other hardware potentially reducing R&D costs. And it give devs more time to work with the revolution controller)

3. What Nintendo's PR is currently saying.

4. A combination of one and two. Releases revolution at $100 or $150, and the revolution controller for PC and maybe either the older generation (xbox ps2) or newer generation (360 ps3). The console is for those who want to play all the old nintendo titles, as well as newer ones but don't have the money for the other consoles but want something for the TV. And the controller and software is for those who already have or decided on getting a PC or other console and don't feel like. This could be more profitable then option two and still give them time to produce a power console more cheaply than sony or ms.

5. none of the above.

Which do you think would be the best option for Nintendo to follow in order to:
a. keep its current fan-base
b. bring more 'gamer's' back to nintendo
c. expand gaming to more audiences (as some have stated, will a controller bring non-gamers or cell-phone gamers to actually buy a console)
d. minimize losses in money, consumer confidence, and the press hype/attitude in case the controller doesn't sell as well as hoped?

I think 4 might be the best option even if it would potentially cut into revolution sales, both in regards to best case and worst case scenarios. What do you think?

 

[jvd]

Why would 2 ever happen ? I don't see a reason to scrap the rev . If it is very underpowered its not hard to delay it 6 months wait for 65nm and clock everything higher than it was and add on more ram. INstead of a late 2006 launch its an early 2007 launch.

Putting the controller on another system or on the cube with no products taking advantage of it is a pretty dumb thing imho to do .

 

[Cornman]

Why would 2 ever happen ? I don't see a reason to scrap the rev . If it is very underpowered its not hard to delay it 6 months wait for 65nm and clock everything higher than it was and add on more ram. INstead of a late 2006 launch its an early 2007 launch.

Putting the controller on another system or on the cube with no products taking advantage of it is a pretty dumb thing imho to do .

what if they make another middle console like GC?
what if they charge slightly more than GC at $249.99?
What if they are right and everyone flocks to them?

 

[Azrael]

What if space aliens kidnap Hiroshi Yamauchi and then bring him back with some common sense?

 

[Powderkeg]

What if the Revolution fails, Nintendo drops out of console hardware, and goes 3rd party multiplatform with their games like Sega has?

Wouldn't they make even more profit, and any console gamer could play Nintendo games no matter what system they owned?

And would this be a bad thing?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I agree with powderkeg on this one and have said so before. Nintendo are known more for their games than anything. Revolution is perhaps a bit of a departure and if it proves successful, kudos for Nintendo for sticking to their guns. But going by GC, if Nintendo had released the same software on PS2 they'd have sold a lot more and likely made a lot more money (though different takes on this have been discussed here before). If Nintendo worked with Sony as was the original idea, we'd have a Nintendo/Sony PS3 with Nintendo's games and Revolution controller

Sonintendo RevolutionStation
or Nintendony Playvolution.

 

[London Geezer]

What if the Revolution fails, Nintendo drops out of console hardware, and goes 3rd party multiplatform with their games like Sega has?

Wouldn't they make even more profit, and any console gamer could play Nintendo games no matter what system they owned?

And would this be a bad thing?

Well look at what that move did to the quality of Sega's software.

I'm afraid a move like that would turn Nintendo in "just another 3rd party studio" who will care FAR less about the games they produce than they would if they were exclusives to their own consoles. And that shows in the games big time!

Might be just my paranoia, but it could happen. Happened to SEGA afterall.
This is a WHAT IF thread afterall so i can say whatever i want really. Like... APPLE PIE. LOTS OF PIE. AND DONUTS. NOW. ON MY DESK. AND COFFEE.

 

[hey69]

regarding the first post.
you still dont believe in that third pilar crap now dont you?

 

[Readykilowatt]

What if the Revolution (like the DS) outsells the PS3 in Japan?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Then Nintendo will make lots of money. What else do you expect to happen? Elvis return and head Nintendo and buy out Sony and conquor the world and force everyone to eat mushrooms?

 

[Guden Oden]

" . . . . . "

I'd like to say something smart in this thread, but I just can't think of anything, so I guess I won't. There's just too much weirdness and noise here already.

 

[jvd]

Well look at what that move did to the quality of Sega's software.

I'm afraid a move like that would turn Nintendo in "just another 3rd party studio" who will care FAR less about the games they produce than they would if they were exclusives to their own consoles. And that shows in the games big time!

Might be just my paranoia, but it could happen. Happened to SEGA afterall.
This is a WHAT IF thread afterall so i can say whatever i want really. Like... APPLE PIE. LOTS OF PIE. AND DONUTS. NOW. ON MY DESK. AND COFFEE.

You hit it right on the head l-b

With sega its fans used to buy a system that sega made and get all sega games . Now though u need a xbox for pdz and some other games , you need a ps2 for vf and some other games and u need a game cube for sonic and some other games .

Gamers picked one system (esp early on ) and stayed with it , the sega games they couldn't get well they just couldn't get. This hurt sales .

The same thing will hpapen with nintendo . There will be 2 consoles and now nintendo fans will be split between the two. Now they need to make games that push diffrent systems that they didn't have acess to all through development .

Its a diffrent ball game when your 3rd party .

I think nintendo should open its bank account and buy a few small developers. nothing nuts just some developers that make more adult orientated games. Fold them into nintendo and produce more games .

They have shown that thier software sells extremely well even on a limited number of consoles . The main problem with the gamecube isn't its software quality , its the lack of a constant flow of games . Just look at this year , we had re4 and that was it . It would have been re4 and zelda , but that is still only 2 stand out games .

They need at least 4-8 stand out big named games a year that way ever 2-4 months you can go buy a new game anticapted game .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They have shown that thier software sells extremely well even on a limited number of consoles . The main problem with the gamecube isn't its software quality , its the lack of a constant flow of games .

Doesn't that go hand in hand though?With few titles to choose from, those titles will sell more. With lots of titles sales will be spread out. That is, if there's one fighter game, it sells to all fighter fans on GC, say 5 million gamers. That's a 5 million unit selling game. But if there were 3 fighters, that'd be more like 1.5 million units per game. With 20 different MarioKart clones and the like, the pool gets diluted.

I wonder if Nintendo aren;t deliberately keeping 3rd party support down a bit because of this, and promote a premium content idea? AFAIK they offer know incentives to attract more developers. They could have afforded to drop license fees years back and get more titles onto GC, but they didn't. I don't think that's because they idea didn't occur to them either.

For me, Nintendo is kinda the Apple of the console world. Less software than a PC, but everything's sleek and classy. Nintendo are the quality platform. Maybe.

 

[Teasy]

What if the Revolution fails, Nintendo drops out of console hardware, and goes 3rd party multiplatform with their games like Sega has?

Wouldn't they make even more profit, and any console gamer could play Nintendo games no matter what system they owned?

And would this be a bad thing?

Nintendo are nothing like Sega so its pointless to compare them, going third party would not mean more profits either. Straight away they would make 33% less profit per game, on current generation game sales that would mean $700 million less profit. They would lose all licensing money that comes from third party game sales (around $1.5 billion this generation). They would also lose all their peripheral sales (controllers, memory cards ect), which again goes into the billions of dollars. Not to mention they would lose the ability to share technology between there console and handheld businesses. What would they gain?.. the possibility of selling some extra games? They would have to sell more then three times the amount of games just to recoup the money they would lose from losing the revenue streams I mentioned above. There's no way they would achieve that sort of increase in game sales by going third party. The fact is the majority of people who really want to play Nintendo games buy Nintendo consoles...

Nintendo have no reason to drop out of the console business, when will people stop bringing up this obsurd argument?

 

[Ty]

Just pull the #s from the GCN side (if possible) and then we could compare what Nintendo makes from the GCN and therefore what they would lose/gain were they to kill a home console.

Sure they made billions on their handheld side but was their GCN side that profitable?

 

[Readykilowatt]

Sure they made billions on their handheld side but was their GCN side that profitable?

Yes. Keep in mind that the Gamecube has not yet been discontinued.

 

[PC-Engine]

Yes. Keep in mind that the Gamecube has not yet been discontinued.

Yep and the hardware itself is profitable.

 

[Teasy]

Sure they made billions on their handheld side but was their GCN side that profitable?

To be honest when you look at the game sales on the system and consider the costs the question then becomes how could it not be profitable?

Last time I checked Nintendo had sold around 60 million of there own games on GC ($30 profit per game) and around 140 million third party games were sold on the system ($10 profit per game for Nintendo). They also sold two controllers and two mem cards for every console sold (at around $10 profit on each at a guess). That comes to $4 billion in profit before taking R&D, hardware losses and advertising into account. Nintendo haven't spent much on GameCube advertising and I'd be suprised if they haven't come close to breaking even on GameCube hardware costs (at times they've made small losses on hardware but other times they've made small profits).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Last time I checked Nintendo had sold around 60 million of there own games on GC ($30 profit per game) and around 140 million third party games were sold on the system ($10 profit per game for Nintendo). They also sold two controllers and two mem cards for every console sold (at around $10 profit on each at a guess). That comes to just under $4 billion in profit before taking R&D, hardware losses and advertising into account. Nintendo haven't spent much on GameCube advertising and I'd be suprised if they haven't come close to breaking even on GameCube hardware costs (at times they've made small losses on hardware but other times they've made small profits).

Going by these figures, they'd get $20 per game sold on PS2 and XB. If they sold 60 million units with 20 million target consoles, one would extrapolate that they'd sell 5x as many games on 5x as many consoles. That'd be 300 million games sold at $20 a piece = 6 billion. Losing all the rest, losing 3rd party fees and hardware profits, they'd be 50% up on current earnings. Plus they'd lose the need for console RnD and marketting which isn't cheap.

 

[Teasy]

That's completely flawed logic though Shfity.. If 100 million people wanted to buy loads of Nintendo's games then GameCube would not have sold only 20 million consoles. Sony/XBox only owners (people who didn't even bother to buy a $99 GC) would not buy anywhere near as many Nintendo games as Nintendo fans do.