So here's an interesting question why is Nintendo going physical while every other major publisher is pushing for digital only? Amiiboos and Labo are both physical products that still tie them into existing retailers and eat into their profit margins. Is it a business move that's doomed to fail, a result of Japan doing its own thing or a brilliant example of swimming against the tide?
Nintendo going physical
Alexander Ross
Chase Lee
Filling a gap in the market. It's common sense to do.
Angel Watson
And yes I know they tie it into digital content but surely they'd make a lot more money if they just sold that content directly to the consumer. They could even afford to knock 50% off the price and sell it.
Then why isn't anyone else following them?
Kevin Cook
They were a traditional gaming company initially.
Brody Nguyen
That counts as "physical" to you?
They're Nintendo-branded funko pops, DLC and merch, they just have the ability to do it much better since their competitors mismanaged their flagship franchises into the dirt, else we'd see a lot more halo shit and whatever Sony used to have
Michael Cooper
Suddenly, I feel good about being a wageslave.
Jonathan Gray
They're all doing their own shit, which as you said is going digital. Nintendo "going physical", as you put it, can be seen as a reaction to this when looking at a timeline of events. Whether or not this is truly the reasoning I obviously cannot say, but looking at it from a business perspective it fits the bill of filling a marketplace void
John Moore
COME ON AND GET PHYSICAL
Nolan Morris
If the model is there and successful surely everyone else would have adopted it though. Even if they've previously mismanaged it they know how to do it now. I'm asking because Nintendo have a habit of either leading the market with completely off-the-wall ideaslike the wii or just autistically sticking to something outdated like cartridges and I want to know which it is.
Thomas Long
...
Blake Brown
The gap can only be filled once? How does that work.
Alexander Torres
Mate.
If there were many people filing a gap in a market, then there would BE NO GAP.
The reason there is a gap to be filled in the first place is exactly because no one was doing it. And even if anyone did try to do it now, they'd be accused of ripping Nintendo off, and poorly at that since MS and Sony don't have the IPs for that.
Evan Gonzalez
As a former toy company, and one of the largest in Japan for multiple markets, not just vidya, Nintendo is far better equipped to produce such things rather than Sony, Microsoft, or any PC platform that have a general focus on computers/other technologies than just vidya.
It should also be really fucking obvious that Nintendo is the one closest to marketing towards children, which would like these things the most.
Oliver Nelson
You must be 18 or older and have an IQ of 110 or higher to post here.
Sebastian Moore
Not necessarily but Ninty will take the lion's share of it before anyone else, especially before they blow millions trying to play catch up
(See: that inane PS motion control thing and the kinect that came out after the Wii)
As much as I hate jewtendo they're the only console and handheld manufacturer that has bothered to try innovating and inventing.
The others want to play it safe while Ninty has the sheer capital and savings to blow money on whatever they want
Cameron Anderson
So basically it's expensive to start and pointless to try and catch up if someone else got there first?
Adam Torres
Honestly, this. They used to make cards and shit, so them returning to cardboard is sensible, they likely have old relationships with paper manufacturers that would allow them to more easily enter the market with cardboard.
Take, for instance, SEGA. Ever since Service Games was founded in Hawaii they created electromechanical arcades, with the advent of computerized games it wasn't a big shift for them to start producing units with silicone chips, which led after a decade or two into them building home consoles, which are just shitty arcades. After leaving the home console market they continued making arcades and even still electromechanical machines (like an item crane).
Usually business decisions with these types of more historied companies that have been around since before video games can be logically traced to their roots as a company.
Now, if Nintendo started producing shoes and dental floss you'd have yourself a very valid reason to question the purpose.
Mason Turner
Yes, getting contracts, setting up production and shitting out physical products in a field your company hasn't touched is hard.
Unless you have an obvious plan going in to "disrupt" the market or do something different in said field, yes. Digital is far easier for the electronic giants such as Sony and Xbox, why would they fight Nintendo on their homeground?
Easton Anderson
Because physical products is what makes them the majority of their money.
Lincoln Taylor
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Adrian Flores
Pretty much. Even if you do something that is similar to a popular site, you need to do something at least different to make it stand out. A comparison would be here over cuckchan. You could post more images in one post and you can have webms with sound. The other site, since I haven't checked that place in years, probably hasn't changed from one image a post and soundless webms I would assume. It also had very bad moderation from what I remember. You could get banned for the most banal things that happened a day or two ago. I hear they also have 60 second timers to post things if you're free.
Popularity of something on the other hand is different from whether it has better functionality or not. It's the reason why sites like reddit and facebook are still going, even if they've displayed questionable practices or just very dated-looking designs. Popularity of something is subjective to what people will put up with. I guess people naturally flock to what has more people supposedly on that platform, rather than the quality you'd get out of it. Even though, that kind of logic can be self-fulfilling in itself.
Gabriel Wright
There's a specific name for this, Metcafe's Law, where a product increases in value the more people use it. Simply because the nature of the product benefits from multiple people using it.
Hunter Torres
its simply called "network effects" in business classes, and yeah it basically describes just that. Social media and products that tend to involve social interaction tends to benefit the most from it.
Juan Ward
Meltcalfe's law isn't just value increases with users, I should specify it's about "the value of a telecommunication service being proportional to the square of the number of users".
Cameron Robinson
like steam and psn :^)
Jason Parker
really fuzzles the mindgrapes.
Jace Perez
How are they going physical OP? You need to download every game on the Switch because cartridges are expensive.
Ethan Cooper
I'd get physical with my Pokemon
Nathaniel Jackson
ITT: Armchair economists flaunting their retardation
Isaac Stewart
the ironing
Brayden Young
Because Nintendo know how to make actual video games and not just cinematic crap.
Matthew Barnes
forgot pic
Joseph Harris
Exactly.
Whoever does best first, wins, and no one else can compete.
The reality of any market is that the first group that does the best thing first will stay at the top indefinitely, while any competition will fail.
Landon Ramirez
I'm pretty sure Nintendo saw the success of Skylanders and decided they wanted in on the action.
Gabriel James
Fuck off nintendrone and stop derailing the thread.
Easton Gonzalez
Analysis like this that doesn't devolve into console wars shit is why I keep coming back here. Polite sage.
Thomas Wood
Amiiboos and Labo aren't game though, Sony got PS camera, PSVR, etc, doesn't mean its a push to physical gaming.
Joseph Reyes
That doesn't make it good, wii makes a push for motion control which is retarded and Amiiboos is a literal physical DLC and cancerous as fuck.
Hudson Hill
Why does Dunkey talk like a nigger?
Gavin Collins
Get that trash out of my face, skylanders was a fucking mistake
Dylan Peterson
this is both right and wrong, when activison was developing skylanders they went to nintendo first for an exclusivity deal in exchange for some support. nintendo told them no, they weren't interested. with disney infinity royally shitting the bed hard by overproducing, extreme content gating, and horrible decisions of forced movie tie in sets while passing over the dev teams ideas for more classic sets. as well as no backwards capability.
years later after seeing every toys to life fall apart because of it's lack of features, they've made a set that works across a platform instead. it's a smart move.
Adam Jackson
Christopher Ortiz
i wonder why??
#1 pokemon
#2 star wars
#3 harry potter
#4 james bond
#5 simpsons
#6 star trek
Joseph Thomas
There are Star Trek amiiboos?
Andrew Davis
I cannot believe people are only now realizing this guy is a fucking retard. I would’ve figured they’d know after he called the Uncharted series a masterpiece but I guess not.
James Myers
Are you retarded?
Sebastian Turner
Remember Skylanders, who coined the whole idea?
Andrew Lewis
I do. It was the tits. The games were fucking fun and the figures were well made. It went so downhill so quickly it honestly makes my head spin.
Aiden Robinson
Masterpiece is a little strong but it's a great series.
Caleb Adams
Are you fucking high.They made like 8 expansions for the thing until it finally died.
How many years was since the first one until the latest. Can't remember if it was the one that you could swap bodyparts or the one with fucking cars on it.
Charles Cooper
Eh, most of those profits are likely going to the Pokemon Company itself. Nintendo just publishes the games.
fucking britbongs I swear.
Christian Ross
Simpsons is an American show genius.
Jayden Fisher
Literally every collector of the merchandise I've seen is from the UK retard.
Cameron Rogers
Do bongs love Simpsons or something?
Nicholas Perez
It's popular here I guess.
I find that unlikely.
Aaron Thompson
Actually britbongs really really like the Simpsons it's on every day at 6pm.
Mason Rogers
Fucking wew.
Brayden Baker
that you saved pic 3 speaks volumes
Oliver Fisher
What picture?
Samuel Powell
Charles White
Nintendo are betting that their sycophantic customer base are blinded by the marketing to realise that on-disc DLC locked behind physical items is completely reprehensible. Ditto for selling cardboard for the price of a AAA release.
If any other company thought their fanbase would be this rabid they'd try the same thing. You see it every now and again when a company has a particularly strong response for something. Bethesda had a really good E3 showing, so they try paid mods. Both Sony and Microsoft tried to force through horrible design decisions because their previous console was a huge success. Suits are greedy, and when they think their customers are stupid enough they'll squeeze as hard as they can. For some reason though Nintendo's customer base are all in too deep to realise they're being fucked. Or they don't care. I'm not sure what's worse.
Ryder Wood
You don't think this is worth $60?
Adrian Watson
Nigger what? Are you trying to be retarded?
Cartridges hold more data per unit area, are cheaper, more resistant to damage and last longer than discs.
The reason Microsoft, Sony et al use/d discs is because it could double as a CD/DVD player. The PS1 has a very good CD player and the PS2 sold as well as it did, originally, because it was a cheap DVD player.
As both wanted to make media platforms rather than video game consoles, they kept using the inferior product.
And before you call bullshit and say that the Switch's cartridges only go up to 16GB, that's because:
a) Nintendo forces optimisation onto Devs that the others don't, so they don't need as much data capacity
and
b) They are being cheap
They do have 64GB cards coming next year, though, which I'm interested to see what games will use all that space.
Still waiting on LEGO Dimensions piracy. Looks like lots of fun, especially with things like Sanic and Scooby-Doo getting tie ins.
Wrong. Nintendo owns every single trademark, GameFreak uses those trademarks free of charge, Creature has some kind of small stake in the franchise (wouldn't be more than 20%) and The Pokemon Company is co-owned by Nintendo, GF and Creature, so we can ignore that.
Nintendo has complete control in terms of trademarks, so they almost certainly own >50% of the franchise, so they have at least $27.5b USD from the franchise so far. I'd guess they own closer to 60-70%, as GF and Creature are devs and don't really need as much money, as they can just ask Nintendo for it and likely get it. Giving devs too much money at the start always leads to shit.
Michael Cooper
Cartridges have been outdated for two decades lad.
David Peterson
This dumb motherfucker thinks cartridges were cheaper than CDs and DVDs to manufacture!
Cameron Watson
Isn't that literally the reason they died out?
Oliver Walker
Friendly reminder that this is a thing as well.
Oliver Jenkins
it'll look worse than that, as well