AniHawk,
I think there's tremendous potential for titles like Mario, Zelda, and Metroid to do enormously well on consoles like the PS4/XB1. Zelda is a series that used to have quite the connection with the hardcore market. With recent entries, that interest has waned, in part due to the direction they've decided to take the series, but also the audience that purchased Nintendo systems has (over time) distanced itself from the core gamer. I believe that the same type of consumer that buys games like Skyrim would also buy a core oriented Zelda game. And Metroid could easily be marketed to gamers that enjoy sci-fi shooters.
keep in mind that mario was never more popular than he was just a few years ago, when he was limited to nintendo hardware. metroid has never been a megaseller, and zelda is generally doing about the same it always has. what is it about the skyrim fanbase do you think would interest them in zelda? the focus on puzzles and dungeons? the colorful and cartoony graphics? the linear story?
what t-rated third-party sci-fi shooters have sold in the multiple millions in the last five years?
how many 3d platformers have sold 800,000 units on a sony or microsoft console from 2005-2014 in the us? how many 2d platformers have sold 1 million units on a sony or microsoft console in the same region?
it's hard to say there's a market secretly starved for nintendo games when there isn't any data to back this up.
Instead of those games selling a few hundred thousand at most first month NPD (which is what they've been relegated to),
skyward sword cleared a million in its first npd month. its lifetime worldwide sales are lower than a lot of 3d zeldas, but i think a lot of that has to do with the game launching in 2011 and requiring a peripheral to work. i don't think there were arguments that the zelda series was dead after majora's mask (which performed worse), so i won't buy the arguments that it's dead now.
Fewer revenue streams is an irrelevant point in the face of zero hardware margins, which I firmly believe is something Nintendo will never be able to go back to. And changing corporate culture is a part of the gaming business. Having to change your software strategy to work on multiple platforms isn't much different than having to change your strategy to support some new Nintendo device.
it's pretty different. there's
way more red tape as a third-party. like, nintendo actually owns factories where they make stuff. and they do it on their own schedule. they don't need to have peripherals officially licensed by other first-parties before including them with games. they don't have to worry about sony's restrictions when it comes to premium editions, or what cut first parties want from such games, or microsoft's restrictions when it comes to game manufacturing. they can skirt rules they create for themselves it's good.
a lot of that is all management and marketing too. so that doesn't even get into the game design aspect and the brand new pipeline that would affect every single release. look at it this way- nintendo's a company of 5000 people. they know how to create a console that would accommodate themselves.
i would argue that changing corporate culture as being part of the gaming business isn't very accurate. at the very least, it would definitely hurt the quality of nintendo games considering that for better or for worse, they have been able to keep a certain reputation for the last 30 years. i don't know a whole lot about them, but maybe nihon falcom is the most similar comparison.
Let me ask you a question, how does Nintendo turn it around in your opinion?
first off, the wii u and 3ds are two of the worst nintendo systems out there. expensive, dependent on short battery life, complex, weak, hard for third-parties to make games for, and in the 3ds's case, difficult even for independent developers to get on board with. it's just everything that could possibly be bad about a games console all rolled into one.
now while i personally find a lot of value in backwards compatibility, it's something consumers don't really care about unfortunately. so their next systems wouldn't reference the 3ds or wii u at all. i mean, it didn't seem to help much when they also played the libraries of nintendo's most successful platforms, so why bring them back? one of the issues with the wii u's architecture is that it was made to also have a wii inside of it. in the 3ds's case, a successor handheld would be bound to the 3d visuals, 3ds clamshell design, or the 2ds shape. instead, both successors to the wii u and the 3ds should be fresh starts to save on cost and remove restrictions from the hardware r&d team.
the next thing, they're already doing, and that's making both platforms easy to develop for together. this means it's a lot easier to share assets and get games out the door. teams that move from the handheld division to the console division and vice versa won't have to speak in different languages. it reduces time, cost, and hopefully manpower. not that they should fire people- but maybe it allows for one more game to be made from the people not forced to work on other projects (the 3-man a link between worlds team was split up in 2010 to work on nintendoland and new super mario bros. u).
so that's the start.
when they're making hardware and software, the marketing team needs to be in on the production meetings. everyone needs to know what the product is, who the audience is, and what message needs to get across. the 3ds and wii u especially suffered from low-key and bizarre marketing decisions. in the wii u's case, after a year and a half of not communicating what the system was, they showed a bunch of people playing a mario game in colored squares and then advertised only two games on television for the next twelve months (lego city undercover and pikmin 3).
if they're going target families, that means everyone needs to be on board and consider what that means for the direction of software design, hardware design, pricing, and marketing strategies. they honestly really nailed it with the wii and eventually the ds.
in the meantime, nintendo should be creating a futureproof eshop network. none of this wiiware/wii vc/psn/xbla wont-work-on-future-consoles stuff. one connected account. purchase super mario bros. 3? you have it for both systems. considering that services may be the future of video games, and considering they're behind valve, sony, and microsoft, they need to get on the ball and prepare for that possibility.
and this is while they keep their hardware division busy with stuff to do. i think it's interesting they're looking into other industries. it's hard to say without seeing
literally anything just what the hell they mean about their qol talk how it will pan out, but i think at the very least it will let their game system have a more focused identity when they're not trying to go for a frankenstein's monster like the wii u and 3ds were.
And why are you so easy to dismiss the power of Nintendo's IP doing well and above what they're currently doing on failing Nintendo platforms?
because they're failing nintendo platforms. we've seen what those ips do on nintendo platforms that don't fail, and i think the talk of third-party nintendo is a huge knee-jerk reaction to a problem that isn't really there, or simply wishful thinking on the part of people who want nintendo games, but believe they're made in a vacuum and could happen anywhere without consequence.
I think you're selling them way short and are simply relegating the company to accept their fate of doing really poor business.
and i think simple solutions to complex problems aren't realistic.
.
? how would you feel if Nintendo made games exclusively to the Xbox One, or a more powerful system in a few years? just asking.