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What should Nintendo do next?

Hyet

Hyet

Member
You are the president of Nintendo, today.
You just announced that the console missed it's first year sales forecast, despite being still the fastest selling system ever.
You just announced that the console will be going up in price into it's second year.

Your exclusive games track record:
Mario Kart World → Huge sales sucess, but mixed opinion. Wideley regarded as a good game but a step back from it's predecessor, but stiill sells better
Werlcome Tour - Poorly recieved, a vector of bad press, dead in the water
Drag x Drive - Irrelevant, dead in the water
Donkey Kong Bananza - Crown jewel, but almost a year after it`s release there's no buzz
Hyrule Warriors: Age of imprisionment - Solid initial sales, no traction. Dead in the water
Kirby Air Riders - Niche series with no traction, frontloaded japanese sales, then nothing. Dead in the water
Mario Tenis Fever - Bombed. Pricing actively worked against it and was a vector for bad press. Dead in the water
Pokopia - Reinvigorating suprise hit, but you didn't develop it, fully own the IP or fully pubish it so you don't get as much form it
Coming up on May 21st: Yoshi and the mysterious book - mid budget game aimed at young kids on the first year of a console that's increasing it's price
Coming up on June 25th: Starfox - a visual remake of a game that is well regarded but can be completed in less than 3 hours. Character redesigns are contentious among longtime fans, the main target audience
Coming up on July 23rd: Splatoon Raiders -a mid budget singleplayer spin off the strongest new-ish Nintendo IP
Coming next in 2026: Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave - New entry in the well liked SRPG Nintendo series. Very popular within the niche but far from mainstream, targets the fans of the most popular recent entry, Three Hourses
Coming next in 2026: The Duskbloods: an exclusive game in the Soulsborne genre, widely disliked for being focused on multiplayer and exclusive to Switch 2. The target audience for this game simply points out that it has everthing they didn't ask for.

Given this situation, as president of Nintendo:
  • How do you think the console and the lineup has done so far? What was done right and what was done poorly?
  • How do you fix the issues going forward?
  • What should Nintendo do from now until the end of the year to take advantage of the bigger sales of the second half of the year?
 
Some people really are very worried about the slightest bad news about multimillion companies, huh.

Less words were spent to make threads on Nintendo's future when Nintendo was going through its less successful era since the early 80s. Imagine that.
 
i-will-survive-2392684dc3.jpg
Nintendo right now 😁
 
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Metroid Prime 4 so dead in the water that OP didn't even mention it...

but to stay on topic, I would suggest developing new Wario Land (look at the success of Pizza Tower), new Kid Icarus (Uprising sequel, but with high resolution, I know Star Fox is coming soon, but with mouse controls it's a no brainer imo), new Mother/Earthbound title would sold well too (look at Undertale/Deltarune success) but I guess it's not gonna happen. And of course a big RPG, new and fresh Xeno series.
 
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We are talking about a company with more than 10 billions in cash and 0 debit, they can easily support a coasting year (2026). Than being said, i believe SW2 needs (im stretching the word) its own must-have hit.
 
They can't do much against global issues.
Covid was good for them in 2020-2021, now AI bubble, wars and global economic instability have hit them.
They simply have to ride it out while accelerating development of mainline games that are seen as system sellers.
 
Hyet said:
You are the president of Nintendo, today.
You just announced that the console missed it's first year sales forecast, despite being still the fastest selling system ever.
Click to expand...

If the second sentence of a massive wall of text is completely wrong, there's no universe in which I'm going to read the rest of it.

Nintendo didn't miss their first year Switch 2 sales forecast. They revised it up from 15 million to 19 million and then slightly exceeded the new forecast.

They're forecasting that they will sell fewer units next year, but that's very different than missing their forecast for this year.
 
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blacktout said:
If the second sentence of a massive wall of text is completely wrong, there's no universe in which I'm going to read the rest of it.

Nintendo didn't miss their first year Switch 2 sales forecast. They revised it up from 15 million to 19 million and then slightly exceeded the new forecast.

They're forecasting that they will sell fewer units *next year*, but that's very different than missing their forecast for thos year.
Click to expand...
I didn't read you post either because the first sentence was wrong
 
blacktout said:
If the second sentence of a massive wall of text is completely wrong, there's no universe in which I'm going to read the rest of it.

Nintendo didn't miss their first year Switch 2 sales forecast. They revised it up from 15 million to 19 million and then slightly exceeded the new forecast.

They're forecasting that they will sell fewer units *next year*, but that's very different than missing their forecast for thos year.
Click to expand...
The guy was so desperate to make a Nintendo doom thread that missed that Switch 2 beat the 19M forecast by almost 1 million 🤣.
 
They should probably keep doing what they're doing, yeah. It's going great, other than economic troubles outside their control, which they seem to be already responding to just fine.
 
Hyet said:
I didn't read you post either because the first sentence was wrong
Click to expand...

The first sentence of my post was an opinion. The second sentence of your post was a statement of fact that was completely false. Maybe you should fix it instead of trying to cover for yourself with playground comebacks.
 
Stop releasing hardware from the middle ages for a start.

Then make good games, bring new IPs and stop milking the same ones over and over. They're selling nostalgia and its tiresome
 
Gonzito said:
Stop releasing hardware from the middle ages for a start.

Then make good games, bring new IPs and stop milking the same ones over and over. They're selling nostalgia and its tiresome
Click to expand...

Curious which handheld performs better w/o being loud/heavy/having essentially no battery life in ways that would alienate mainstream consumers?
 
They sit back and count all their money?

Idk, they beat the sales goal that they revised to be even higher. Fastest selling console yet.

And they haven't even released their heavy hitters lol. They have a Mario, Zelda, Smash and Pokémon coming. They're in a great spot.

There's some global factors that suck, but you can't do shit about a war in Iran.
 
What they can do is make games. Give me ocarina of time and majora's mask remakes. Give me super mario galaxy 3. Give me two new zelda games. One going back to the classic zelda format and the other expanding on the open world format.
 
They sold tons of consoles this year, their Q4 was weaker because of Europe, but it was not unexpected or a disaster. It's still a record year and very profitable.

Welcome Tour and Drag x Drive and such are games that never expected to be selling much, it's demos.

Games like Kirby Air Riders and Mario Tennis have very low budgets, even if they underperform (which Kirby has not btw), it's not a big loss. Nintendo drive a very tight ship and keep dev costs on a leash.

They have Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros. all coming in the next three years. 2026 will be slower, because of the price hike and few major titles, but they are planning for that. 2027 and 2028 will be massive for them.
 
Lokaum D+ said:
like increase the price of already out of date hardware by $50 cause reasons and i ll not even talk about the increase of a 10yo piece of garbage.
Click to expand...
Cause "reasons". Are we implying there's no reasons lol.

Some of you manage to post here all day for years and still somehow know nothing about the industry.
 
Mhmmm 2077 said:
Metroid Prime 4 so dead in the water that OP didn't even mention it...

but to stay on topic, I would suggest developing new Wario Land (look at the success of Pizza Tower), new Kid Icarus (Uprising sequel, but with high resolution, I know Star Fox is coming soon, but with mouse controls it's a no brainer imo), new Mother/Earthbound title would sold well too (look at Undertale/Deltarune success) but I guess it's not gonna happen. And of course a big RPG, new and fresh Xeno series.
Click to expand...


They should make a Metroid movie. Nintendo needs to feel the sweet sting of a box office bomb.
 
I dont think there's necessarily anything to 'fix' on their part. The system is creeping up on 20 million sales in under a year and they haven't released a 3D Mario/Zelda or Smash yet.

What they've released for the system so far doesn't personally make me want to rush out and grab one, and that may have alot to do with my own personal gaming tastes at this point, but keep the software coming, especially the flag ship stuff, and ride out the wave of geopolitical bullshit that has basically everyone by the shirt and curlies.
 
Switch 1 generation went on way too long, but I thought Nintendo was using that time to make a bunch of AAAA games they could blast out to Switch 2 immediately. But alas that was not the case. Even after Switxh 2 came out they were protecting Switch 1 and slow rolling Switch 2 patches. The Switch 2 release list last year was quite frankly bizarre.

So they need to move on and leave Switch 1 behind. It's not like it has a shortage of games.
 
  • How do you think the console and the lineup has done so far? What was done right and what was done poorly?
The console should have launched with a new 3D Mario game. It's still done surprisingly well despite that.
  • How do you fix the issues going forward?
Switch 2 Lite. Switch 2 OLED. These two skus will address most barriers to entry for the Switch 2.
  • What should Nintendo do from now until the end of the year to take advantage of the bigger sales of the second half of the year?
There is nothing I could improve about what they are doing during the 2nd half of the year. That's because you can't wish a game out of thin air.
 
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