What's amazing is the lack of spin from Iwata. Anybody else gets asked about how their console is outright failing and we hear about 10-year-plans and "1 billion gamers" and whatnot. That amount of frank candor is truly surprising because I expected him to blame the economy like some do.
About what Nintendo needs to do to stay ahead? Well, nothing at this point. They're still outselling everybody, for the most part. But if they want their console to really flourish, they'll need to expand their internal game developers and expand their American localization staff. They might want to flex their money as well, as they have a ton of it and they only make one thing, as opposed to their competitors, one of whom's games division is running out of all the money they've earned since 1998 and another who is something like $9 billion in the hole.
Nintendo's done a lot without third parties, in fact they've even WON without third parties. But now would be the time to start tying together $100 bills and throwing some of these struggling third parties lifelines, particularly Japanese ones. They could go onto an acquisition spree (They have enough money, just from last year's profits, to buy both EA and Square-Enix outright, and have enough left over for donuts), but that might have bad counter effects if all their talent leaves when Nintendo buys them (which would prove a certain truth that's been bandied about here before.) But they should be trying to mend this gap, because they made a foolish error in thinking simple logic and basic arithmetic would bring over most of them. It's like you know who your friends are on moving day. Nintendo needs to help them move, so to speak.
OR they could do what Sony did with Squaresoft back in 1997 and buy up stock in a lot of these third parties and use that influence. Or even buy controlling stakes, which would be cheaper than just buying the company outright and would have about the same effect.
And all of this I think Nintendo realizes because this business is a fast paced one, and standing still for a long time allows for decline to creep it's ugly head (such as Square Enix's case, where most of their revenue this generation has come from DS ports of old games they had already developed, while their console games take ages to complete.) And let's not forget that they must have a (while still sensible) large development budget for their next console. The falling technology prices and abject failures of their competitors will allow for a laser focus on the best things to appropriate. It's their turn on stage, they should use it to their advantage.
Topic: Nintendo Lowers Wii Sales Projections (Read 7766 times)
