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NWR Interactive => TalkBack => Topic started by: alexosborn on February 11, 2015, 08:48:31 PM

Title: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: alexosborn on February 11, 2015, 08:48:31 PM

The future of J.K. Rowling's magical world could have turned out very differently.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/39610/nintendo-tried-buying-the-rights-to-harry-potter

Nintendo tried to secure the exclusive rights to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter franchise.

The company created a pitch back in 1998 to obtain the rights to produce all adaptations of the book series. NoA's internal team worked on a pitch for a third-person adventure title based on the popular wizarding franchise. Additionally, a smaller team was broken off at Nintendo Software Technology to develop a title based on quidditch.

However, instead of accepting Nintendo's pitch, Rowling sold the rights to Warner Bros. who went on to produce a film series and contract out the development of video game adaptations to Electronic Arts.

There was reportedly a disagreement over the art style, which contributed to Rowling's decision to not work with the Big N. The company's limited resources and lack of experience in TV and film was another contributing factor.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: Ceric on February 12, 2015, 06:22:43 AM

That would have been a very interesting What If scenario.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: TheXenocide on February 12, 2015, 12:06:46 PM

I think this could have actually gone very well. If anybody know how to handle a sacred cow of a character, it's Nintendo.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: Ian Sane on February 12, 2015, 12:09:53 PM

So Nintendo would have made the movies and such as well?  I agree with Rowling.  What the hell does Nintendo know about anything other than videogames?  I would have considered giving them the home videogame rights but nothing else.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: Mop it up on February 12, 2015, 06:03:12 PM

Yeah, it'd be weird for Nintendo to have gotten film rights, but they might have been able to make interesting games out of it.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on February 12, 2015, 06:11:21 PM

Quote from: Ian Sane on February 12, 2015, 12:09:53 PM

So Nintendo would have made the movies and such as well?  I agree with Rowling.  What the hell does Nintendo know about anything other than videogames?  I would have considered giving them the home videogame rights but nothing else.

agreed.
JK made the right choice.

In the grand scheme of things, this might have been a boost for Nintendo, but it would have been a terrible move for Harry Potter.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: Luigi Dude on February 12, 2015, 06:47:05 PM

A Nintendo with the Harry Potter rights would still have ended up the same as the Nintendo without them.  This was back in 1998, at the end of the year Pokemon got released in the West and became a wordwide phenomenon that would be bigger then Harry Potter was for the next few years.  So it's not like Nintendo needed something at the time to really boast their financials since Pokemon exploded around the world at the end of the year.

The only advantage it would have done is given the Gamecube exclusive Harry Potter games that might have helped sell a few million more systems, but even then considering how unstoppable the PS2 was at the time, it would have hardly been a game changer.

Yeah Nintendo would be worth more money with the Harry Potter rights, but as we saw with the Wii and DS that wouldn't have done much since they just throw it all in the money bin without bothering to really grow the company.  The only thing that's caused Nintendo to finally start expanding was the 3DS shaky start and the Wii U's disastrous hardware sales.  These things still needed to happen for Nintendo to start spending money so it's not like having all that Harry Potter money would have caused the company to start acting differently before that.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: Ian Sane on February 12, 2015, 06:54:12 PM

Even from a videogame perspective this would be a hard sell.  So Nintendo gets the game rights and then releases exclusive Harry Potter games on their systems.  How does Rowling benefit from that when a third party company could release games on EVERY system and thus provide Rowling with higher potential sales?  Seems to me that Nintendo benefits a lot from this while Rowling really doesn't at all, unless this was the only major company showing interest.

This actually is a good window into Nintendo's typical self-centered way of doing business.  They've got a deal that's fantastic for them but what incentive does it have for the other party over other offers?  "Hi, we have no track record in making movies and any videogames we make will be 100% exclusive to our platforms but it will benefit us greatly if we landed your incredibly valuable IP so sign with us!"  Huh?  Is this the sort of pitch they make to third parties?  It's like they're throwing "please understand" into business negotiations.

Title: Re: Nintendo Tried Buying the Rights to Harry Potter
Post by: Khushrenada on February 12, 2015, 08:03:44 PM

I'd say that Nintendo has some TV experience due to Captain N and The Super Mario Bros. Show. Then there's all the anime they've had done like Pokémon, Kirby and F-Zero. I'm not sure that would have been much of an issue and frankly what has Harry Potter done in TV anyways? It's a film franchise.

So, in that regards, Nintendo doesn't have a great resume. There's the Pokémon movies and Super Mario Bros. and The Wizard. Can't think of anything else beyond that. Even then, I'm not sure how much work Nintendo actually did on those projects.

As far as the videogame side goes, I'd have to start looking up information on the series but does anyone know how well those games sold? How do the sales compare with Nintendo software sales? It's easy to say that making it 3rd party means more sales but if the first couple games suck quality wise, they could ruin the potential sales for the rest of the series and may not make that much money on multiple platforms compared to a single platform but with a high quality level of game design.

It's funny. When I think of the games, I just think cheap movie tie-in / cash grab but I guess the games really could have been based more off the books. I don't know since I have no expertise on anything Harry Potter related. Still, to my knowledge, I think the games were released around the same time as the movies which is probably why I thought that way. Not to mention I've forgotten they've even existed. It's not like anyone ever listed a Harry Potter game as one of the best games of the year for anything.

I imagine Nintendo's approach would have been to release the games for it first and further build up demand and then do things like a movie or TV show for the series. Similar to Pokémon's approach or their other videogame series really. I suppose it is smart in that it doesn't look like the game is being based off other media which could hurt its perceived opinion of it like other game adaptations.

In the end, I'd say it really comes down to the movie rights. Perhaps if Nintendo had only pursued videogame rights, maybe a deal could have been worked out but I'd say the most profit made on the series besides the books was the movies and the games aspect of it was just an extra bonus for Rowling. No doubt, the lawyers or people on Rowling's side recognized that and knew that Nintendo would not be able to handle that aspect well and was most likely focused more on the videogame side of things which would result in pursuing a less financially advantageous situation for Rowling and the brand.