The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

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scotland
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby scotland » July 28th, 2017, 1:21 pm

As Strats article gives evidence too, the Switch is a vastly overpriced tablet. My kids enjoy their tablets, which are lighter, smaller, play movies, have the internet, have ereaders, boatloads of easy to learn games, boatloads of cheap games, boatloads of diverse games like minecraft, etc. Lots of things sell at higher prices than warranted because of being exclusive, or fashionable, or whatever, but dollar for dollar its too hard to justify feeding Nintendo for this as a kids system.

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pacman000
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby pacman000 » July 28th, 2017, 2:48 pm

Paul Campbell wrote:Very interesting if it's truly the main reason. That would mean Nintendo would actually be frustrated by this instead of feeling clever. I was thinking yesterday about the difference between the Wii, the Wii U, and the Switch, and how they started off, especially after reading that old thread someone posted a link to about the release of the Wii U. Nintendo probably had a bad feeling about the Wii U a few days after its release, and that probably translated into the limited support it saw through its life. It almost makes me wonder if Nintendo doesn't have an almost built-in success because of their longevity in the business, as long as they don't screw things up. And the name and design of the Wii U is them screwing up, even though I personally got a lot out of the system...


Of course Nintendo's frustrated, and no, they don't feel clever. They want to sell systems; for every system sold they know they'll sell X pieces of software. Turn away customers and those customers may go elsewhere. The Switch was a new concept for Nintendo, and their last system underperformed, so they came up with a conservative sales estimate to control risk if the system didn't catch on, but they don't like turning people away.

(My opinion based on limited business experience.)

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Atarifever
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby Atarifever » July 28th, 2017, 6:12 pm

scotland wrote:As Strats article gives evidence too, the Switch is a vastly overpriced tablet. My kids enjoy their tablets, which are lighter, smaller, play movies, have the internet, have ereaders, boatloads of easy to learn games, boatloads of cheap games, boatloads of diverse games like minecraft, etc..


In my opinion, the choice for getting kids into games is either to get them into Nintendo handhelds or into nothing. Yes, kids will play tablet games now, but the future of that is that they will likely never be into gaming culture like you or I are. Colin Moriarity did a great video on how unprofitable and full of failure the "mobile game market" actually is, and the future there is not the future of games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaPJiqIRvxU ). Heck, Shuhei Yoshida (head of Playstation) himself said he didn't want to imagine a "nightmare" world where kids had all their first gaming experiences on tablets and phones instead of Nintendo.

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ActRaiser
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby ActRaiser » July 28th, 2017, 7:01 pm

pacman000 wrote:... but they don't like turning people away.

(My opinion based on limited business experience.)


In my humble opinion I agree with everything you said. The one exception would be in regards to the NES Classic. They never said it was to be a temporary thing up front. They are most definitely leaving money on the table and intentionlly turning people away.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby VideoGameCritic » July 28th, 2017, 9:24 pm

I watched this whole video and Colin does a good job of expressing a lot of the thoughts I've had over the years. As you may have noticed, I'm not interested in mobile gaming and not impressed with the download market. I think these parts of the industry have experienced a "race to the bottom" which has unfortunately bled into the console market.

Paul Campbell
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby Paul Campbell » July 28th, 2017, 9:51 pm

pacman000 wrote:
Paul Campbell wrote:Very interesting if it's truly the main reason. That would mean Nintendo would actually be frustrated by this instead of feeling clever. I was thinking yesterday about the difference between the Wii, the Wii U, and the Switch, and how they started off, especially after reading that old thread someone posted a link to about the release of the Wii U. Nintendo probably had a bad feeling about the Wii U a few days after its release, and that probably translated into the limited support it saw through its life. It almost makes me wonder if Nintendo doesn't have an almost built-in success because of their longevity in the business, as long as they don't screw things up. And the name and design of the Wii U is them screwing up, even though I personally got a lot out of the system...


Of course Nintendo's frustrated, and no, they don't feel clever. They want to sell systems; for every system sold they know they'll sell X pieces of software. Turn away customers and those customers may go elsewhere. The Switch was a new concept for Nintendo, and their last system underperformed, so they came up with a conservative sales estimate to control risk if the system didn't catch on, but they don't like turning people away.

(My opinion based on limited business experience.)


I just meant that so many people were accusing Nintendo of feigning stock shortages as a result of a huge amount of buzz about the system, supposedly raising the general consumer feeling of it being a worthy and desirable product. I was even starting to assume there was probably some truth to this.

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Atarifever
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby Atarifever » July 28th, 2017, 9:53 pm

VideoGameCritic wrote:I watched this whole video and Colin does a good job of expressing a lot of the thoughts I've had over the years. As you may have noticed, I'm not interested in mobile gaming and not impressed with the download market. I think these parts of the industry have experienced a "race to the bottom" which has unfortunately bled into the console market.

My favouurite stat he gives is that, despite people saying mobile is this huge, money-making game market, in order to make 1/3 of the money made in games, it had to sell devices to a literal one third of everyone on Earth. Meanwhile, the console and handheld markets sell to far, far, far, far fewer people than that and make 66% of the money. Oh yes, the future to a sustainable market is mobile. That's like if a restaurant sold to 2 billion people a day, every day, but was out-performed twice over by a small chain in one U.S. state. The room to grow for mobile is limited with 1 in 3 people already being on there. If they sell to the entire population (all of every single person alive) at this rate they will just beat console and PC game profits off of some 200 million users. That is an insanely low margin market.
Another stat he gave on a podcast was that something like 90% of the app store could disappear tomorrow and the profits would barely change. That means almost everyone making app store games makes zero dollars and zero cents. Even poorly reviewed and received console games sell something on average.

Paul Campbell
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby Paul Campbell » July 28th, 2017, 9:59 pm

scotland wrote:As Strats article gives evidence too, the Switch is a vastly overpriced tablet. My kids enjoy their tablets, which are lighter, smaller, play movies, have the internet, have ereaders, boatloads of easy to learn games, boatloads of cheap games, boatloads of diverse games like minecraft, etc. Lots of things sell at higher prices than warranted because of being exclusive, or fashionable, or whatever, but dollar for dollar its too hard to justify feeding Nintendo for this as a kids system.


Now that I own it, I partially disagree with this. I'd call it "a little overpriced", but certainly not "vastly" overpriced. To me it's worth it to get real console games on a portable console like this. I agree with Dave. Downloadable tablet games are NOT the same as console games, and I do not simply refer to the Switch as a tablet, because it's more than that.

JWK
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Re: The SNES mini is Nintendo's last chance for me

Postby JWK » July 29th, 2017, 12:23 pm

Well, if we're taking the WSJ at face value, I feel bad for my negative thoughts on Nintendo's supply issue with the Switch. But after doing this a number of times, haters can be excused for assuming Nintendo is up to their old tricks. As for Nintendo understanding the more units they sell the more software they sell, that's kind of an obvious business notion. But that's historically what every other console maker *besides* Nintendo has done. I mean give them their just due; the 3DS has never been difficult to find, so they're capable of meeting demand. So why purposefully limit the NES Classic, which would have been profitable for YEARS? With the SNES mini they alleviated our worries for a few seconds by saying they'd produce more, then shatter our hopes by following that up with "we won't sell this past Dec 2017." At least they're being upfront about its limited nature, but it's still music to the ears of scalpers. They would need to quadruple production of this vs NES Classic... which they won't and Nintendo will still end up with a black eye over this.

My point is is this: is it any wonder why so many people are assuming that it's just "Nintendo being Nintendo?" The real shock is the possibility that Nintendo actually *wants* to produce more of their console but are having to fight Apple for components. Intentional or not, Nintendo needs to be better prepared for every possible scenario in the future. It's their job to do so. If this was a truly unforeseen production hitch, then best of luck sorting that out. You still probably should be more open with your fan base; why not address the shortage at E3 2017? Give an update on when you expect more? Nope, the event came and went. If, on the other hand, this is intentional as it has been in the past, then you deserve your shoddy reputation as an incompetent distributor. I want to be wrong, Nintendo. But you've gotta make it right.


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