Nintendo is a poorly run company

First let's start off with the premise that all businesses exist to make money and further their profitability. I think that's something that, despite our preferences, we all can agree on. Now I know many are going to come at me after reading the topic title, pointing out that Nintendo's been around for 125+ years, that the Switch is flying off the shelves, posting the doomclock GIF etc, so let me preempt:

This topic isn't proclaiming Nintendo's demise. I'm not arguing they're in danger of going out of business.

It's also not to say that they are unable to sell systems and bring in a profit; instead it's a relative argument. It's about them failing to fully capitalize on their resources and trends in the market to bring them greater profitability than they already are seeing. Mostly I'll be supporting this argument with their failure to leverage their online and legacy.

Firstly, to the former: in an age where PSN is reputed to have brought in more money than the entirety of Nintendo, this company insists on marginalizing and presenting a paltry and insufficient online ecosystem that sadly remains more than a decade behind conventional standards. They have many IPs that are ripe and screaming to exploit a fully-featured online platform (Kart, Smash, Pikmin, Mario, Tennis). Voice chat through the system, friend invites (no friend codes), and every feature that is to be expected for online in 2019. Hell, 2010 standards would be a miraculous improvement. Yet they do the least amount possible, in the most convoluted manner possible, and now arrogantly decide to charge for it.

Will people pay? Yes, but that's only because they've no other option and not due to the merits of the actual service, which most bemoan. But if Nintendo took initiative to build their online past the point of an afterthought, not from apathy but instead actual ambition, people would gladly throw $60 annually their way without any hesitation, and they'd do it in droves. Further, Nintendo's actions towards online would attract the attention of third parties, something they've consistently struggled with. It would in addition make their platform more appealing to developers, even lacking hardware parity.

In addition, Nintendo is letting their legacy rot when they have a platform that has never been more conducive to being an all-in-one go to portable solution for retro gaming for their numerous systems and countless classics dating back decades. Putting out three games from one platform (NES) monthly for a Nintendo Online subscription is ludicrous considering what they could be doing. They should be busting their asses to present a fully-fledged VC store covering every system (at least that's capable of running on the Switch) available. A single place on the Switch to go to browse and buy across a broad spectrum of their legacy. Make these games multiplayer as well, and price them reasonably. They should be working full-tilt on this, as it's solid gold on the table just waiting to be taken. Gamers are begging for Nintendo to take their money, and they refuse to afford them the opportunity. So what do people do instead out of frustration? Pirate, to which Nintendo goes after them. Brilliant.

There is no excuse for neglecting this potential in 2019, and I don't even consider it arguable that Nintendo is run abysmally by a bunch of old clueless dinosaurs who were in their prime in the eighties but today hold absolutely no clue (or care) for the modern gaming landscape, ultimately to their company's detriment. I can only hope in my lifetime that hungry and ambitious youngbloods comes into the executive sphere and shows these imbeciles how it's done.

By a standard of being not just profitable but more profitable that is easily within reach given their circumstances and resources, Nintendo is a complete failure of a company. They sit there so damn conservative and complacent, not understanding that if they weren't, there's a fortune to be made.

I don't think any company does it totally right and Nintendo is victim of its own odd choices at times, but I don't think they're run poorly... They operate in the upper end of the spectrum when it comes to game development and that outweighs all the money psn brings in to a gamer.

Until Nintendo offers games more devoted to onlineits customers will never demand a fully and correctly implemented online system. Right now I'd say it is worth the $1.67 per month if you buy it for the 12 month plan.

There was a datamine leak that SNES games will also start to be included with the online.

I think the way that they handled Switch VC is very questionable though.

I also think the way they handled the NES Classic was very questionable.

And there's also Mother 3 localization :(

That PSN article seems to be using 2015 pre-Switch/late WiiU/pre-Nintendo Online numbers, so it isn't particularly relevant to this conversation.

Even if those were recent numbers, you'd still be comparing subscriptions across two very different install bases - one for a console in its dying months, and one for a console that is only getting started.

Anyway, I wonder what would happen if Sony copied Nintendo's model and offered two online subscription options - the current system for $80 per year, and a bare-bones Switch-like one for $20 per year.

Would people still pay the $80 subscription, or would they swap down to the more affordable option? And would people pay $80 per month on the Switch online if it had more features?

Then again, even that is hard to compare, since Switch multiplayer games are much less reliant on online features - they're portable, so with any amount of luck, you can just talk to your friends while sitting next to them.

bro,

switch online could have voice chat and party chat and messaging. And it would still be selling exactly the same. so nintendo is like "why bother". those features will not chnage how well switch is selling. it shows most casuals dont care.

also the online is only 20$. They charged accordingly. frankly all those nes games on there on previous systems would have been 100$ worth.

Things I think would really be nice for them to catch up on would be cross-platform digital rights ownership of VC titles. But, I get they are behind the competition by a decade with lots of things, and it doesn't help Sony is just as bad this gen not bridging the PS3's PS1/PS2 BC digital catalog with the PS4, so no compelling reason foe them to either, but this is a reason I am never ever going to buy any more digital VC titles on Nintendo hardware, not unless I absolutely have to play something, but I won't be double dipping anymore with their VC titles, or buy whatever they make available in future. Furthermore, when they were releasing VC titles, it was at a snail pace. NoA took nearly two years to bring Metroid Zero Mission to Wii U after NoE released it on their eShop.

I would add questiable publishing decisions too, like not releasing Fatal Frame II in North America on Wii, or the 4th game made exclusively for Wii. Or the 5th FF game only getting a digital North American release. They disappoint me with control of this series so much. But, at least they are doing right by Bayonetta.

Most people don't use those features anyway. I haven't chatted in an online game since Halo 3 on my xbox 360.

Nintendo is run so well, they can turn around a rough 3DS launch. They can survive a Wii U sales disaster.

This is because they don't invest in being graphic whores. They don't go bankrupt trying to please people who wouldn't buy their systems anyway.

It takes someone who has Nintendo Degrangement System to claim that Nintendo is poorly-runned. Nintendo is no Sears, Toys R' Us, Kaybee Toys, or Blockbuster Video.

@Planeforger: if Sony offered a $20/yr subscription I would actually pay it. I have never paid for a single month of Playstation Online and just choose those types of games to play online on my pc for free. Nintendo isn’t doing great so far with this online service but I’m willing to pay the $20 happily to play Mario Kart, Smash, etc online. But this whole 2-3 nes games per month sucks. It’s like they’re pushing us to mod it and put Retroarch on it. I’d happily rather pay Nintendo and just have access to their library than mod it though.

Nintendo is sitting on a goldmine of money that they refuse to ever cash in.

They are probably the dumbest company on the planet.

They could be making $1 Billion per month if:

-They sold every game on mobile for 99 cents.

-Pokémon MMO(PC) with subscription. Releasing a new expansion pack every year that adds each gen.

-Nintendo Online Service/OS available on every platform available

-Stop making hardware

-Go 3rd party.

I don’t understand how a company can be so freaking stupid. It is so obvious how to make massive profits and they are like “no...let’s just make crappy wii u ports instead”.

They do make some odd decisions... but I guess they all do at times.

If Nintendo does indeed reach 3rd party will you not be surprise if Nintendo claim themselves instead of 3rd party BUT AS Mario party and other developer and journalist, like many other decision Nintendo make, examine this and say “what?!”

Imagine how much money they'd make if they just put Super Mario Bros on Steam? Yeah, I could imagine it'd sell in insane quantities.

dude do yourself favor get a ps4 a vita and get ready pre order ps5 if your a gamer

@TheEroica: I don't think any company does it totally right and Nintendo is victim of its own odd choices at times, but I don't think they're run poorly... They operate in the upper end of the spectrum when it comes to game development and that outweighs all the money psn brings in to a gamer.

Yes, but today's gaming company encompasses more than only software development. It's entails an ecosystem that compliments games, and to belittle that and the financial potential it presents is counter to what a business is and should strive to be achieving. I'm not asking Nintendo to do anything different then they already are, only much better. They're already doing it, they're just managing it very, very poorly. Their online is terribly executed, and their legacy is but a fraction of what it could be.

@PlaneforgerEven if those were recent numbers, you'd still be comparing subscriptions across two very different install bases - one for a console in its dying months, and one for a console that is only getting started.

As far as I'm understanding it, it was a comparison between Nintendo as an entity only to a service that Sony offers complimentary to their hardware and software revenue. Nintendo Online didn't exist at that time, or at least it was not charged for. Regardless, at $20 I doubt Nintendo would even come close to what PSN/Live rakes in.

@KBFloYd: Switch online could have voice chat and party chat and messaging. And it would still be selling exactly the same. so nintendo is like "why bother". those features will not chnage how well switch is selling. it shows most casuals dont care.

People don't care because Nintendo's given them no incentive to. Those who enjoy online would come if Nintendo took serious steps to provide a competent and well-executed online infrastructure with a decent Virtual Console offering.

@Bread_or_Decide: Most people don't use those features anyway. I haven't chatted in an online game since Halo 3 on my xbox 360.

An anecdote isn't proof. Sony and MS's online's success and profitability are. Online gaming is exceptionally popular and very lucrative, and Nintendo has some of the best IPs for multiplayer not to mention many legacy games over a variety of platforms that can be adapted to it, so I don't buy for a second that people who play Nintendo games wouldn't be interested in a great online experience. Gamers would love it.

@onesiphorus: It takes someone who has Nintendo Degrangement System to claim that Nintendo is poorly-runned. Nintendo is no Sears, Toys R' Us, Kaybee Toys, or Blockbuster Video.

I'm one deranged individual then. First Trump, now Nintendo. Seems any criticism nowadays entails derangement. I think you may need to step away from Fox News for a bit and stop drinking their Kool-Aid.

Every company has done stupid shit, but Nintendo is the only one not backed up by massive corporations.

I do not agree with the premise. I do accept they have been slower than the others and their solution needs enhancement.

I do not agree that this has been incompetence or even that material up until now. I do not believe this is the same target audience as the twins.

Most of their product is bought by mom and dad and their userbase is going to skew much younger. Mom and Dad have been and are concerned about the kids being online....period. This is ebbing away slowly as young kids are now much more routinely online. This was not the case a decade ago. And today there is still a considerable concern amongst mom and dad about how much time is spent on the computer.

They have foregone something, but it is not nearly as material as you make it out when applied to the whole of the userbase and the actual investment decision makers.

Nintendo has made some really irksome decisions over the years, and I can remember having a lot of similar thoughts clear back in the early 2000's. They re-release stuff, again and again. They get away with doing the bare minimum when they can. They lag behind the competition in a lot of ways.

I think right now a lot of other factors are starting to worry Nintendo though. They aren't sure what the best option is for the future of the company. You can tell by CEO Shuntaro Furukawa's recent statements about Nintendo possibly leaving the hardware space altogether eventually, and about further embracing mobile, and licensing rights to IPs for things like movies and theme parks. It's hard not to kind of see things from their perspective, too - at the end of the day they aren't sure how to stay relevant.

Bet your post is interesting, but don't have time to read it right now.

They do really stupid shit all the time. Heaps and heaps of missed opportunities. But they're still standing tall, so I guess they're doing most things right. But they can do soooo much more.

With Nintendo, it feels like they never bring out the big guns. They just sit on them. Maybe they're saving them for when they need to desperately save their company. Maybe they're fine with just watering down their things in order to prolong their stay in the business. I just don't know what the hell is going on in their HQ..

I don't see Sony or MS or EA or Activision cashing in on old successful IP's either... I think they just don't see enough of a demand for these things?

They're also getting as much third party support as is expected. Some games would look terrible/run terrible on a Switch, they can't all be ported over successfully.

Over the years they have made some monumental mistakes worst being the Wii u. They relied on the 3ds to get them out of trouble but obviously bounced back in style with the switch. They can't allow droughts to happen like Wii u though that will kill the wave around the system. I see the system as a handheld which Nintendo has held down since gaming started.

I think Nintendo knows their target market: those who usually game together in front of the TV or the peer to peer types between handhelds. You know, gaming where the players know each other and are in close proximity to each other.....kinda like LAN gaming of past PC multiplayer.

I don't think Nintendo is interested in the larger online market which are filled with screaming, nasty anonymous types.

I don't considering gossiping and racial slurs while I play a game to be a great online experience.

It's much better if everyone is muted and I just play the game with them.

Yeah, they can't afford to take a huge risk and fail. Luckily they keep a lot of money in the bank and don't waste it trying to impress people who only enjoy graphics.

@MirkoS77: "First let's start off with the premise that all businesses exist to make money and further their profitability."

Nope. Not true and I do not agree. There are these things called "non-profits" which are businesses that exist to provide some sort of benefit to society or to a business/industry, not to make a profit.

@Bread_or_Decide: you’re in the very small minority. I chat in game chat and party chat all the time on my PS4. While playing a game or just talking hanging out.

That just means the profit goings back into the business. The people running non profits still make a boat load of cash, and I do believe their paychecks are take home profit. So it's not like they're doing this stuff for free either.

I like how Nintendo isn't as predatory as the other big game companies.

It doesn't seem to me like they want to milk their customers with half-finished games, DLC, lootboxes, microtransactions or any other actions that can be looked down upon. Sure, they milk their customers with overpriced ports and expensive games that stay a high price for very long; But that is okay I guess.

I don’t know enough about their internal workings to say one way or the other. But Nintendo has routinely failed to implement a common or much-needed feature into their devices since before the GC up through Switch. It’s part of who they are at this point.

In the Soviet Union, Russia Nintendo runs you!

@R4gn4r0k: Nintendo games still have that same old "Nintendo Seal of Quality" approach to them. They don't release half-arsed buggy games that require patches or DLC to fix, but they have quality assurance right out out of the box.

And they still follow the same old buy-once business model, instead of selling parts of the game as DLC. The games feel like complete games right out of the box.

But that cost them when they tried to do that on mobiles with Mario Run. If it went with an F2P model, Mario Run could've been a massive hit. But with it's buy model, it ended up under-performing. After Nintendo went F2P with Fire Emblem Heroes, that became a big mobile hit.

Nintendo is a poorly run company. They just happen to be better than every other gaming company in the industry.

Nintendo does takes risks, though, and they certainly don't succeed at everything they set out for - but they take risks, and arguably greater ones compared to the competition. Before Nintendo the gaming industry didn't really consider touch screens or motion controls, but now these features are nonchalantly implemented across many modern platforms. Of course, Nintendo does not succeed at everything, and the Wii U is a great recent example of failure for the company, but the most impressive thing of all is Nintendo seems to always recover from its own shortcomings. I think it's impressive considering there are no big corporations to back them up. Nintendo, like a healthy company, takes risks and seeks rewards. Failure is just a part of that cycle, and they manage to show they're capable of recovering when that happens, too.

Yeah the moblie market is a weird one. They don't want to spend 60 or even 30 on a full game, but they don't mind being milked to death by MTX's. Really baffling to me.

Actually, data released by Nintendo disagrees with the bolded underlined:

The very young demographic (up to age 12) represents only 5% of Switch usage, the slightly older (13-15) also only 5%, whereas ages 16-34 (the range that is the most popular for online gaming and of which is less and less likely to be purchased by the parents) is 70%. Add the 35-44 bracket to that and it jumps to 87%. I'd argue that's a user base that is more than a little material when it comes to online gaming. Many of these people are the ones who grew up with Nintendo, of who was instrumental in getting them into this hobby, who are held in nostalgia, and they are the people that have money to spend who want to enjoy Nintendo games with everything current industry trends and capabilities have to offer.

And if Nintendo's so concerned with the online experience, there are means to tailor it to a player's preference that've existed for many years now and of which are perfectly functional. It is Mom and Dad's job, not Nintendo's, to curb their children's online time and to take responsibility for the experience they or their children may have. Children are given phones all the time in this day and age, yet strangely you don't hear people whining that Apple should compromise the abilities of their products to save the children. Sure Nintendo prides itself on a family friendly image, but it's possible to do so while still affording consumers modern day standards and capabilities.

Further, Nintendo's legacy hasn't been addressed. Would you agree that what their doing with their back catalog is fiscally prudent?

I agree. It seems like Nintendo is just sitting on a pile of gold regarding their retro properties. They could easily bring in billions per year if they have a subscription service for their retro IPs on the Switch and continue selling NES/SNES Classic Minis. Yet they don't, for whatever reason. *shrugs*

Also, they could be improving online as well. I'm sure more would pay $20/year for voice chat, friend invites, friend messaging, party chat, etc. Yet, they don't care to improve their online offerings. They just add some NES games to artificially drive up the value.

Another thing is how they make their games. Fans have wanted a Zelda game like Breath of the Wild for a long time. "I want an open world Zelda game, similar to Zelda I, that's updated for modern gameplay." They make it and BOTW continues selling like hotcakes. Pokemon fans want a huge MMORPG. All you have to do is make it with Kanto/Jhoto, and then add more generations as time goes on. That can easily sell well over 20 million copies, yet they sit on it.

@MirkoS77: Read the first note. Then get back to me.

What's a note?

Gonna need to see your resume before I believe your bullshit

Nintendo. Poorly run since September 23, 1889. Yeah ok.

Nintendo is one of the worlds oldest still existing large companies. They must have done something right. Just sayin'.

Lol ... No.

Yes, Nintendo is no perfect by any means ... but they are not a poorly run company. They are succesful, period.

Not a whole lot. Giana Sisters exists for a reason.

@madsnakehhh: not as successful as they could be. Until you and others can provide and support an argument that they are just as successful now as they would be if they offered a modern and fully featured online platform (that has been proven to be incredibly profitable as evidenced by PSN and Live’s success) and didn’t let the vast majority of their back catalog rot while gamers are begging to toss money their way for it, my point stands.

It’s a relative argument, I’m not making an absolute statement. They are sitting on solid gold and doing nothing, or if they are, are doing it very poorly. I don’t say they’re poorly run because they’re not successful, I say it because they’re not as successful as they could be when such potential is staring them straight in the face. You don’t need to be a CEO with a business degree from Harvard to see this.

You might be right. Knowing Nintendo, they would charge 20 dollars just for Mario Bros. 3. There's a reason I don't really support them.

Pretty much this.

1. Mobile gaming is now dominated by free-to-play, while buy-to-play games have a poor track record on mobile devices. Nintendo tried a buy-to-play model with Mario Run, and that failed. But when they went free-to-play with Fire Emblem Heroes, it became a big hit. So no, it's not a good idea for Nintendo to sell their games on mobile for $1. That's actually a terrible idea, as that would just devalue their games.
2. PC gaming is now also dominated by free-to-play, while the subscription model is becoming increasingly unprofitable. The only subscription games still around making decent money are WoW and FFXIV, but they pale in comparison to what free-to-play games are making. A Pokemon MMO could be huge, but a subscription model would limit its potential revenue. It would need to go free-to-play to maximise revenue, like Pokemon Go.
3. Okay.
4. Again, that's a terrible idea. When Sega stopped making hardware and went third-party, they went downhill. The same would likely happen to Nintendo if they exited hardware and went third-party. That doesn't benefit Nintendo in any way.
5. It seems to me like you don't really understand how the gaming business works. Because most of your suggestions are not financially beneficial. If anything, some of your suggestions could be financially harmful. So it's a good thing that Nintendo aren't following your suggestions.