A interesting and new episode of Game Theory's Deadlock, looks into the whether or not Nintendo should stop making consoles and contribute to third party software after the Nintendo Switch. This Deadlock has our Nintendo of America's head Reggie to debate this with Matpat. With PCs and smartphones taking the the gaming industry by storm and taking over in the past few years. It's a good question to ask if the concept of the console will end up becoming obsolete. What do you think? Do you think companies like Nintendo should go the way of Sega and become third party? Or do you think they are still in the game and are far from dropping out in the Console wars?
On the console front, I think Nintendo should focus on making software. That's what they're good at. However, I'd also like to see them continue making handheld systems.
I find it interesting that in that particular video that nintendo guy seemed to more say why nintendo always has been awesome and never actually seemed to directly reply what mat said. I think consoles will still continue to exist for a very long time, it's just way easier to buy a console and plug into your TV than to buy a dedicated PC and hook it up. Now, if nintendo particulary should continue making consoles or focus more on games? This is a rather tough one IMO. They do have had quite some awesome innovation hardware-wise, with motion controls at least. The switch is seeming to do some very interesting stuff, too. For games-only, we have seen the success of pokemon go, or, well, maybe not a success because it is already over. It lived for like only a month or two until the hype was over, that's not that long. And seeing zelda releases on PC would be awesome indeed. So yeah, for nintendo specifically i am quite torn if they should ditch consoles or not.
Pokemon Go wasn't actually released by Nintendo, something which a lot of investors failed to realize when Nintendo stocks rose sharply shortly after the game was released. They fell back down rather sharply too, once people figured it out.
Nintendo owns a 32% stake in the Pokemon franchise, and holds an undisclosed stake in Niantic, the developer of the game. They do make some money off of the game, but not nearly as much as they would if it was their own.
