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Comment by iasay | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo are in a sticky situation. They are a poor value proposition these days. My kids quickly lost interest in their Switches when they saw Mario Kart prices and to play each other they would have to buy three copies. At best they get used for Animal Crossing that came with it and any free stuff and that's about it.

What they tend to gravitate towards is their iPads where they can play < $10 games together which are available across family sharing (Minecraft, Among Us, Roblox are popular). They connect xbox controllers to the things and use that. The iPads are also fully blown computers so they are used for just about everything else in their lives.

I don't think Nintendo have a chance against that.

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Really? They've sold >107 million units of the Switch/Switch lite/Switch OLED so far.

That makes the Switch one of the best selling consoles ever made - it beats the Wii, the original PlayStation, the PS3, the GBA. It's edging towards the PS4 and the GB & GBC.

According to their own stats, each of those consoles has an average of ~8 games sold (excluding download only titles, so the real value is higher).

Even though it might not work for you or your family, I think that's good evidence that Nintendo have a formula that works pretty well for them - those kinds of sales figures are not indicative of a company in crisis to me.

Certainly not saying it's not successful for its time. But this is about the future and the whole dedicated device model and expensive games are rapidly becoming a dead end. The tablet and phone gaming market has a lot of overlap now and people expect there to be market parity with that.

On top of that there are a lot more Android and iOS devices out there than there are Switches.

I suspect Nintendo will inevitably end up like Sega and be a games publisher on other platforms. And there's nothing wrong with that. People like Nintendo because of the software. The only reason the hardware sells is because it's the only way to get the software.

I don't agree with you on these points - my experience of console/PC gaming vs phone/tablet gaming is that phone/tablet gaming experiences tend to be very shallow drop in/out experiences compared to what is available on console or PC. Even the heavily curated Apple Arcade doesn't have any good examples of this that I've seen.

I've not seen a Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, or even Mario Kart 8 tier experience on mobile. Given that, I don't see Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft abandoning their dedicated hardware any time soon. Sales are still strong, and there's no evidence of consumers abandoning these consoles for mobile-led gaming as yet. Maybe it'll happen, but I'm skeptical. Playing big gaming experiences on a phone display with phone controls (or worse, some kind of bolted-on-extra controls) sounds like a miserable experience to me.

You mention games like fortnite a bit in other comments, and the court documents from Epic's case show the revenue share for fortnite is not in favour of iOS or Android - it's PS4 by some margin - https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/apple...

edit: for Sega, given you raised that example - Sega had a series of missteps in the console hardware market that Nintendo don't have any real analogue for - the Mega CD, the 32X, the Saturn (outside Japan) - all of those led to losing consumer confidence. And then, the Dreamcast failed against the behemoth that was the PS2.

The closest I can come to this for Nintendo is the Wii U, which was also a pretty significant flop, but the Switch has had them bounce back in a really strong fashion.

>my experience of console/PC gaming vs phone/tablet gaming is that phone/tablet gaming experiences tend to be very shallow drop in/out experiences compared to what is available on console or PC.

Yeah, I think that's exactly what separates phone games and console/PC market, and it'll stay that way. Short form contact is exactly what the on-the-go audience is looking for. Smartphones in general have killed the dedicated gaming handheld market. You can see that in the final generation of dedicated handheld consoles (3DS/Vita) which sold less combined than either the Nintendo DS or the Game Boy. But not because the smartphones had better games, but just entertainment with social media, or streaming video. Vine or TikTok are built around the short video format too.

There's plenty of good ports like XCOM 2, Alien: Isolation, Divinity: Original Sin 2. But you can hardly convince someone who has the option of getting a game on PC or console to spend that same money on the same game on a phone. Meanwhile console manufacturers have exclusive games to convince people to buy their console, to join the audience of people who will say "why would I buy this game on phone when it runs better and has better controls on this?"

Meanwhile Apple and Google don't do the same investments in exclusives because very few people are picking their phones based on the games on it, because that's not the phone's primary purpose.

> Yeah, I think that's exactly what separates phone games and console/PC market, and it'll stay that way. Short form contact is exactly what the on-the-go audience is looking for. Smartphones in general have killed the dedicated gaming handheld market. You can see that in the final generation of dedicated handheld consoles (3DS/Vita) which sold less combined than either the Nintendo DS or the Game Boy. But not because the smartphones had better games, but just entertainment with social media, or streaming video. Vine or TikTok are built around the short video format too.

I think that's fair - with a second contributing factor that the 3DS and Vita were more expensive compared to their predecessors - the DS was $150 at launch. The 3DS was $249.99 at launch, with a subsequent drop to $170 a few months later because the sales were dire.

And the Vita at least in the UK suffered from literally no marketing - the 3DS had adverts on TV. People knew about it, even if they didn't have one. The Vita was anonymous in the marketplace - you only knew about it if you were really looking for it.

I really want to play Fantasian but it's exclusive to Apple Arcade.

(And I wouldn't mind trying Card of Darkness, Grindstone, or Sneaky Sasquatch either...)

No, people have been saying that since 2010. And it hasn't happened yet

> The only reason the hardware sells is because it's the only way to get the software.

The hardware definitely makes a huge difference:

1. Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros., Splatoon, etc. are very similar to their Wii U counterparts, but the Wii U was a failure.

2. Hybrid gaming existed before the Switch (Super Game Boy, PSP 2000, PSVita/TV, iPhone/iPad...) but Nintendo executed it perfectly.

> Nintendo are in a sticky situation. They are a poor value proposition these days.

If you like Mario Kart, it's a fantastic game that you can play for years. It's also accessible enough that basically everyone can play it.

> My kids quickly lost interest in their Switches when they saw Mario Kart prices and to play each other they would have to buy three copies.

That's a big advantage of the regular Switch vs. Switch Lite: 4-way local multiplayer in docked mode.

I'm considering a switch (for the kids), selling it to myself as "the games are expensive but not optimized for addictiveness, it's a better business model"... But is that true?

We are already having fun with Minecraft (java), but I see my son sometime pulled into long stretches of of "free" motorcross games (or worse, he lets some car drive some track to get coins) on some shabby website.

Animal Crossing is terribly addictive so I certainly wouldn't sell it to yourself on that basis. What I've found is when they start exploring "free" things, it's time to put the thing away. They are bored and don't know it and that's your time to start parenting rather than letting the machine do it for you.

I tend to encourage my kids to do something in the real world when this happens. They still paint, draw and read and it's a welcome diversion after a few minutes away.

> when they start exploring "free" things, it's time to put the thing away.

Wow that's good advice I'm going to apply on myself! Thanks

How about actually-free motorcross games?

http://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/

Xmoto is so cool, I was pretty addicted to it haha! Very fun game. I'll introduce it to the kid, at least there is no ad flashing behind it.

> to play each other

They could play on one console attached to a TV?

But yes for all three to play at the same time on separate consoles would get pricey.

They have Switch Lite which can't connect to a TV. Not only that it'd be split screen which isn't much fun. It wasn't back in the 90s either.

That's one opinion. I love to use my projector from the couch with split screen games. It's a very different experience than everyone looking at their own device. I like it now and I liked it then.

I would say that split-screen is considerably more fun on a massive, bright 4k panel than it was on a far smaller PAL/NTSC screen!

And couch co-op is my favourite way to play games, still.

Was your screen smaller than a Switch Lite?

Switch Lite has a 5.5 inch screen, definitely not a fun way to do split screen.

No I definitely agree with that :)

The post I replied to seemed to say that split screen in general was not great. I'm just contending that's a matter of taste!

In my opinion the mistake was buying Switch Lites in the first place. I would only see that being a better choice if you're a consultant who's never in the same place for long. Your kids may or may not agree with you on the split screen, too. I enjoyed it in the 90s and it's still my preferred way of gaming with friends over online or LAN play.

Switch is going to outsell the PS4. I think they are doing fine.

I don't disagree with that. The problem is evolving it into a market saturated with general purpose devices and subscription services. That's something that Sony and Nintendo shrugged off.

Lets throw this on the table: I actually played Fortnite on my iPad the other day via XBox Live streaming. It was perfectly playable, with an XBox controller streaming to my TV. And I didn't have to buy a Switch, PS4 or any up front cost on games at all.

Even the cheapest iPad is more expensive than a Switch. And the setup is complicated and finicky. You need some way to stream to your TV or connect to your TV, you need a controller, iPads aren’t exactly optimized for gaming or easy to set up for gaming (relative to a Switch where everything just works). All those little things add a little friction but in the end that ends up adding up to a lot of friction.

Also, unlike phones iPads are not general purpose devices that everyone has just around and if they have them, they may be tied up with other duties.

Also, game quality is abysmal (if a lot less pricy). It’s just not a good fit.

That might change, it might change slowly, I don’t know – but currently I don’t see general purpose devices as much of a threat for consoles. Reason for change? Reason for putting focus on things general purpose devices don’t do well? Sure. But no existential threat.

They have the most important thing: content.

Nintendo games are of very good quality. They have a ton of IP, the attach rates of their games are unmatched in the other consoles as well. If they keep doing what they are doing they’ll be fine.

Lots of good stuff out there with better content. Hyper Light Drifter for example. That’s not Nintendo specific.

Also Homeworld Mobile.

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