Nintendo finds itself under fire from furious shareholders | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo finds itself under fire from furious shareholders

gamasutra.com

21 pointsImpossible28 comments

After reading all 17 questions and answers from the 74th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, I only see one question which might be interpreted as "Under fire from furious share holders", and the shareholder starts by saying: I do not understand video games and I even feel angry because, at Nintendo’s shareholders’ meetings, the shareholders always discuss things relating to video games or such childish topics as “what the future of video games should be.”

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/meeting/140627qa/index...

Is it not bizarre that a shareholder has that sort of flippant perspective on the primary industry of the company they're invested in? I'm seriously wondering if they are operating on a level that I wouldn't expect — only caring about numbers etc and not the game at hand.

That's not true if you know about Japanese culture, where politeness is taken to a higher level than many other cultures (where a maybe means no).

imo this is a hard question that gets harder and harder to fight off

> As a fan of this company, I was reminded once again that Nintendo is, after all, a great company and still alive after seeing “Splatoon,” a new game announced at E3 that has been well-received by video game fans. The current stock price of Nintendo is, however, far from satisfactory, so I hope you will work hard to make an improvement. I would like Nintendo to maintain its solid business policy and not to turn to businesses such as the business of today’s social games, but I am concerned about the fact that young children today often use smartphones handed down from their family members to enjoy free games without additional payments. I do not think even Nintendo will be able to ignore iOS, Android or games playable on web browsers in the future. How much have you studied these factors, and how will you make use of them?

In places like the US and Germany, the question would probably be shortened to "I am concerned about the fact that young children today often use smartphones handed down from their family members to enjoy free games without additional payments. I do not think even Nintendo will be able to ignore iOS, Android or games playable on web browsers in the future. How much have you studied these factors, and how will you make use of them?"

There are other questions that fit this criteria once you realize that Japanese culture is very polite. In fact many of the comments seem to be expressing serious concerns.

The "What if I were to say that" approach:

The outcome of corporate management and business operations shows up as operating profit and loss. Because the company has posted operating losses for three consecutive fiscal years, I actually feel like questioning the business responsibility of the management, but instead of my doing so, today, although three months have passed already, I would like the management to explain this fiscal year’s earnings forecast and the forecast for operating profit and loss.

Criticism as a question:

I do understand that Nintendo is planning to improve its performance with Wii U and Nintendo 3DS for this fiscal year and the next, but in the long term, I, as a video game fan who wants Nintendo to keep on running a game business, am worried that Nintendo might be going to become a manufacturer of health devices in the future. I would like to own Nintendo stock for as long as ten years, so please show game fans like me something that will convince us that the game business will have a bright future in that period. It seems to me that the hardware-software integrated platform business will not last forever. Is Nintendo not going to change this business model? If not, I am concerned that failure of the next hardware system could be critical. In order to wipe away my anxiety, I would like to hear about Nintendo’s dreams for the future, especially from Mr. Miyamoto.

Backhanded compliment:

Before starting, please let me pay my respects to Mr. Yamauchi, former president of Nintendo, who passed away last year. I would like to thank him for providing us with such a variety of fun games. Also, I would like to pray for the speedy recovery of Mr. Iwata. I see Mr. Iwata is a very conscientious person. He is so sincere that, in my view, he is trying to take on all of the things related to the company’s current situation by himself and I think it might have made him ill. I might be biased, but Mr. Miyamoto seems more resilient and is better at taking everything in his stride. I hope Mr. Iwata will take this advice and use it to make him a better president.

More criticism with an easy out for saving face:

I understand your point that ups and downs are inherent in the entertainment industry and in this industry, and I also recognize that the company is in a difficult phase now. Is what is happening now a part of the fluctuations which used to take place in the past too? Or, is the fluctuation this time bigger than before? In other entertainment industries, take movies for example, the declining popularity of movies was observed after the 1950s or 1960s, and people with the right mind in the industry tried to stop the decline with quality pictures. Regarding the current situation surrounding Nintendo and its console game business, some are expressing their opinions by saying that it has been caused by smartphones, but I have not been able to find any advice from them that, if executed by Nintendo, would likely make Nintendo a better company. What is Nintendo’s view on these points?

Considering the three way fight between Xbox, playstation and PC, it seems Nintendo is trying to claim a less saturated portion of the market. While Xbox and playstation fight over who has the best graphics (which will always be worse than PC games), Nintendo focuses on creating unique experiences that cannot be found anywhere else. It seems to me to be a great long-term strategy as more xbox and playstation users switch to PCs as they become more common. As far as their slow start, look at the 3DS!

     "as more xbox and playstation users switch to PCs"

Is that actually the case? Sure, you can get more horsepower from your PC, and they continue to advance as a console becomes obsolete, but that HP also comes at a much higher price tag (even if you build your own rig, as many of us do). A PC also add complexity.

I'm not convinced that more people are switching to PC. The PS4 has so far outsold all of its predecessors. Perhaps more people are playing games on a PC (and I'm not counting mobile stuff here, different audience), but I don't think that it's coming at the expense of consoles.

Nintendo develops hardware to support their IPs just as much as they alter their games to take advantage of each generation of hardware.

Each generation of console adds a new method of adding input to the game. Each generation they evolve both evolve their existing IPs to best take advantage of the new hardware and develop their hardware to best support the development of their IPs. For example the C buttons for the N64 controller were added to solve the cameras issues encountered during the development of Mario 64.

This is lost on a lot people. The pairing of Nintendo hardware and software developed as a package to compliment each other is a huge part of Nintendo's success. Just look at the Mario service and see how many times its been reinvented using the same basic controls, running and jumping. All of those reinventions were developed in tangent with new hardware.

I suppose my point is, putting Nintendo's IPs on mobile or another console destroys what has allowed the IPs to remain so successful for so long. It would make both Nintendo's hardware and software less valuable.

The success and failure of Nintendo was always based on trying things that the market didn't believe in.

Sometimes they succeed (Wii) sometimes they flop (Wii u)

The main reason I like Nintendo is their willingness to go All-in on something controversial or new.

Wii U was definitely an initial failure but they've been clawing it back in the last few months. Since the release of Mario Kart 8 and the free game thing, Wii Us have quite literally been out of stock at quite a few places (since the demand spike was quite unexpected from the retailers).

It remains to be seen if the Wii U will be a long term success or failure, but we might yet see it do well. The Wii didn't really hit the big time until its price came down and it had software like Wii Fit. Maybe the Wii U will have a Wii Fit equivalent and will hit the right price point?

I still maintain that they'd see at +20% sales if they had named it almost literally anything else. Wii U is such a stupid name that it really makes me question wtf is going with the management there. Even with the Wii, that console succeeded in spite of the terrible branding, not because of it.

i dont know, i think their success has been solidly in portable (DS/gameboy) and when they had a monopoly on the top game producers NES, SNES. However, I admittedly don't follow new games. The people at best buy looked at me like i had 4 eyes when I asked where their ATARI's were at. I meant those ones with the controllers and pre-installed games, but still

It is pretty clear to me that there is one way that Nintendo (or someone) can innovate and really capture their market again, and it revolves 360degrees around one thing, and one thing only: development tools.

Imagine if they released a console that had development tools bundled - i.e. onboard. Wouldn't that be a wonder! Especially if it were designed in such a way that it were Nintendo-easy to publish to a world-readable games store ..

Seriously, I believe this is one area that can blow open the whole game industry. Ship Unity developer edition on the next console, Nintendo, and make it available to everyone. You'll get a new game market created in no time...

I agree with this as well. Nintendo seems like a developer hostile company.

And iOS developers complain about provisioning profiles and Apple Review. At least we have awesome documentation and Xcode keeps getting better.

Getting a Wii U development unit costs around $[2000,4000]+import tax. It's free for the first n months (1 or 3 I can't remember) and then you have to pay to keep the unit.

If you plan on releasing it on the eshop you will have to pay an exorbitant sum to each countries ESRB equivalent which is a complete racket.

So yes, it is a developer hostile company. Then again, Nintendo has always been behind with keeping up with the latest tech trends and features. For example just look at their online services: * No party chat. * Very little 3DS/Wii U cross compatibility for NNIDs (and don't forget the horribly long FCs). * No cross licensing between 3DS/Wii U. If I want to buy Super Mario Bros 3 I should NOT have to pay for it twice. * No remote play support * No 3DS controller support (besides Monster Hunter) * Digital Games on the eshop aren't priced competitively as you can almost always find a physical copy cheaper. This part baffles me.

> And partway through the meeting, a shareholder puts simply: "I do not understand video games and I even feel angry because, at Nintendo’s shareholders’ meetings, the shareholders always discuss things relating to video games or such childish topics as 'what the future of video games should be,'..."

You're a shareholder of a video game company, and you're wondering why they're talking about video games? Seriously?

Nintendo seems like it's firmly attached to a narrow business plan and wants to ride that into the ground. At the very least they could be toying with the phone market by releasing mini-games or something under a "nintendo mobile" name.

Tons of people would download that stuff. It would at least get their feet wet, get some developers up to speed and get them some idea of what they can or can't do with the mobile market with probably very little risk.

It's a little sad to see things the way they are. Nintendo has a load of beloved IP, and a generation of developers who would likely love to build for a Nintendo platform. But they've failed to capitalize on either.

You have to realize their history though. The "Nintendo seal of approval" exists because the game market was filled with horrible games when they first started, so trusting some other dev with their IP, which could potentially be ruined by a third party. They have been making strides with this (see Hyrule Warriors), but considering the piles of garbage games on the app store, their aversion is understandable. On top of that if you could get Nintendo games on other platforms, their console sales would suffer. Plus, a touch screen would just be frustrating for platformers like Mario, only turn based RPGs seem to port well.

I'm not suggesting they trust another dev with their IP. Perhaps I phrased things poorly. I think it could be potentially worthwhile to make their platform more open to allow devs to introduce their own IP on it. I also think that Nintendo could be doing more to get older gamers who grew up on their games to play Nintendo again (including, yes, potentially making games available on non-Nintendo platform).

Would console sales suffer? I'm not so sure. The market for, say, tablet games may not be the same market that exists for Nintendo DS games or WiiU games.

More than anything, it seems that Nintendo has just decided to do nothing to fix the situation. Even small-scale experiments in expanding their marketplace reach or opening up their platform may potentially encourage investors in their ability to get things back on track again.

Long term that's a terrible move for Nintendo. Sure short term it would raise money but it would lead to Nintendo leaving the console business and becoming more like what Sega is now.

Better than being dead.

Looking at what Sega has become... They're probably better off not doing that. If Nintendo were to do something outside of their closed ecosystem, it'd be better & much more safer to do it on PC or Linux.

Nintendo needs to hop into the sack with Valve.

Nintendo wants nothing to do with the current mobile market.

$5 is considered premium, when in their market $50 is discounted.

So what does Nintendo do when the market for $50 games has evaporated? It's far too late to start looking at mobile and other markets at that point.

Did the market for expensive sport cars ever go away completely?

Or for that matter, has cheap Samsung Android mobiles destroyed iPhone yet?

Look at the sales of the game industry over time (page 12): http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2014.pdf It's pretty clear the entire industry is shrinking. I don't know about you but if I ran a major game company I would definitely want to be exploring all options for possible growth right now (or better yet 5 years ago). Comparing video games to high end sports cars is apples to oranges.

That report only includes retail sales. Given the explosive growth of online sales, that isn't surprising.

The problem is most major markets for standard gamers are saturated. Thus you have to turn to emerging markets or non-standard gamers. Given the way last generation went and the way the current generation ignores non-standard gamers, I wouldn't call out Nintendo for their lack of foresight in this regard.

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