Now that I’ve seen the numbers, looked at the games and learned how Nintendo will adapt, what are my thoughts? Well for one I do not want to see the Big N fail or go under. Right now if you look around in various forums about Nintendo and their financial troubles, you will see a ton of posts that call for Nintendo to stop making consoles and just focus on video games, posts of people wishing that they would fail and have some company buy out their properties, or for Nintendo to just disappear completely. However hard they might wish for Nintendo to just go away, they are not going anywhere soon. Unlike other Japanese companies that are also having financial troubles, Nintendo has plenty of money in the bank to keep them well afloat for years to come. In fact they have at the time of this writing 812 billion yen in the bank. That equates to at least $10 billion USD. They can afford to flop every year until the year 2052. And by that time VR/holodeck style games will be the future. At least I hope.
Anyways back to Nintendo and my thoughts about their current troubles. They need to understand that while we do love Mario and friends, we want more. Do more with characters that don’t get enough love. Hyrule Warriors is a good first step, but its just Dynasty Warriors with a Zelda skin. We want to see characters like Samus, Pitt, Roy, Ness and many others that are not a part of the Mushroom Kingdom in games outside of Smash Bros. And if Nintendo, if you do need to fall back on Mario and friends, why don’t you let other developers have a crack at them. It worked for the most part for the Metriod series till Other M, you have Namco working on Super Smash Bros, Atlus is working on SMT X Fire Emblem. You say you want to take risks with your IPs Nintendo? Then what greater risk to take than to have someone else work on your IPs. And yes I am aware of the Panasonic CD i Mario and Zelda games.
As for the Nintendo Figurine Platform, some people will say that you are just copying Skylanders and Disney Infinity. And in a way you are. But unlike most naysayers, I see vast potential. Imagine Mario in dreamland fighting King Dedede or Link battling Mother Brain. These might sound like extreme examples but they are possible with the NFC. And if you want a sure money maker take the Pokemon Rumble Wii U figures, which by the way was poorly marketed, and re-purpose them for a brand new Pokemon Colosseum game or integrate them with the new Pokemon 3DS games.
I don’t want Nintendo to fail. If they could learn from their mistakes that they have made since the release of the Wii U and even as far back as the Wii, I can see them coming back into the black. They won’t be the top dogs that they once were, but they will still be here providing us with innovation and games for all.
