Around E3 time, Forbes contributor Mark Rogoskwy predicted Nintendo's demise, or at least that the company would be forced to go multiplatform with its hit franchises, becoming more exclusively a game software company, like Sega did more than a decade ago. Although Nintendo is a big company with a lot to fall back on, the company has been losing money for years and there's no end in sight. Globally speaking, the Wii U is a flop and the company's portable systems today are statistical noise next to the mobile device's game market. I think there's a good case to be made that Nintendo may get out of the game hardware business altogether after this console generation. The other companies (Sony and Microsoft) may be able to muster one more console generation following the current one, but ultimately they too are probably going to be vanquished by Internet games and virtual reality devices.
I say all this with a heavy heart, as a long-time follower of most all things Nintendo, an owner of every system they've come out with, and someone who's as yet not interested in Sony's PlayStation 4 or Microsoft's Xbox One. The other systems just don't have many games that would interest me. I think my game preferences are more spiritually in tune with those of the Japanese than they are with those of most Western gamers. While many video game stores in North America may have already stopped carrying Wii U systems and games, and while the big N's overall dismal financial situation may have recently forced the company to close its European HQ in Germany, Nintendo rules the console market in its native Japan. When it comes to the console market, the view from Japan could hardly be more opposite that of the overall, global picture. In Japan, Sony's PlayStation 4 (the top-seller globally) is considered a flop, outsold by a 3 to 1 margin by Nintendo's Wii U, because it (PS4) has no games that a substantial number of Japanese gamers are interested in and Microsoft's Xbox One is expected to perform so poorly that it hasn't even been released there yet. (Xbox One launches on September 4th in Japan.) Nintendo's Mario Kart 8 is currently projected to become perhaps the year's top-selling console game in Japan. With Japan moving in such a philosophically opposite direction that of the dominant Western game market, hardware companies like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, in a more pronounced way than ever before, find themselves today forced to choose which market they wish to focus on appealing to. Sony and America's native Microsoft have clearly chosen the winning formula of focusing on appealing to the larger Western game market, while Nintendo has opted for the bolder, and probably vain, path of attempting to re-energize its presence in its native Japan, which has a much smaller population. I say that the effort is likely in vain not just because the Western game market is bigger, but because, while Japanese gamers may favor Nintendo over other game hardware companies, the bottom line is that they're near to abandoning the console market altogether in favor of online games for mobile devices. They're at a more advanced stage of that transition than we are! Nintendo's future hinges on the market for its portables, but even large and increasing numbers of Japanese people who once bought Nintendo's portables can now instead be seen using their cell phones to play video games.
For all their shortcomings, I love Nintendo! I love their humor, their franchises, the memorable, iconic characters they've come up with (and continue to come up with), and their sheer creativity! It might be cool to eventually see their software available for download online without mandatory console ownership, but I still can't help feeling a little bit misty eyed about their future prospects as a game hardware company. What kind of world will it be without an actual Nintendo system on the market for the first time in my living memory?
What do you think? Is Nintendo, as a hardware company anyway, going to bite the big one this console generation or do they have one more left in them?
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