Forums

Topic: Nintendo as a console maker in the cloud gaming era?

Posts 1 to 20 of 26

nib0

The Nikkei Asian Review, which publishes excellent business reporting on Nintendo, recently carried an interesting opinion piece raising questions about the future of the company. Here's the link: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Nintendo-s-future-is-far-from...

Despite Nintendo recording a 41% jump in profits in the fiscal year that ended in March, buoyed by Animal Crossing’s successful launch and high console sales, the writer erred on the side of caution, questioning whether the company is well-positioned enough to survive the coming era of cloud-based gaming platforms being offered by Google, Amazon and others. These are some excerpts from the article:

“Dominant ecosystems like Microsoft, Google and Amazon can leverage their platforms into games and demote Nintendo and others to the status of a pure content provider beholden to their distribution muscle.”

“Anyone thinking about Nintendo's stock price today needs to think ahead. In five years' time will Nintendo be able to leverage its superior content to maintain its own independent and profitable platforms, including devices?”

“A careful investor needs to ponder the darker possibility: that Nintendo in five years' time will have become a game developer and publisher whose pricing power has been surrendered to someone else's dominant platform.”

I’m curious what Nintendo players, rather than investors, think about this. Nintendo has always been a company that has bucked trends and, up until recent mobile games, traditionally kept its first-party content exclusive to its devices. But hardware design and innovations that bring new ways to play are equally synonymous with the brand.

While I can understand that consumers want to access their game content in a platform-neutral way, i.e. on a device or console of their choosing, I don’t see "content ecosystems" overtaking consoles anytime soon. Despite the convenience of digital sales and the potential of cloud gaming, I think players would still want to own physical, console-specific games.

Perhaps the desire to have and hold is similar to why vinyl music records and books are still a thing. Gamers are by and large "collectors" too, with merchandise playing a big part, and I think this is part of the reason why game stores are not likely to go the way of movie rental shops, even when players can stream triple-A games from a device of their choice.

With the selling power of the Switch and the success of the hybrid console model, I would say Nintendo is primed to fight on as a console maker, even if tough competition from oligopolistic platforms leads it to cede some of its prized classic IP, which would yield a commercial boost it could use to channel into innovating hardware.

What does everyone else think?

Edited on by nib0

nib0

WiiWareWave

Funny since those three "dominating" companies are in the back of the pack and combined sales of all three are less than Nintendo's or Playstation's. Honestly I heard that even combined Google and Amazon have less than 5 million subscribers for their cloud services.

Owner of http://www.WiiWareWave.com

PSN ID: Rukiafan7
NNID: Rukiafan7
Switch FC: SW-6328-7327-5891 ~WiiWareWav~

Switch Friend Code: SW-6328-7327-5891 | Nintendo Network ID: Rukiafan7 | Twitter:

Laoak

I don't see Cloud Gaming happening any time soon and if it does, it won't be successful. Also, I don't think Google and Amazon are going to take over the big three. They don't have any experience and after the failure of Stadia, who would truly want to play on a google streaming service any time soon? Maybe like in two generations time but not now.

{funny quote here}

ThanosReXXX

“Dominant ecosystems like Microsoft, Google and Amazon can leverage their platforms into games and demote Nintendo and others to the status of a pure content provider beholden to their distribution muscle.”

Except for the Microsoft part, that statement alone is already complete and utter nonsense. Google and Amazon would wish that they have the clout and importance in the video gaming world that any of the big three have. They're eons behind in thought process, usability and game libraries. They simply don't understand the core gamer. They just see another revenue stream and want a piece of the pie, but I'm pretty confident that all they'll ever get, is the leftover crumbs.

Google Stadia is already pretty much DOA, and it's never going to take off, and it'll be closeted within the space of 2 years, much like any other extracurricular initiative that Google has undertaken over the last decade or so.

So, yeah, never going to happen, and that opinion piece is only interesting in an alternate universe "what if" kinda way, because it's WAY off base concerning the actual reality of it.

The whole eco system and the entire philosophy of Nintendo is to not only make games, but also the hardware needed to play those games, so they'll never allow themselves to be demoted to a software publisher. Nintendo games on other platforms just won't be the same, and won't give us that real Nintendo feel, which is famously known as "The Nintendo Difference". That isn't possible if you basically cut off one of the legs of the foundation of what they are and what they stand for.

Even in the darkest scenario, they'd probably rather commit business suicide and remove their IP from the world altogether, than hand them over to the likes of Google.

Edited on by ThanosReXXX

'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

WoomyNNYes

I don't know anyone that likes video games that wants cloud gaming. For the same reason pepole don't want to buy digital movies through their cable tv provider - because you don't truly own them, and people don't trust their cable tv provider - they barely tolerate them.

Well said @ThAnOsReXxX (edit, i fixed it. haha I keep forgetting you're triple X. funny (formatting doesn't matter, just spelling. I gotta have fun with something 😋))

@ThanosRexxx "The whole eco system and the entire philosophy of Nintendo is to not only make games, but also the hardware needed to play those games, so they'll never allow themselves to be demoted to a software publisher. Nintendo games on other platforms just won't be the same, and won't give us that real Nintendo feel, which is famously known as "The Nintendo Difference". That isn't possible if you basically cut off one of the legs of the foundation of what they are and what they stand for."

Edited on by WoomyNNYes

Extreme bicycle rider (<--Link to a favorite bike video)
'Tendo liker

ThanosReXXX

@WoomyNNYes "Dear Nintendo Life member, due to weird text formatting of the name on your part, as well as forgetting one X, the person you quoted was NOT notified"...

'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BruceCM

You should cut out one of his Ns to make up for that, @ThanosReXXX ..... Like so, @WoomyNYes

SW-4357-9287-0699
Steam: Bruce_CM

gcunit

While Nintendo can continue to successfully leverage Mario, Smash Bros., Zelda, Pokémon and Animal Crossing they'll have an interested consumer base and in light of the popularity of the Game Boy series of devices, the DS series, and now the Switch, I suspect that the fans of the above IPs will have no qualms about continuing to buy dedicated Nintendo hardware for as long as it's manufactured, whether it incorporates cloud based delivery or not.

The real question I feel, is how long will Nintendo maintain its core values that have made it the games company it is?

You guys had me at blood and semen.

What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

My Nintendo: gcunit | Nintendo Network ID: gcunit

Bunkerneath

So, two games Cloud editions got announced yesterday...

It is the end of days in my eyes, my internet where I live will never be powerful enough to play them and it's even worse than digital only games as once that server is switched off, you have paid for a game you can no longer play.

I AM ERROR

Switch Friend Code: SW-5538-4050-1819 | 3DS Friend Code: 1633-4650-1215 | My Nintendo: Bunkerneath | Nintendo Network ID: Bunkerneat | Twitter:

Snatcher

My internet is pure crap so I don't think I would be able to play them but hey, its better the nothing.

Nintendo are like woman, You love them for whats on the inside, not the outside…you know what I mean! Luzlane best girl!

(My friend code is SW-7322-1645-6323, please ask me before you use it)

Sorry for not being active much recently, but I’m very much alive!

Zeldafan79

If they aren't going to release the game for real why bother with a cloud version? Basically they are saying it's only for rich people with top of the line internet connections. Also as others have said you're paying for a game you wont be able to keep. It's like buying a hamburger. Eventually it ends up in the toilet.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" Optimus Prime

jump

Control is cheaper than other typical RRP of AAA releases on the Switch so if all cloud versions are cheaper priced I could live with it.

My only complaint is I wont be able to stream music/podcasts as I play as well as I can't play them on the tube where there's no Wi-Fi.

Edited on by jump

Nicolai wrote:

Alright, I gotta stop getting into arguments with jump. Someone remind me next time.

Switch Friend Code: SW-8051-9575-2812 | 3DS Friend Code: 1762-3772-0251

Raylax

Games industry's big enough for cloud gaming to be a viable market for one demographic of customers, whilst console gaming remains viable for another demographic of customers. Wasn't so long ago that smartphone gaming was definitely going to wipe out handheld gaming (3DS seemed to do just fine); advanced graphical capabilities on smartphones was definitely going to wipe out console gaming (lol); and every time a new console generation swings by, someone somewhere tolls the death knell for PC gaming.

Cloud gaming will most likely stick around (although whether Google's or Amazon's offerings to the space are the ones to survive seems... debatable), but I very much doubt it will push out or displace other forms. It's just further expansion of a growing and diversifying industry.

Raylax

3DS Friend Code: 0173-1400-0117 | Nintendo Network ID: RaylaxKai

Matt_Barber

It's all down to the latency. For streaming to work you need the combination of a low latency connection and a game that can tolerate a few frames of lag without becoming unplayable.

Nintendo are, in large part, at the wrong end of both scales in selling some rather twitchy games for platforms you can use while out and about. As such, they're rather more insulated from a sudden surge in cloud gaming than most.

Matt_Barber

JaxonH

I understand the concern about cloud gaming, since it is inevitably going to gain significant marketshare.

The thing is, I don’t see that happening in 5 year’s time. Not that cloud gaming won’t be around, it’s around right now. But it won’t gain any significant market share for another 20 years. It’s something that’s going to happen very slowly and gradually over a very long time. And it’s never going to completely eradicate dedicated gaming platforms. So while it will certainly take marketshare, it won’t claim all of it.

Furthermore, Nintendo has insulated itself against such a threat by positioning its hardware as the one platform that offers portable play anywhere without an internet connection required. And demand for such a product is not going to dissipate with the rise of cloud gaming. So in a sense, they’re more prepared for the coming storm more than anyone else. While companies like Microsoft and Sony are developing their own cloud gaming tech, The fact is they have to because it’s their marketshare that’s going to be eaten with the rise of the cloud. But not Nintendo. At least, not so long as they continue making hybrid or portable systems, which they certainly will.

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

skywake

I'd argue, and I'm fairly sure I've argued before, that if anything the existence of a product like the Switch is dangerous for the future of cloud gaming. Not the other way around.

If you go back to when OnLive was trying to make waves the main appeal was being able to play 360/PS3 era games on your phone. And when your mobile competition is the DS and PSP (or even 3DS/Vita) that's a fairly attractive sell. But ten years later we have a lot of those games ported to the Switch.

Of course there's always going to be a fidelity gap, you can always say that cloud gaming will be able to offer "better visuals" even if they are subjectively shrinking. The problem for cloud gaming but is that the current push is for faster load times, improved lighting and higher display resolutions. The first one is faster NAND, that will find its way to all devices including a future Switch. Improved lighting will still be an advantage, so that's one win. However display resolutions? The problem is portables can get away with 720p, Switch 2 and even Switch 3 won't be racing to 4K

I kinda see cloud gaming as more of a niche that doesn't quite know it's market yet. It's trying to sell itself as a higher fidelity visual for people who want that but don't want to pay for higher end hardware. But the problem is that the people who want higher end visuals generally also want lower latency and are willing to put more disposable income into better hardware. Which rules them out. And on the other end more casual users really don't care about the higher fidelity visuals anyways.

tl;dr: Now and on a product like the Switch is probably the time when cloud gaming is its strongest. A decade from now that's going to be a much harder sell as a future Switch will close that gap further.

Edited on by skywake

Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"

Cotillion

Gaming is a form of media. There's countless amounts of media that people pay for, but never get to keep. There's 'service' models for other media formats such as movies, TV and music. They are dominating their respective formats. Gaming has a larger hurdle in that latency is a much larger issue. Once that's mostly resolved en masse, you can bet streaming will take over for the masses.
For Joe Average gamer, all of sudden all he needs is a service subscription. Doesn't have to buy hardware, doesn't have to buy games, doesn't have to worry about storage. Just login and play. This is the large appeal of services in other forms, you don't need a turntable or CD player. You don't need a Blu-ray player. You don't need to store mass amounts of discs and other things that will be out of date in a few years. This is also a large portion of gamers. This is why mobile gaming is such a big thing, there's nothing 'extra' involved, so anyone can do it on whatever device they want.
Some areas (mine included) are capable of this now, but it certainly isn't widespread enough to be the next big thing quite yet. There used to a much wider gap on video, streaming HD and 4K wasn't possible or not as widespread and actually buying the discs was better, but that gap closed (and fairly quickly). I can't see any difference between a streamed movie and a physical one anymore. And at this point, I don't even have a player anymore. Things will change when that gap closes more with gaming.

The companies themselves. This is how I view them. Nintendo is iffy in the scenario of streaming being widespread. So is Sony, in my opinion, as they seem to still be stuck in the 90's in terms of mentality. Google and Amazon are clueless. I fully expect Stadia to join Google+ and everything else they have abandoned in the not too far future. Watching Microsoft the last while, you can tell they are preparing. They are (smartly) tying to play friends with everyone. The more 'friends' they have with their ecosystem, the better, as they are installing themselves as the place to be for streaming.
Nintendo is always the hardest to predict and this is why they are iffy to me. They just do whatever they want, never seeming to follow trends or even caring what anyone else is doing. They're 1st party software will always have appeal. Who knows what they'll do next. Switch just kind of came out of nowhere and created, then filled, a market noone else even knew was there. I don't think anyone can predict what they'll do. A dual mode device like Switch though, could do well in a streaming dominated scenario....for a while. If it hits mainstream, every device will have the service apps, much like now you can get everything from phones to refrigerators with Netflix and youtube on them now.

Cotillion

Sisilly_G

@Shadowthrone : There is a significant gap in streaming vs disc-based media. It won't bother most people, but enthusiasts notice, and there is still a demand for higher quality alternatives, and I doubt that they will ever completely go away. While streaming is certainly very popular at the moment (and almost unbelievably cheap) it's extremely costly to the service providers and I am not confident that many of them will be profitable or sustainable in the long term. Of course, time will tell. I am perhaps in the minority of those not subscribed to any form of streaming service (I have more than enough discs to last me years). The fact that so much propaganda is being produced by certain providers (cough Netflix/Disney) has made me especially grateful that I have never supported their platforms in the first place.

While convenience trumps all in terms of mass appeal, I am still quite old school in that I overwhelmingly prefer physical media as it offers overall superior quality, whether that's CDs for music (weirdly enough as the technology has been on the market for 40 years now) or Blu-ray/UHD Blu-ray for film/TV. Blu-ray yields very high quality video and (usually) lossless audio. The streaming/download equivalents typically offer only a small fraction of the quality in comparison.

Hell, I have rendered Blu-rays with very low bitrates in HD (comparable to streaming quality) and it may surprise some to know that you can fit about 12 movies at 1080p on a single 50GB disc with decent quality video (ahead of DVD anyway) and lossy audio, but the format is prized for its ability to present films as close (in some cases better) to the theatrical presentation as possible, so it's very rare that distributors will squeeze multiple movies on to a single disc when the market has since gravitated online for convenience at the expense of A/V quality.

In respect to games, ownership, convenience, and flexibility is king, and cloud gaming offers none of that (at least where I am concerned). Again, time will tell whether the market will embrace it. While I am not one to begrudge people from pursuing options that best suit their needs, I think cloud gaming is far more detrimental to the consumer than beneficial, especially if consumers inevitably become bereaved of the software that they had paid for, which can result in such a model collapsing on itself.

"Gee, that's really persuasive. Do you have any actual points to make other than to essentially say 'me Tarzan, physical bad, digital good'?"

Switch Friend Code: SW-1910-7582-3323

Cotillion

@Silly_G I don't deny enthusiasts can tell and that they still demand it and more. The thing is that enthusiasts don't make up the majority. Physical sales of movies has dropped drastically while streaming is ballooning. Netflix alone is about to pass 200million subscribers, and that's just one service. That's a staggering amount of people for one service and doesn't take into account how many people are sharing their accounts or amount of people in a household using it.
To 'fight' against it is pointless. It's coming.
But the thing is, there will always be alternatives. While streaming movies and music continues to explode, there are still other options available. You can still buy many of those things physically (one caveat being sometimes it's only in a limited edition) or buy them digitally. Games will be no different. Digital is king now for games, but you cant get many physically. Streaming is just going to be another option.
As for what streaming doesn't offer as you stated; ownership, well no one can argue that. Its the service you're paying for, not the game/movie/album.
Convenience and flexibility....well, to the masses, streaming owns those. Convenience being you need no special hardware, you need nothing at all besides a subscription; which leads into flexibility in that you can use it on a device you prefer to use.
Going even further with it, people have been conditioned for this for many years. Look at movies, someone buys VHS and has a nice collection. Oh, now it's outdated. He rebuys on DVD. Oh, now that's obsolete. Alright, now Blu-ray, cat get any better than that. Oh damn....now there actually is something better. Streaming kills all of that. Now people will just get the best they can get (enthusiasts aside) without having to replace an entire collection or even buy new equipment, with the TV being the exception. Gaming suffers the same thing. Rebuy the same games, slightly better on the next best hardware. Which will become play the newest games on whatever you happen to have, no hardware entrance fee. And the access....I have watched and listened to far more than I ever would have imagined than if I was buying it. Because it's there. No risk in paying for it and not liking it. There's definite upsides as much as there is downsides. The big unfortunate one is availability and preservation. I guess one has to weigh that in deciding which way to go.
And now we have an entire generation growing up where streaming is the norm. My kids couldn't give a rats ass about owning movies or games. It means nothing to them, that's not how their world is.
And they live in a house where I have the NES/SNES games I had as a kid. I have a turn table and vinyl. It's not like they aren't exposed to it. They just don't see the point when there's an alternative of having everything readily available on one singular device (which now includes their movies, music and games all in one).
Personally, I grew up with the physical. Kept all my games and they all still work. I find I never use them for two reasons: there's just so much new stuff to try and I have access to most of it on modern systems now and it's just more convenient.

My takeaway from streaming is that it will be an option. People seem to have this fear that it will be the only option, when the other media forms have shown that's just not the case. Vinyl has actually seen a resurgence in recent years. Personally, I use all available options. I get vinyl for albums I know I love and want forever. I also use Spotify for on the go and to check out tons of stuff I never would have heard otherwise. It's not like it's a one shot choice forever. I plan on having a streaming service soon (gonna give xCloud a go) while also buying games I really love to play. I mean why not? For less than the cost of one game, I get to try out hundreds. I couldn't even tell you how many games I bought, played and then never touched again. And if I play a game on xCloud that I want to keep...then I'll probably go and buy it. I think some people would be more open to it if they viewed it differently. They call it a rental service....yeah, then treat it like one. You can demo hundreds of games for a fraction of the cost of buying them. Then buy what you want to keep. Of course, that assumes consoles are still around.
It's all so speculative at the moment, that I can't see taking a hard stance either way currently. As long as there's always an option, then I say bring it on.

Cotillion

skywake

Shadowthrone wrote:

Gaming is a form of media. There's countless amounts of media that people pay for, but never get to keep. There's 'service' models for other media formats such as movies, TV and music. They are dominating their respective formats. Gaming has a larger hurdle in that latency is a much larger issue. Once that's mostly resolved en masse, you can bet streaming will take over for the masses.

So two issues with this. Firstly stream latency isn't necessarily an issue that can be resolved, it's an inherent physical limitation. When you have physical distance between the server and the client there will be latency. Other forms of media get away with this by having a large buffer in content, which they can do because you the end user isn't directly interacting with it. Even if you look at a livestream you're going to be ~30s behind the actual content, video calls target ~100ms of latency, Netflix will buffer as much as it can.

With games we usually talk of ~30ms of latency as being the maximum acceptable which... is going to be tricky to make it the dominant delivery method when the absolute physical limit for fibre gives 1ms of additional latency for every 200km in a straight line. That's before you consider the cable winding through suburbs, the latency of your home WiFi, the additional processing compressing the video, the processing decompressing the video and the fact that your inputs also have to go down this network link. At a minimum you want to live in a city and have a server located in the city you live in.

Basically, if everything goes its way it may explode in Japan and maybe the UK as well as a few major population centres in the US. But I don't think it's ever going to become the dominant player globally. You'd have to have a super local and different kind of infrastructure that, frankly, does not exist yet. Google and Amazon are huge but their servers are designed for serving files not rendering games.

Secondly, to be blunt, the only strength of game streaming has always been that you could get high end visuals on a cheap device. The media as a service model is not a strength because you can do gaming as a service without streaming. So for it to be attractive the gap in fidelity has to be high enough that people will overlook the inherent limitations of it.

And to explain why that's not really where things are going consider this. Nvidia literally sells what is the hardware equivalent of a TV dongle version of the Switch for $150US. That's a thing today at a relatively low price of entry. So you can imagine what might be possible on the 10 years from now equivalent of that. So the question is... would the visual gap between that device and what might be possible from the high end 10 years from now matter to a casual user? I'd argue no.

Edited on by skywake

Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"

Please login or sign up to reply to this topic