Topic: Is Nintendo resting on its laurels?

This is all correct, but that's not how investors see things. They think in terms of potential profits to actual profits, not as a stand alone number. A product can be profitable but at the same time leaving money on the table.

If Nintendo only have 14 % console market share, then investors will just see potential profits squandered. And Breath of the Wild isn't a loss leader for the Switch either, since the Switch doesn't have enough margins for that. Furthermore, there's a limit to how far you can take the loss leader concept, you can't sell a game as a loss leader to get people to buy a console as a loss leader to finally make the profit on game licenses. The game licenses would have to be astronomically high for that to work, and Switch already have a problem in that area due to the cost of the game cards. There's a limit on how much consumers are willing to pay for a game, and that price has to house everything from development costs, retail costs, and the cost of the physical media. This is especially relevant in today game market were Sony and Steam are doing huge sales not that long after the game was released.

Full price for a 1.5 year old game like Breath of the Wild isn't a viable business strategy anymore.

I was talking about Sony and Microsoft together since their consoles are basically identical. Nintendo has 14 % and Sony + Microsoft have the rest of the market. What do they do with these 86 %? They make fully voice acted open world games with NPCs that interact with the world. The same is true for PC, so you could add the PC market share to that "team".

As for popularity, we are beyond the years were game consoles were niche things for a few enthusiasts, so you do need to do a lot to appeal to what is popular, otherwise you'll be out competed. In the current gen of consoles, there has been 141 million consoles sold, and only 20 million of those are Switch. When the next gen of consoles gets released, Nintendo could take more market share if they do more to appeal to what is popular.

The 3DS price was dropped because of soft sales. The Switch, on the other hand, is selling better than projected, so Nintendo has no incentive to reduce its price.

That's actually a terrible idea. Nintendo would be fools to divide their market like that. I think what consumers and developers need to keep in mind is that the Switch is its own system and not simply a portable alternative to the latest Playstation and Xbox.

What I meant was that when the Playstation 5 and next Xbox is released, then Nintendo should release a "Switch 2" that is fully backwards compatible with Switch games. I'm not talking about dividing the current market, I'm talking about the next generation, which might come 2020.

The driving force behind buying a new gaming PC is to be able to get RAYCASTING™. I myself think it's pretty silly, but that is what drives to common consumer to their purchases. It's the same in the home theater market, people buy new stuff for FORK-Resolution with ULTRA HDR, then they watch whatever tv series they were already watching on their new equipment.

If Nintendo offers little new in terms of new technology and even go back on industry standards (such as how full voice acting now is the norm in AAA games) then they'll have problems getting people to buy their stuff.

I'm not talking about how many PCs exist in the hands of consumers. I'm talking about the rejuvenation of gaming PCs. Most consumers are probably playing less demanding PC games, but when they buy a new PC they want a "Crysis" for it. The same is true for Playstation. People got sold on the PS4 with technically advanced games, but then indie games became popular on the console. Nintendo won't be able to sell 50 million consoles the next generation unless they also have those type of technologically advanced games.

It's common sense that people don't upgrade their PCs to play indie games that would run on a potato. You're just stalling and hoping I'll run out of patience with you so you can "win" this discussion. People won't buy a Switch 2: Electric Bogaloo if it doesn't have games that meet AAA standard.

@Yorumi I remember when my little brother out together a gaming PC with a GTX970 for Oculus. Graphics card cost more than a console.

Oh my god, literally EVERY new console launch involves showing off new hardware and software tech as a selling point.

@Yorumi Then you get popular AND unoptimized POS games like PUBG :^]

Ultimately though, getting second-hand parts and etc that still beat consoles still ends up with a better performance:cost than consoles overall.

@Agriculture
Your PC thing is really off, man. Most PC gamers upgrade their rigs to get better performance out of existing games that they enjoy a lot, NOT usually to reach some kind of height being set by a graphics-heavy new game. A small portion upgrade rigs because they are streamers and want to stream with better settings; streaming setups are incredibly demanding.

But for your normal PC gamer, it's pretty shocking how PC gaming these days is less about specs than consoles. Most of us play very undemanding games like MOBAs, Hearthstone, WoW, etc. Just look at the top 10 games on Twitch at any given point. The most demanding games in the top 10 right now are Destiny 2 (new expansion just came out - that'll be gone in a day) and Battlefield V, both of which are very flexible with graphics settings for modest rigs. The other games are WoW, Fortnite, Dota, League, Hearthstone, GTAV, CounterStrike, and Overwatch. That's where a lot of the PC space is and has been for a few years now.

Stuff not on Twitch tends to be Steam trash and indies that can run on a Dell from 1998.

@Agriculture

It's absolutely not true that everybody buys gaming PCs with the intention of playing the latest beast of a game on them. One of the growth markets in computers is "budget gaming-capable PCs", the kind that can play some games but aren't going to run the latest and greatest on the highest settings.

That's exactly what I bought when I needed a new laptop a few years ago. I wanted something I could play things like Civilization and X-Com on and also use for work, and that's what I bought (a Lenovo Y40-80). It's the Switch of gaming laptops, with just enough power to do some good gaming on but definitely not the most powerful rig on the block. Suits my needs just fine.

My coworker was recently in the same boat, her main criterion was that it can play WoW. I don't remember what she ended up buying but it sure wasn't the biggest and baddest. She's a fairly hardcore gamer with many hundreds of hours in WoW and a lot of time in indie games like Stardew Valley, practically zero interest in power-sucking games like GoW or Destiny. Not everybody fits that mold that you seem so sure about.

This is why things like the Y40-80 and the Switch sell. AAA game publishers and hardware manufacturers would love you to believe that everybody wants the high-end, hardcore experience, but the reality is a lot of people enjoy games that are not nearly as demanding.

That is like comparing apples and oranges. I really dislike those kinds of comparisons. I have seen countless of times when people compares graphics cards that have 2x-3x times the performance of a console. Of course it is more expensive.

First, it is called ray tracing and it is a technical term so no need for TM.

Second, unless you are an early adopter, no one will buy those cards. Sure, they will become the new standard, and they will be in most games in the end but that will take a couple of years. At this time they are overpriced for what you get since you only get a modest increase in most games.

Btw, I am more interested in the new tensor cores, those can hopefully be used for some nifty things in the future. While ray tracing can make some parts of rendering more realistic, a real AI network can make the games feel more realistic.

I always click these titles knowing everyone knows the initial statement is utter nonsense, providing a place for open conversation towards whatever someone leads to grabs attention at a certain point in the thread.

Just passing by, smile and wave!

Then there's older games like The Sims 3 which are still pretty demanding. TS4 is less demanding then TS3 is. I was able to run TS4 easily with my tower's integrated graphics chip. But for TS3 I ended up needing to get a decent graphics card. Not a top tier one, but a good solid mid tier one.
Stuff not on Twitch tends to be Steam trash and indies that can run on a Dell from 1998.

Breath of the Wild is a great game, but as many people pointed out, it felt empty, especially in the towns were NPCs just stand there not interacting with anythings (the closest thing you'll get is a character walking towards where they're supposed to be). Nintendo is definitely resting on it's laurels if they think that will fly when all their completion have living worlds were characters are voice acted, interacts with the game world and have good facial animations.

Does everything they do print money?

The answer might surprise you.

But it did fly. In addition to its universal acclaim, the game has sold over 10 million copies. It's the highest selling Zelda game of all time. It's hard to say "this won't fly" when the game is selling two thousand copies a day.

@JasmineDragon And it also won Game of the Year AGAINST ****ing Horizon Zero Dawn, the personification of that "big interactive open-world game". Horizon Zero Dawn, as great of a game I'm sure it is, won absolutely no awards from The Game Awards. Nothing. As pointless and dumb these game awards are, the vast majority of games that won awards were Nintendo games, other Japanese games like Persona 5, and indies like Cuphead, all using "inferior technology".

Graphics are important but none of that matters much compared to the actual game itself, which Japanese/indie games REALLY succeed at.