Topic: We don`t need EA on Switch !!!

Whenever EA comes up I'm never sure whether I've got a metaphorical brick in my hand ready to launch through their windows (I visualise EA as an abandoned 19th century mill with a few panes of glass still intact for vandals to hit) or whether it's actually a piece of metaphorical dirt ready to throw onto their coffin as it's lowered into the ground.

Either way it's a bit sad. They were truly great once and if that body gets lowered into the ground it takes a lot of fantastic (but very long in the tooth) IPs with it.

They are still important because they have the development expertise to manufacture and sell licensed sports games (and they have the exclusive licenses that in some sports makes any meaningful competition basically impossible). However Nintendo can succeed without them and I am not their audience. I'd much rather the audience for videogames diverge as far from EA as possible if I'm honest.

Sorry for taking so long to respond... Super busy Finals week and all. And I should still be studying right now. lol

I've been using mods and CC for so long in The Sims that I'm not even sure that it would be recognizable without them. The Sims 3 - the one I play the most, has some major programming issues, and modders set out to fix that so we can enjoy the game as it should have been to begin with. The most glaring example is with Story Progression in TS3. If you play without a mod to fix it, the game will stop bringing babies and children into the neighborhood and you'll end up with a dying neighborhood.

So that's just one huge example. I need to get back to studying, but thought I would respond, even if it was super late.

@MarcelRguez I would imagin he is also right about a lot of eastern European countries too as Nintendo doesn't do particularly well there either, but these markets are so small, look at the video games market as a whole in both UK and Germany (Germany also loves Nintendo) compared to Spain and Italy + some Eastern European countries then you will see why Nintendo doesn't really market their products in these countries too well, they honestly don't need to, the UK gaming market alone is bigger than both Spain's and Italy's put together, it would cost you the same to market your product in each country, but your return would be much bigger from the UK.

@MarcelRguez Yep defo a chicken and egg situation to a degree in that if Nintendo decides to start effectively marketing their products in those countries, they would see a slice of the pie that Sony has access to currently in countries like Spain and Italy, But im more inclined to think that there are more than these factors at play here such as cultural differences as well.

But also look at this picture as a whole, not just Nintendo but gaming in general Sony included, while Spain's gaming market is strong, its no where near as big as the UK's or Germany's. That wont change anytime soon.

for arguments sake here are the numbers from the 2016 reports

Spain gaming market as a whole valued at $1.8B
Germany gaming market valued at $4.1 billion
UK gaming market valued at $6.0~ billion

The UK's valuation was done in British Pounds whereas others where done in Dollars so my conversion might be off, the figure was £4.3 billion. To put this in further perspective, if it costs you 3 million dollars to market your product in both UK and Spain, but your return from UK will be more than 3 times as much, why would you spend the 3 million to market Spain when you can just use that 3 million to better the experience for those in the UK to ensure they keep coming back, as your market there would be bigger anyway.

If you manage to capture 1/3rd of the gaming market in the UK with 3 million dollars then you will have earned the entire value of Spain's gaming market as a whole (more than $2 billion) - if you do the same in Spain you will get less than 1/6th of the available profit from the UK. if you decide to only market to the UK, strengthening your 1/3rd to around 40%-50%. you will be passing the entire value of Spain's whole gaming market. Which you could never possibly get 100% of anyway.

One could argue that "profit is profit" but you could also argue that your profits from one will be too big for you to consider marketing to another.

This is why Sony are bleeding money and Nintendo are making money

@Razer I'm pretty sure that Sony's PlayStation brand is more profitable than Nintendo. Even their revenue from PS+ alone was more than the entirety of what Nintendo made last year.

@Octane this statement is hugely incorrect but i'll tell you why in a moment. I dont mean Playstation, i mean Sony.

Sony as a business are losing money on every single division except their gaming market, their movie industry lost 1 billion this year alone large in part due to poor marketing.

So the reason why this statement is wrong is simply because looking at Sony as a business (all divisions included, mobile, entertainment, electronic, Gaming ect...) is worth $48 billion.

Nintendo as a whole (only does gaming, nothing else but video games) is valued at around $49.5 billion

I dont know how much Sony's gaming division is but i know its not as big as Nintendo's or as profitable. Sony might make more money from game sales but they wont make as much profit, Nintendo spends less than Sony to make their games, MUCH less, and they spend less marketing their products, as Sony does a lot of useless marketing that goes nowhere and Nintendo sell their games for the same or more than Sony = much higher profit

@StuTwo Terrible analogies. We all know EA looks more like this:

@Rusted_Gold EA doesn't really have any great developers under their control anymore. They bought a bunch of formerly great studios, but most of them they shut down and consumed the IPs, and others they folded into EA corporate, replaced most of the management structure, and had MASSIVE turnovers of staff (after a long period of genuine abuse.) They have great NAMES....but those names exist in the same way Rare exists post-Microsoft, while the real staff are at Playtonic. Their indie publishing program is the real deal (and is actually targeting Switch, anyway....so it may be a win-win) but their corporate studios.... they really do look like StuTwo's 19th century abandoned mill with a few panes of glass left.

it really comes down to their deadlock on sports licenses. But as to if Switch needs those...the sales of FIFA and NBA suggest the answer is probably no. The attach rate isn't all that impressive. If people that have switches aren't buying those games, fewer still are buying Switches FOR those games. It's entirely realistic that EA Sports' market and Nintendo's market don't significantly overlap in a way that's meaningful for either company.

@Razer You were talking about profits, now you're talking about the value of the entire company. Pick one.

@Octane actually if you read the last part i talked about profit as well.

"Nintendo spends less than Sony to make their games, MUCH less, and they spend less marketing their products, as Sony does a lot of useless marketing that goes nowhere and Nintendo sell their games for the same or more than Sony = much higher profit"

To further explain what i mean, Nintendo have streamlined their marketing to be more effective (targetting more profitable markets like i explained in more detail on an earlier post), therefore costing them less to market a product that is valued at same as or more than their competitor.

Also due to the high specs on the PS4, games especially AAA games are vastly more expensive to create whereas Nintendo's are a lot cheaper, also take into account that many of Nintendo's big hitting exclusives are made from their own in-house software development teams, further driving down costs of developing games for their systems (case in point is both Mario and Zelda), while Sony's are mostly outsourced to other development studios. which further drives up the cost of creating games for Sony and drives down the profit margin.

all this in a nutshell means that Nintendo is more profitable than Sony, which would make sense as they are as a business valued more than Sony.

@Octane Your earlier statement was at one stage correct but that was a long time ago during the mid 00's when their PS2 console was at its peak, they also had the PSP on market, it did lose to the DS but was hugely profitable in its own right, they just bought out Ericsson phone brand to make their own phones that were hugely popular at the time, their laptops were good too, they were making profitable movies (first Spider-man trilogy, Bad Boys 2 e ct...).

at that stage Sony was valued at 70~ billion.

Since then, movies went down the pan, PS3 actually lost Sony a lot of their market value, as it wasn't profitable for the first 2.5 years of its life, by which point Sony's share values had degraded so much that any profit it would make after would not recoup the loses (they actually finished 3rd in the last console wars). The PSN hacking cost them dearly too, they have had to discontinue their laptops and their phones are bleeding money right now.

PS Vita was the metaphorical equivalent to Sony running head first into a brick wall with spikes on it without a helmet. no reason or design, it makes virtually no business sense to do what they did with the PS Vita. None at all.

Then there's their electronics departments, TV's are not profitable as a venture for any business anymore, they cost so much to make, the technology lasts way too long and doesn't yield fast turn overs (TV's last sometimes for 10 years without needing to be replaced.) and most other electronic devices radios are a neesh that nobody cares about. Their speakers or headphones are a joke compared to Beats or Bose

Sony's only profit spinners right now are Asian finance consultancy firm that is apparently insanely profitable as a business and their PS4, which as of the last month has been cannibalized in its native home by the Switch.

@premko1 Exactly, because there are few AAA third party games on Switch. If EA and others were to bring more of their games over, then there would be more mass-market appeal on the Switch (although at the rate Switch is selling at, maybe it already has mass-market appeal?)
@GrailUK I'm ignoring the microtransaction aspect, since I feel the average Joe doesn't notice or care about that (though micro transactions are terrible). They just want FIFA to play with their mates, so those sort of games I feel would benefit Switch. Switch is doing well, but it wouldn't hurt to have those games.

It would hurt anyone who has a gambling issue. Maybe including kids who would not have a gambling issue before this.

: /

: /////////////////////////////////////

Man, this thread looks less "typical Nintendo fan bashing publishers who jumped off the Wii U ship" and more "no, we want this awful company doing horrible things away from our console, we're better than this" every day. At least to me it does. How much does your company have to suck that Nintendo fan complaining is the smart, and clear moral high ground?

@Razer
"Sony's only profit spinners right now are Asian finance consultancy firm that is apparently insanely profitable as a business and their PS4, which as of the last month has been cannibalized in its native home by the Switch."

Sooo...
Basically, whatever Sony did , it will never safe their company from Financial loss, because of Switch success ?

@kkslider5552000
Just ignore premko1, he just want to provoke anybody here to start hate EA and boycott EA whatever reasons.

@Anti-Matter

Well if you had read all my post i explained that Sony has many other divisions which are losing money, the Switch really shouldn't effect Sony sales too much because most people who have a PS4 will also buy a Switch. But the Switch will still make more money because Nintendo's profits are larger due to their smaller overheads (production, marketing, development ect... All cost less for Nintendo as i explained).

To really answer your question, Sony can still make it out of this and become big again if they turn their other business ventures around (which they have actually started doing as of earlier this year), if they start making good movies, music and good mobile phones like they use to then they can make a good profit.

Sony do make money from the PS4 but not as much money as Nintendo makes. It doesn't mean that Sony can't be successful because Sony has many other divisions which can make money.

They just need to be clever again, Sony have made some seriously flawed decisions before 2017 evening within gaming, like the Ghostbusters remake in 2016... The PS Vita and Sony's huge failure to capitalize on the digital age as they were positioned so well in the market to do so before Apple, Samsung and even before them Nokia (this has been well documented in the technology world).

Sony can make money, it doesn't depend on the Switch, it depends on themselves to bring back their other projects. You just have to look at a 20 year flow chart of Sony's market value to realize they have been on nearly a decade long decline that has only recently started to get better.

But the good news is that Sony have started to pick things up again, their movies are not so bad, they made a good choice to let Disney use Spiderman and they started doing ok with music again too so maybe by next year this time they will be back on the right track.

I hate EA with a passion. They have little to no respect for consumers and poison everything they touch.

Sadly they own the license for Star Wars games though and I really would like a Star Wars game on the Switch (ideally a Rogue Squadron collection or KOTOR); so if they were to release one I'd be forced to buy it.

In the end I believe having more third parties around, even EA, will ultimately contribute to the switch success. As always its up to the consumer to decide what to do with their money. I hate EA so I wont buy them - should they happen to publish a very awesome game with no hidden fees that I am excited about - I might give them a chance as I have given ubi with mario rabbids. Otherwise I dont want to spoil my collection with EAs label ☺
I dont even know what kind of games they have these days , except fifa of course.