How Nintendo could (but won’t) make more money

Big N isn’t looking too hot.

Last week, Nintendo dropped its forecast of Wii U units that it will sell by the end of the fiscal year from 9 million to a mere 2.8 million. The great news that the 3DS was 2013’s best-selling gaming system was overshadowed by the fact Nintendo also overestimated its expected sales by several million.

Overall, Nintendo believes it will not longer earn 100 billion yen, adjusting its forecast to a 35 billion yen loss. This would be gaming’s oldest remaining console-maker’s third-consecutive year losing money.

Nintendo is still sitting on a Scrooge McDuck bin or two of cold, hard cash from the ridiculous profits they made from the original Wii and DS, so don’t pay the Henny Penny’s of the blogosphere any heed when they say the house that Mario built should quit consoles and specialize in games; that’s just another case of Sega does what Nintendon’t.

While Nintendo is known for shaking things up and taking risks (see aforementioned Wii and DS money piles), they’re also known for pig-headedly sticking to their guns. What follows is a list of things I think will make Nintendo money or at least make what they have more successful. However, I do not expect for a second that they will do a single one of them.

1. Unify the Virtual Console

Don’t hold back releases on the VC just to differentiate products. There are 11 million more 3DSs in the wild than Wii U’s, meaning that’s 11 million more potential sales for each and every game Nintendo, for whatever foolish, dogmatic reason, refuses to allow on a handheld. The 3DS should be home to every VC game for every system the hardware can handle, which should easily cover everything up to the N64.

Also, there’s NO REASON why Game Boy games must ONLY be on the 3DS. If somebody with a Wii U wants to buy Kirby’s Dream Land 2, Nintendo should just shut up and take their money. The idea that VC games from handhelds should only appear on a handheld’s VC (a holdover from the Wii’s questionable no-Game Boy VC policy) is just as obnoxious as Apple’s former love affair with skeuomorphism.

2. Catch up VC releases

The games available on the Virtual Console in this generation are still slim pickings compared to what the Wii had. This is, sadly, due to each game on the Virtual Console containing unique programming (including a stand-alone emulator wrapper) in addition to the ROM image. Making a standalone, console-specific VC program that can be fed vanilla ROM images from the eStore (which then can be populated neigh instantly and simultaneously for all VC-using consoles) is not impossible, as private programers already have demonstrated. No need to overthink or overengineer these things if you aren’t going to give them the wonderful “3D classics” treatment SEGAs best arcade games have been getting.

…and 3D versions of what was shovelware 30 years ago doesn’t count, Urban Champion.

3. Continue supporting the Wii

While the 3DS represents 11 million more potential customers for digital products, the Wii outnumbers its successor by 97 million. Considering how big the pent-up demand for Earthbound was, you’d think Nintendo of America would want to maximize sales by allowing as many people as possible to buy it. I strongly doubt anybody would be willing to buy a $300 to $350 console to play an 18-year old game, not matter how much of a cult classic it has become over time. But apparently Nintendo of America thought it would drive Wii U adoption or else use its low sales to justify not releasing Mother and Mother 3?

In any case, there’s still a market there. It’s not as big as it would have been had Nintendo not put the thing on life support for more than a year leading up to the Wii U (because giving up on a product does such wonderful things for revenue), but there’s still money to be made there with a minimal investment.

4. Open the VC floodgates

Okay, last time hitting the VC. But there’s so much money-making stuff they COULD be doing with it, but aren’t. With no more disc-based Game Cube backwards compatibility, the Wii U would be the perfect home to digitized Game Cube games. We also already know Nintendo can swing downloadable GBA games on the 3DS, but has said they will not do so.

WHY? Don’t you want need money, Nintendo?

There’s a lot of product here that could make some easy cash with minimal effort, even if they still hold back the Ambassador Program games. For that matter, DS games work perfectly fine on a 3DS too. Digitize the first-party new classics and push some impulse buys on obsolete versions of Brain Age and Nintendogs, or even long out-of-print titles like Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Electroplankton or Metroid Prime Pinball.

5. Eliminate region locking across the board

Apart from four Virtual Console-related points in a row, the going theme of these suggestions has been avoiding missing potential sales. This one is huge. Whenever Nintendo of America (or, in a shocking twist, Nintendo of Europe) fails to release a game in their region, it can be imported from another region. The players get to play their games, and unit sales go up. Win-win! Happier customers and more money for Nintendo. Not to mention more sales and money for third-party developers, who will then release more games when they make more profit. This can be done even to old consoles with firmware updates, so perhaps new pressings of Trace Memory 2 and Fatal Frame 4 may yet be in order (which is wishful thinking even for this list).

6. Create a single, unified online shop

Nintendo already has begun this process by unforking eShop currency (except Wii points, alas. I have 300 left over I’ll still never use. Get on that!) and joining disparate 3DS and Wii U accounts through Club Nintendo in an unusually savvy use of existing resources to solve an old problem. It’s a good start, but these things should never have been separate to begin with.

Nintendo needs to take this cue from Sony, who elegantly manages a single marketplace for two consoles and two handhelds. Not splitting the eShops has the secondary effect of minimizing the expenses of keeping the shop open for legacy systems. Considering how nearly every online service has come to an end for the Wii, Nintendo’s current plan is to just cut it off completely. The standalone Wii shop, which could be a source of income, however trickling, for years to come, probably won’t last much longer, either.

7. Create a single, unified online multiplayer medium

Nintendo’s done online before with several of their titles, so they have experience doing one-off implementations of online multiplayer (with mixed results). They need to take the next step forward and build a robust generic online infrastructure that all of their multiplayer games can take advantage of, finally putting their offerings on par with Sony and Microsoft. Certain third-party developers have come out and stated that the lack of such support has either turned them off developing for the Wii U or made their efforts more difficult. Which brings us to the next point…

8. Pay attention to the competition!

Also known as “Know your own damn industry!”

The bottom line is, and the reason I don’t expect any of these to actually happen, is that Nintendo places more importance on the abstract dogma of “being Nintendo” than being competitive. Somewhere along the way, they forgot those two things aren’t always one and the same.

Nintendo developers can’t be kept in a vacuum or a bunker. They will not be tainted or spoiled with knowledge of the outside world. They cannot keep the company competitive (or existent) in a dynamic industry by trying to exist outside it.

That revelation that Nintendo developers have never seen or heard of any of Microsoft’s or Sony’s online systems was beyond ridiculous, but it explains so much of what’s gone wrong. When a competitor does something better than you, and has been for almost a decade, you need to buck up and do better. And Nintendo dogmatically robs itself of the chance to even know about such situations, and does so at its own peril.

9. Squash brand confusion and boost advertising

Iwata Asks. The Nintendo Channel. The Big N is no stranger to marketing. Unfortunately, they’re spending all their budgets on things only existing customers ever see instead of putting word on the street.

When a non-franchise game that’s supposed to be a blockbuster and system-mover is released, it needs a very high profile to be a success.

Did you ever see an ad of any kind for what should have been a new hardcore darling, The Wonderful 101? Would you have known it existed/when it was released without having read a review or preview on a gaming website?

This is but one of the marketing problems marring Nintendo this generation. They’re holding back on advertising and choosing iterative names for their hardware. While it’s too late to change the name of the 3DS and Wii U, they could have at least avoided muddying the waters further with the name of the 2DS. Or the 3DEES fruit gummies.

Still, more competent and omnipresent advertising can help address the fact that these are new systems that people might want to upgrade to. Yes, more advertising costs more money, but this is money they SHOULD have been spending all along. While fixing the door is less effective after the Yoshis escaped the barn, Wii U sales are sufficiently anemic it couldn’t possibly result in any fewer.

10. Make many more apps for other platforms

Making and selling their own iOS Pokedex was a no-brainer considering how popular less-than-official Nintendo apps are. There is a demand for Nintendo-related content on iOS and Android, no question about it. Nintendo should go ahead and create more “accessory” programs and sell as many as they can; using them as marketing for the “good stuff” on the 3DS and Wii U.

11. Nintendo is good at iterating except when it isn’t

For many of their IPs, Nintendo has kept to a general rule of releasing only one game for each console. I hope you like the upcoming Wii U Mario Kart, because you won’t get a sequel without a new console.

While yearly editions of these (or any) games are very unnecessary (though 2D Mario seems to be on that schedule lately), I don’t think having a new Smash Bros. every 3 years instead of every 7 will hurt their quality.

One thing Nintendo seems to lack is the shear manpower to keep HD projects going. The Wii U is inching closer to its second year, and there hasn’t even been announcements of new games in half (or more!) of Nintendo’s system-making franchises. No Metroid, no Zelda, no F-Zero, no (first-party) Fire Emblem, no Star Fox, no U Wars, no Kirby, no Rhythm Heaven, no Custom Robo (if that one was even on your radar). The Paper Mario series even got bumped from console to handheld (perhaps where Kirby will now spend all of his days, too).

Remakes and spinoffs can only tide us over so long, Zelda. It’s plenty bad when a Nintendo console lacks third-party support, but it’s downright apocalyptic when it lacks first-party support, too. Nintendo should use its cache of cash to double-down on development staff and get more games cranking.

And perhaps it’s time to raid the closet again for some fresh gaming experiences. Kid Icarus and Punch-Out!! made some big comebacks, perhaps it’s time to revisit Wave Race, StarTropics or Mother? Heck, you put the Ice Climbers in Super Smash Bros. Melee. That sounds as likely candidate as any for the latest sequel-to-a-forgotten-NES-game-that-nobody-asked-for if Clu Clu Land of Lolo doesn’t get remade first.

12. NoA/NoE need to take (localization) matters into their own hands

While it’s cute that Reggie misses Dragon Quest games too, he could crack a few whips and make no fewer than three of them come to North America today should he decide to.

There’s plenty of unused games left in Nintendo of Japan’s quiver. It almost hurts me to state this, but go ahead and leverage an improved eShop to offer the riskier or more outdated games as digital-only goods. As much as I advocate for and demand physical copies, I’m still buying Ace Attorney 5 and Trails in the Sky II digitally because doing so is preferable to never playing them.

Nintendo should examine what other companies aren’t publishing themselves, and take these projects on if they think they’ll sell even a few. Nintendo of America has examples of doing this sprinkled all over their history, from Mega Man VI on the NES to the hot-selling Dragon Quest IX on the DS.

Sure, this reputation hit a huge and unnecessary snag near the end of the Wii’s lifespan, but Operation Rainfall proved that with actual exposure (remember that earlier bit about the importance of marketing?), games can create fanbases out of nothing, sell in bunches and turn a tidy profit for publishers.

13. Make the eventual next-gen console using x86 architecture

This will streamline porting from the PS4, XbOne and their successors, leading to a more robust third-party lineup due to the minimal investment it’ll take to port games (justdDon’t forget the online multiplayer infrastructure, too).

Also, have every VC game ready at launch. It’ll be easy as pie to do after coding a new emulator, as Nintendo can just use vanilla ROMs that they already replaced the weird, one-system-only versions with. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?

Status report

Just finished: Bioshock Infinite, Bravely Default (demo), Game Dev. Tycoon, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Peggle, Star Command, Super Motherload

Just Started: Costume Quest, Ultimate Marvel v. Capcom 3

Still Playing: Diablo III, Dragon Quest IX, DuckTales Remastered, Final Fantasy VI Advance (CES Dragon’s Den), Final Fantasy XIII, NewER Super Mario Bros. Wii, Sonic Generations (PS3), Star Trek: Online, The Last of Us

Lagging behind: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, Metroid: Other M, Persona 3: FES, Starcraft: Brood War, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, Torchlight, Wii Sports Resort