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Nintendo To Smartphone Game Makers: You Can Only Gouge Our Players So Much (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki took a Wednesday opportunity to review one game maker's financial reports: CyberAgent Inc, maker of smartphone games like the Nintendo-published Dragalia Lost. This report, published at the end of January, made vague allusions to a single smartphone game dragging the company down. Quoting from the company's own English-language press release: "At the time of the original earnings forecast announcement on October 25, we looked a new game title made a good start [sic]. However, its performance is being slower than we expected as of today." That resulted in a whopping 20-percent drop in revenue expectations in the company's gaming sector, from 50 billion yen to 40 billion. Mochizuki pressed the company to confirm which game that was, and CyberAgent confirmed the game in question was indeed Nintendo's Dragalia Lost.
The company clarified things even further to the WSJ, alleging that Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally. "Nintendo is not interested in making a large amount of revenue from a single smartphone game," a CyberAgent representative told the WSJ. "If we managed the game alone, we would have made a lot more." When asked by the WSJ, Nintendo's Japanese arm replied with a statement that apparently confirms CyberAgent's allegation. "We discuss various things, not just limited to payments, to deliver high-quality fun to consumers," the Nintendo rep told the WSJ. The report says the reason why Nintendo's revenue goals for its entire smartphone-gaming sector are considered modest compared to other large Japanese publishers may be "because its smartphone games are positioned less to make oodles of cash and more to raise awareness of Nintendo's IP (which Nintendo will soon leverage with theme park attractions and a feature-length film)."
The company clarified things even further to the WSJ, alleging that Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally. "Nintendo is not interested in making a large amount of revenue from a single smartphone game," a CyberAgent representative told the WSJ. "If we managed the game alone, we would have made a lot more." When asked by the WSJ, Nintendo's Japanese arm replied with a statement that apparently confirms CyberAgent's allegation. "We discuss various things, not just limited to payments, to deliver high-quality fun to consumers," the Nintendo rep told the WSJ. The report says the reason why Nintendo's revenue goals for its entire smartphone-gaming sector are considered modest compared to other large Japanese publishers may be "because its smartphone games are positioned less to make oodles of cash and more to raise awareness of Nintendo's IP (which Nintendo will soon leverage with theme park attractions and a feature-length film)."
For those of you who made it to the final paragraph where they finally explain why Nintendo is "gouging" less than other game makers, it turns this whole story into a big "so what?"
The report says the reason why Nintendo's revenue goals for its entire smartphone-gaming sector are considered modest compared to other large Japanese publishers may be "because its smartphone games are positioned less to make oodles of cash and more to raise awareness of Nintendo's IP (which Nintendo will soon leverage with theme park attractions and a feature-length film)."
So for Nintendo, the benefit flowing from the game is both its own revenue stream and what amounts to advertising for other revenue streams. For all but a handful of game makers, the game itself is the only revenue stream they're going to have.
Jim Sterling - an independent game critic - has been harping on this issue for a few years and it's only gotten worse. The revenue expectations of game publishers are totally bizarre and outlandish. Which is one of the reasons asshole execs are bleeding the AAA industry dry of anything resembling artistic integrity or innovation. ActiBlizz is a husk of former glory days of Blizzard, famous studios get bought up, squeezed for the next open-world-live-service shite and then closed down. Even as revenues are through the roof and higher than ever before people get laid off and/or are still expected to risk their health on some death-march to some large release. At the same time shady tactics for squeezing even more money out of people move AAA publishers towards gambling companies and their shady business. (Star Wars Battlefield anyone?)
Game publishers are just about the worst right now and Nintendo whining that they "only" make 40 billion as opposed to 50 billion (give me an effing break) doesn't make them look to good either IMHO.
For all I care AAA publisher execs can go die in a fire, preferably one fired by all the obscene amounts of cash they can't get enough of.
F*ck this bullsh*t!
I'm sticking to well-aged titles, last-gen systems and indie studios.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Nintendo: "Back off! That's our job! And don't even dare consider using any of our IP under the fair use doctrine"
Hearing Nintendo complain about gouging surprised me so much that I almost knocked over my Amiibo collection with my $70 Switch controller!
I am not a sig.