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Comment by mathgladiator | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking about nintendo the other day. It boiled down to this: If they produce a new original zelda game on a new console, then I'd pay $300 for it. They have me by the nostalgia balls so to speak.

If they made a Zelda game for iOS for $9.99, then I'd buy it.

Why would they sell something for $9.99 when they could sell it for $300?

What about secondary markets. Not everyone has an iPhone. Some kids are just getting game boy advances. It's going to take a while for Nintendo's brand to die off, and they have time to wow us with great games.

Fools like me will give them money for a chance to reconnect with my childhood.

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> Why would they sell something for $9.99 when they could sell it for $300?

Because there could be hundreds of other people who don't act and think like you for every one that does.

Simple answer: Scale.

There are maybe 1000 people like you. About 80 million potential customers at the 9.99 price point.

It remains to be seen if the app store model can support games with the kind of production costs a game like Zelda incurs. So far it looks a lot more like flash games for $1.

They could start with porting their existing games like Square Enix and others did. But the question is whether they want their titles to remain exclusive.

I think if they want to remain a giant, they'd continue with what they do and strive for a next breakthrough. Whether they will succeed is another question.

If they give up the exclusivity of their own titles and move on to software-only like Sega (or maybe a combination of their own hardware platform + publishing to other platforms), they might still be great in the industry, but there'd be many alongside them.

Following the Sega path would not be a good idea IMHO. They would be like you said one game editor among many, wouldn't have control over the platform and loose intimate knowledge of the system games runs on.

And last but not least, they'd loose media coverage and brand power. There are only three big console brand, they get free media coverage when they sneeze while Sega happened to be talk about from time to time, when someone remember they still exists.

Sega had no choice, it reconverting or die. Nintendo don't have to (yet) and I hope they won't. IMHO, it's just typical handwaiving of greedy short-sighted investor that want a higher ROI, now, regardless of what's better for the company. Yeah the mobile game pie is larger then the console one but would the marketshare achievable by Nintendo's game be bigger than on an exclusive console ?

I think the app store can definitely support games that are $20 or $30. Already Square has released several titles approaching $20 in price, and they have been very successful.

Nintendo is leaving money on the table because of NIH (not invented here) syndrome and their shareholders have a right to be disappointed.

Calls for Nintendo to produce for iOS sound like those criticisms of Apple in the 90s where pundits suggest they ship Windows machines.

Nintendo is all about their franchises, and millions buy their consoles just to play Zelda or Mario. They'd dilute their brand and cannibalize their console sales if they began producing for iOS.

Or as an economist might put it: demand is highly elastic with regard to price.

From what you are saying it sounds like you'd buy both. Also, in the context of kids; people should be thinking of the iPod touch as the direct competitor to the GameBoy and a lot of kids have iPods.

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