Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere.
Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere.
We're actually at a point where some Switch games will even run on smartphones.
"They have little to no moat apart from copyright law protecting their IPs"
There, I rephrased it for you. It is actually one hell of a moat.
For something like 20,000 years we were all shared owners of our legends and stories, and recently that's changed. It doesn't make sense to me that the kids that grew up on pokemon are prevented by law from making their own stories, art, and games about this shared cultural history.
This idea that the corporation that spawned the thing "owns" the idea is absurd. The creation is borne of the input of our culture, the output belongs to the culture. If you wanna do a capitalism in there 20 years should be more than enough time to do so. 70 years or whatever the USA is at now is absurd, madness.
Public domain "IP" had lead to phenomenal art that's been capitalistically profitable. Sherlock Holmes, multiple profitable movies, tv shows, and videogames. Greek mythology, multiple award winning videogames and movies, same for Norse mythology.
Those laws still exist irrespective of how recent they are in relation to human existence however, and they are very much enforced by the powers that be, to the benefit of capital holders. Saying that it gives Nintendo "little to no moat" is a ridiculous statement.
They waged war against Famiclones in the past - see NTDEC (which had trademarks involved, since NTDEC stands for "Nintendo Electronic Company") and Power Player Super Joy III cases. However, they did lose the PocketFami case (in Japan, mind you) due to patents expiring and the fact it does not come with built-in games.