Comment by xattt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xattt | Hacker News Reader

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Nintendo had a conventional approach to gaming for a number of years. No microtransactions, skins, etc.

In the last decade, they’ve been aggressively pursuing emulator hobbyists and “making deals they couldn’t refuse” (Yuzu).

Recently, they started offering a “soundtrack” app as part of the benefits of Nintendo Online where you can listen to music from their first-party games. I see this as an administrative move to demonstrate active marketing of their properties, to delay their copyrights lapse (similar to Disney bringing Steamboat Willy to try to preserve a 100-year-old copyright).

Also see the Switch 2 tech demo app being sold rather than included. Can you imagine if Microsoft charged for the Windows XP tour, or Apple for the Tips app?

There is not one single aspect I can point to that makes you say “gotcha”, but micro-aggressions against fans seem to be adding up and tipping the scale away from a company that gives warm, fuzzy feelings deserving of fandom.

I don't know, I actually do somewhat get it.

If there is a product, you pay for the product. People do not respect, or value, things they do not pay for. Steve Jobs had a similar philosophy with refusing to offer free meals at Apple - subsidized meals was okay, free meals was not okay.

Having worked in a small business, I have seen painfully firsthand how giving customers free things almost always backfires and just creates extremely demanding customers. Look at how demanding customers are of Nintendo right now that the Welcome Tour be free; even though they would not be demanding it if Nintendo had just not made the Welcome Tour at all. They would be literally happier and less demanding if it had never been made, which is backwards.

On that note; Nintendo does have to somewhat be cautious about their intellectual property in ways other companies do not. We like to think of things as Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo; but this is an illusion. Apple makes four times as much money per year from mobile gaming than Nintendo does in entirety. Xbox and PlayStation have plenty of fallback cash from the rest of their respective companies; Nintendo is the smallest of the three and has no fallback option.

> Nintendo is the smallest of the three and has no fallback option

Nintendo reportedly has $15 billion in cash, while PlayStation and Xbox are both marginal

Framing Nintendo as "the small one" is funny :)

Sony has $20 billion of cash on hand as of December 2024, Microsoft has $70 billion of cash on hand, and Apple has $53 billion of cash on hand. If something goes south, the rest of the company can keep them afloat (and has in multiple cases, see Xbox 360 red ring); Nintendo has no such luxury.

Sony receives 38% of their revenue from PlayStation. Microsoft receives 8% of their revenue from Xbox. Apple's amount is four times larger than Nintendo, but insignificant to Apple. Nintendo, meanwhile, >90% at least comes from gaming-related activity (movie and toy licensing might be the exception).

Yes, Nintendo is the smallest, the most dependent on the industry, and it's not even close.

> Sony has $20 billion of cash on hand as of December 2024

Sony is $28 Billion in debt as of 2024 too

> Microsoft has $70 billion of cash on hand

Microsoft has $62 billion in debt

> Apple has $53 billion of cash on hand

I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader

How much debt is Nintendo in? (Hint- It's insignificant)

Now you can do the usual capitalist moron MBA shit and moan about how debt is good actually, but frankly

Nintendo is Japans most successful company and Sony isn't even in the top 300

Nintendo is real, Sony is a paper tiger

> Nintendo is Japans most successful company and Sony isn't even in the top 300

by what bizarro metric is Nintendo more successful than Toyota? debt to equity ratio is all you care about?

Successful may have been the wrong term, but Nintendo is (or was last year at least) Japan's richest company.

This is not a trivial thing

https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/713322

> debt to equity ratio is all you care about?

All I care about? No, but you cannot so easily dismiss it either

Companies, even huge ones, that are highly leveraged are in a precarious spot. A competitor could simply buy them, a bad product launch could lead to investors pulling out and the company being parted out and sold... Many industries are littered with the remains of huge, "untouchable" companies that were vulnerable because of their debt load

Companies having savings and low debt load is good for the company and its employees actually

It is only bad if you are a hyper capitalist investor idiot who doesn't care about the long term success of the company and just want to extract as much wealth as you possibly can for yourself before leaving it to crumble

So toyota made more in net income last quarter alone than nintendo has in net cash, but they're less successful? Seems like a really weird metric.

They also have way more debt than Nintendo's net cash so?

Businesses may be comfortable operating in massive debt but it's clearly only sustainable for so long

Businesses operating under the kinds of debt loads they take on are what leads to irresponsible government bailouts to keep "key industries" from collapsing when they are unable to service their debt

Sure, Toyota is "successful" until it isn't, and then their debt comes due and they can't pay so it collapses

We should be encouraging more companies to be responsible like Nintendo

> I have seen painfully firsthand how giving customers free things almost always backfires and just creates extremely demanding customers

I appreciate that. Running a small business is no small feat, and takes every bit of blood, sweat and tears to make it work.

I also want to draw contrasts to the indie music scene in the mid-aughts and the situation with Nintendo now. A number of bands had their music pirated or offered for free, but truly appreciated by fans. As a result, these bands saw at least moderate successes when they toured: fans saw the effort of touring as actual work, rather than nickel-and-diming.

Nintendo should be following this “indie” path (continue creating innovative games), rather than aggressive rent-seeking (legacy IP property protectionism).

I really don't buy that what worked for the indie music scene, has anything to do with how Nintendo does business. Piracy can, and does, have a serious impact on video game sales - about 20% fewer sales according to the University of North Carolina (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game...).

I also don't buy that Nintendo is forced into an either/or. Their strategy is to do both; and it seems to be working just fine.

> I see this as an administrative move to demonstrate active marketing of their properties, to delay their copyrights lapse (similar to Disney bringing Steamboat Willy to try to preserve a 100-year-old copyright).

Copyright doesn't work that way. You're thinking of trademark law, which only covers how you can name things in commerce, not what you can and can't copy.

The only thing about copyright that's use-it-or-lose-it is fair use, and only because of how English-language[0] legal systems work. You may have heard that Japan "doesn't have fair use", but what that really means is that they don't have binding precedent. This gives copyright owners an incentive to litigate novel reuses of their work early and often.

Nintendo, of course, is the kind of company that doesn't need an excuse to sue someone; but it does explain why they tend to be very slightly more litigious in common-law countries.

I imagine the real reason they released the soundtrack app is to keep third-parties out of their business. i.e. they don't have to pay 30% to Apple or deal with Spotify's shitty "pay out of a pot" system if their soundtracks are just an NSO benefit.

[0] Yes, I know this is "English-heritage" not "English-language", but in practice this is a language split.

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