7. Need To Learn From Steam And Others
Valve have proven in recent years that it is possible to exist in todays gaming landscape as an alternative to Microsoft and Sony. Their approach to Steam has been a welcome breath of fresh air to gamers and numbers indicate that it recently surpassed 7million concurrent users. There's no reason why Nintendo can't take a look at the things that Steam has done right and implement them in its own E-Shop which is miles behind the competition. Steam's pricing and interface are extremely user friendly while its achievement system inspires gamers to complete the titles in their library, allowing new games to do well as well as allowing older titles to gain a new lease of life. Nintendo are the perfect company to take advantage of such a system. With a massive back catalogue to work with, Nintendo could revitalize these years of games by just putting some real effort into the whole thing whether through a new interface akin to Steam or modeling their existing E-Shop after it. Imagine a Nintendo service where you could play through the entire old Nintendo library, gaining achievements and sharing your progress with friends. This could also allow multiplayer on classic Nintendo titles, meaning you could play fan favorites like Mario Kart 64 all over again enjoying it online against others. Of course this means that Nintendo would also need to completely revamp the way they approach game pricing. Currently, most classic NES titles on the E-Shop are around £3-£5, which is a shocking number for games that came out decades ago. This is especially crazy in a world where emulation is so easy to figure out. Not that I would condone such behavior. Nintendo can also take inspiration (and comfort) in the fact that in recent years, Sony has also had to take a long hard look at how they do business. It found itself in a similar situation to Nintendo but responded with a quick and somewhat ruthless business plan that Nintendo may need to take a look at. Unlike Nintendo, Sony realised that gaming had become huge business in the US and Europe and took steps to make sure they followed the trend away from the usually booming Asian market. Most notably, Western markets got the PlayStation 4 way before Asia simply because they are now a much bigger market for Sony. While Nintendo has always done huge business in Japan, Nintendo's president Iwata recently admitted that he has an antenna for Asia but seemingly misjudged the rest of the gaming world. Surely this sends a message to Nintendo that it might be time to look further outside their own borders and think about restructuring their Western business model.