Nintendo is self-sustainable, Apple is exerting a lot of influence among smaller studios with Arcade. Like Annapurna Interactive (which is nota bene funded by Oracle).
Nintendo is just two bad generations of hardware from being vulnerable enough to sell itself (IMO.)
They had only $4.3 billion cash on hand as of 2018 (surely more by now thanks to the success and maturation of the Switch.) But Microsoft just dropped a little less than double that on ZeniMax.
I wish Nintendo were in such a rock-solid place where I'd feel confident about them existing forever like Disney but I don't think that's ever been the case.
Edit- The people downvoting me have apparently already forgotten about the Wii U. Imagine if they had two such systems in a row, without the DS/3DS line as a profitable fallback. Such are the possibilities of the future.
When Nintendo's doing well, they're doing great, and everyone seems to forget the bad times. The GameCube era wasn't much better, but at least the GameCube and GBA were profitable/break even from their launches, as opposed to the Wii U and especially 3DS post-Ambassador price cut.
Would be interested in a discussion or any kind of rebuttal from others who are actually familiar with Nintendo's financial history.
To be clear: Nintendo as a company operated a loss from 2012-2015. An incompetent CEO could easily exacerbate that into a death spiral. Don't take Nintendo for granted, is all I'm saying.
It's a possibility but pivoting to software isn't easy by any stretch, and it wasn't something Sega should have even been able to do (financially.) The only reason it happened is because Sega's biggest debtor, Isao Okawa, forgave that debt on his deathbed.
In a slightly altered timeline where Okawa didn't do this, Sega would have went under and its IP's would have been sold piecemeal to the highest bidders.
Nintendo has famously large cash reserves rich and a quick Internet search suggests they have about 7 billion in cash. Things would have to go very badly for them to go out of business, especially as they can presumably issue new stock to help raise money for a pivot in some sort of doomsday scenario.
Over $4 billion cash on hand is an insane amount of money for such a small company. Nintendo is only about 4,000 employees worldwide, so that cash will go a very long way.
You're getting downvoted because you are talking from a place of objectivity. From my understanding (outside of the Wii U), aren't they the only company not losing money on consoles - even now? Why would you bring up "selling themselves" when talking about a company founded in 1889? None of the competitors existed that long - using your logic, Sony and Microsoft might as well count their last days.
"It eventually became one of the most prominent figures in today's video game industry, being the world's largest video game company by revenue"
I wish Nintendo would just take some ideas from other companies in the areas of online play and incorporate them into their own products. My friends and I would love to play Mario Kart on Switch with each other, but we can't be bothered to setup an additional voice chat solution and use the dumb lobby system. We also would like to play Mario Party online, but Mario Party Switch doesn't even offer its main game modes online, just a handful of mini games.
It's frustrating because there's a lot of untapped potential.
> Nintendo is self-sustainable, Apple is exerting a lot of influence among smaller studios with Arcade. Like Annapurna Interactive (which is nota bene funded by Oracle).
I feel Apple Arcade sucks. I recently subscribed, cause I thought maybe my daughter would enjoy it. But most of the games are still too hard for her. So then I tried to play some games on Arcade for myself, but can't say I enjoyed it. Played a few games for 15 - 30 minutes then got bored. There just seems to be very few -if any- really quality games on Apple Arcade, at least from my point of view.
A few days ago I ordered the Retroid Pocket 2 [0], I hope this device will help me get my gaming fix.
If the Retroid Pocket 2 provides me and my daughter with a fun experience, then later I'll order a 2nd one for my daughter. I believe old NES/SNES games are probably easier to play for a 3.5 year old child compared to most of Apple Arcade's offerings. My daughter can already handle a simple gamepad, so as long as the game doesn't use too many buttons (4 directions + A/B/X/Y), a game should be playable for her.
Apple's entire approach to gaming is broken. I tried to play various games on my iPad Pro and AppleTV recently and just getting a controller to work is a shitshow. Half the games that work with controllers have weird moments where you need to touch the screen.
It's fine for extremely casual or touch based games but doesn't work for anything serious.
> Have you tried any NES games lately? They're super hard! SNES games are better but they're still almost all very difficult.
NES games might be hard. I never really had a NES while I was young. But I do know for sure some SNES games that will be easy to play. E.g. Mario Kart & Unirally. There's some videos on YouTube that shows other games that are playable by young children [0]. Super Double Dragon isn't too complicated either I think and the Retroid Pocket 2 can be connected to a tv using HDMI cable and can use BLE to connect controllers. So that way I can play together with my daughter at the same time, to make it even easier for her.
Here's a video that suggests some NES games for children [1].
Annapurna Interactive has had their name on so many creative, well-done projects recently. I had no idea they received funding from Oracle, but quite frankly that just makes me think (somewhat) better of Oracle, not less of Annapurna.
I would never want it to happen because of how much I love Nintendo. But I have always thought if there is any gaming property Apple can really benefit from buying, it is Nintendo.
I mean, one of the founders (Megan Ellison) is Larry Ellison's daughter, I'm sure he helped it get started, but does Oracle as a company have any official activity with Annapurna?
