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Discussion Nintendo: "Switch business has exceeded our expectations", plans to expand game development capability by $900m, $2.7bn for theme parks, stores

Caviar said:
I'm not educated in this area so maybe I'm just not understanding the business sense in investing billions of dollars in retail when retail is dying. They want to be Apple so bad.


lol
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I think retail is dying in the sense that it doesn't make sense to have a store on every high street but the Nintendo Stores at the moment also act as tourist hotspots.
 
Chris Walken said:
You know whats next Nintendo, stop creating gymmic new consoles, focus on what works and people want and expand your software input by increasingyour developers or acquiring new ones.
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I think the next nintendo console should only be played with your feet
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
It's going to be interesting to see how much of an increase this actually is, over what timespan and in which areas. Nintendo has seen steady growth over the Switch era: NCL went from 2133 at the launch of the system to 2621 today, globally they went from ~5000 to ~6700 in the same timespan. As for specific examples, we already know that Monolith Soft and to a lesser extent Retro Studios have grown during this time. Obviously, the acquisition of NLG also meant an increase of their workforce. This additional investment is quite large but the wording makes it hard to predict how soon we're going to see its effects. Is this over 5 years? 10 years? More?

One large focus is obviously going to be EPD itself. We've known about some projects stalling or being put aside due to their lower priority. But people at Nintendo have also warned against explosive growth because they fear it would dilute their culture. It's going to be a challenge to balance this with the necessary growth but the unprecedented strength of their games in legacy IP like Mario and Zelda plus their ability to make 10m+ sellers like Splatoon and Ring Fit definitely warrants more investment. And if the rumours about an EPD-developed Donkey Kong are true it indicates that they are bringing some larger IP back into the fold.

Even though they don't rule out M&As, I think it's pretty unlikely that this money will go towards them simply because none of their current partners warrant an acquisition. Of course, this can change at any time if the owners want to sell as it was the case with NLG. But I don't think you can plan for that unless one of their partners has already expressed interest in selling. There are several potential partners that could be great fits but we already know that Nintendo is acquisition-averse.

Personally I hope that they continue investing in NST, Retro and Next Level Games. I already said back when NLG was acquired that they have the chance to create a network of developers that they can flexibly place on projects as they see fit, the same way they do in Japan already. In Tokyo I see a lot of potential in EPD 8 sharing a building with Game Freak and HAL (as well as PTD and 1-Up Studio).
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Yeah, one lesson of the pandemic might be that they do need to increase development capacity and efficiency outside of Japan and right now, with the acquisition of NLG in Canada and with Retro and NST already being based in the States, that's where inward investment makes a lot of sense.

I'd really like to see investment head to NERD, and I'm sure at least some investment will, but there's less potential there to create a development hub or network purely because there's no other Nintendo-owned presence in Europe. Maybe they could invest and give NERD and NoE more producing capacity and capacity to handle more externally developed games in Europe.

But certainly this suggests the investment and rearrangement which has been obvious in some places (Monolith Soft, EPD 8 moving into a new facility shared by multiple studios) is going to continue and ramp up.
 
Oregano said:
I think retail is dying in the sense that it doesn't make sense to have a store on every high street but the Nintendo Stores at the moment also act as tourist hotspots.
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Yeah, I know people that want to go to New York just to visit the Nintendo Store.
 
storres said:
Yeah, I know people that want to go to New York just to visit the Nintendo Store.
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Yeh there is absolutely no reason there should not be flagship Nintendo stores in many more locations, Europe is totally ignored but London / Paris / Berlin etc should all have one. It should have already happened really. Like, look at the Pokemon pop up store in London recently - ques around the block every single day lol the demand is sky high for Nintendo merch
 
Chris Walken said:
You know whats next Nintendo, stop creating gymmic new consoles, focus on what works and people want and expand your software input by increasingyour developers or acquiring new ones.
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You know what you should be doing, Nintendo? TURNING INTO SONY!
 
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Terrell said:
@Dardan Sandiego I don’t think “acquisition-averse” is the correct framing. They engage in conditional acquisitions, which is important for the reasons they engage in them.
For Nintendo, M&As aren’t about IPs or patents or even technologies. They’re about talent and expertise. So when you engage in M&As for those reasons, you have to be able to keep the whole reason to acquire. That means quality talent that wants to work with Nintendo and is eager for acquisition.
This is why NLG was acquired, ownership was ready to sell and NLG had already decided to only take contracts with Nintendo as far back as 2014(?), so the talent was eager, obviously capable and the opportunity arose.

So long as conditions are met, no M&A is out of bounds, but those conditions are not always easy to meet. When they are, though? Yeah, they do it with little to no second thought.

And there’s nothing stopping them from building new studios outside Kyoto, either, albeit carefully.
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I don't think it's an unfair assessment to say that they prefer not to acquire developers in most cases. It doesn't mean that they will never ever acquire other devs but we haven't really seen them go out of their way to expand through M&As the way other large companies do. They have maintained partnerships over several decades with companies like IS, HAL, SRD etc. Any other corporation would have bought these smaller companies a long long time ago. I'm not saying this is a bad thing but NLG's owners selling feels like the classic example of Nintendo's hand being forced or risk losing a valuable partner. The fact that the impetus came from NLG rather than Nintendo is crucial imo.
 
Chris Walken said:
You know whats next Nintendo, stop creating gymmic new consoles, focus on what works and people want and expand your software input by increasingyour developers or acquiring new ones.
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People really seem to dig the gimmick of taking your console games on the go.
 
Skittzo said:
Ring Fit Adventure of course
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really-shocked.gif
 
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Guaraná said:
I guess it will take at least 5 years for us to start seeing the results of this investment
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Raccoon said:
totally, maybe even longer. several years of expansion, then several years for the output increase to be perceptible
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They've been expanding their studios since like 2017 though. It's unclear exactly what the time frame of this $900M expansion will be, it's very likely already been happening behind the scenes for a while.
 
Skittzo said:
They've been expanding their studios since like 2017 though. It's unclear exactly what the time frame of this $900M expansion will be, it's very likely already been happening behind the scenes for a while.
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Over the next five years.
www.nikkei.com

任天堂、開発内製化などに4500億円　5年めど - 日本経済新聞

任天堂は5日、ゲーム機「ニンテンドースイッチ」関連ビジネスを中心に2027年3月期までの5年間をめどに最大4500億円を投じる計画を明らかにした。カギを握るのはゲーム開発の内製化だ。コンテンツ制作力を高めるため人材の採用や育成に力を入れる。オンライン会員向けのインフラ整備にも充て、次の成長につなげる。同日、経営方針説明会を開き、手元資金の一部を成長投資に振り向ける戦略を明らかにした。古川俊太郎
www.nikkei.com www.nikkei.com
 
oracion said:
Over the next five years.
www.nikkei.com

任天堂、開発内製化などに4500億円　5年めど - 日本経済新聞

任天堂は5日、ゲーム機「ニンテンドースイッチ」関連ビジネスを中心に2027年3月期までの5年間をめどに最大4500億円を投じる計画を明らかにした。カギを握るのはゲーム開発の内製化だ。コンテンツ制作力を高めるため人材の採用や育成に力を入れる。オンライン会員向けのインフラ整備にも充て、次の成長につなげる。同日、経営方針説明会を開き、手元資金の一部を成長投資に振り向ける戦略を明らかにした。古川俊太郎
www.nikkei.com www.nikkei.com
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Thanks for this link, maybe @Atheerios can add it to the OP for context and maybe a mod (@mazi ? 🙏🏼) can change the title.
 
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Caviar said:
I'm not educated in this area so maybe I'm just not understanding the business sense in investing billions of dollars in retail when retail is dying. They want to be Apple so bad.


lol
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While physical “retail” is dying , much like “we are all gonna move to paperless” , It’s still gonna be present . And I feel the things most likely to thrive in a smaller retail environment are very specific retail experiences from companies with cult followings . I’d also add improving and increasing retail infrastructure could also be about just merch offerings in general and the supply chain of getting these to retailers or via online shopping.

That said I would highly doubt if the increase of retail stores entail even anything close to a significant amount of their investment into “infrastructure” nor do we know fully what forms it may take . It could for example be a collaboration/partnership with an existing retail store ala what disney is doing with target versus opening more stores themselves . On top of that they’re certainly not seemingly gung ho about opening more retail spaces especially outside of japan, I would bet any outright Nintendo Stores we see in NA for example outside of the New York one stay tied to the theme parks.
 
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Well they're constantly putting out games that sell 5 or 10 million +, of course they will want to expand to make even more of those.

And the most important, maybe now Camelot will have enough people to put a RPG story mode in their games.
 
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Leo said:
Well they're constantly putting out games that sell 5 or 10 million +, of course they will want to expand to make even more of those.

And the most important, maybe now Camelot will have enough people to put a RPG story mode in their games.
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Camelot are independent and so it's unlikely this investment is going their way. Unless they want to sell up, but there's no sign of that after 20+ years of partnership with Nintendo.
 
Time for some more signings.

Nintendo needs a number 10.......They can buy Miyazaki from Fromsoft.

They need a Striker............Itsuno from Capcom might do the trick.

And lastly, a new number 5...............Hashino from Atlus is the perfect choice.

Any other suggestions?
 
Sounds like they're not making the same mistake as Wii-era Nintendo, not expanding bolstering their output despite sitting in a shitload of cash. Good news.
 
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MisterSpo said:
Camelot are independent and so it's unlikely this investment is going their way. Unless they want to sell up, but there's no sign of that after 20+ years of partnership with Nintendo.
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Well yeah, but i didn't want to lose the joke lol
 
Moltres006 said:
Time for some more signings.

Nintendo needs a number 10.......They can buy Miyazaki from Fromsoft.

They need a Striker............Itsuno from Capcom might do the trick.

And lastly, a new number 5...............Hashino from Atlus is the perfect choice.

Any other suggestions?
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Well Nintendo has recently disclosed their internal policies about embracing and supporting diversity in their teams so I'm not so sure Hashino would be a good match =p
 
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Anything that goes into expanding EPD is good news to me. It's good to see they are putting that Switch cash to good use instead of just sitting on it lol.
 
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This says to me, that Nintendo really isn't resting on their laurels. Which is absolutely great.

Remember when both the Wii and DS were absurdly financially popular, and then they completely abandoned the Wii for the final 2 years of its life.

It seems like their isn't a Wii situation here which is good. Give me all of the games Nintendo.
 
MisterSpo said:
Camelot are independent and so it's unlikely this investment is going their way. Unless they want to sell up, but there's no sign of that after 20+ years of partnership with Nintendo.
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I'm curious how long Camelot can keep up while staying this small. At least they already got 3 HD titles under their belt unlike AlphaDream.
 
Lozjam said:
This says to me, that Nintendo really isn't resting on their laurels. Which is absolutely great.

Remember when both the Wii and DS were absurdly financially popular, and then they completely abandoned the Wii for the final 2 years of its life.

It seems like their isn't a Wii situation here which is good. Give me all of the games Nintendo.
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They can’t give up on Switch. There’s nothing else lol
 
Dark Cloud said:
They can’t give up on Switch. There’s nothing else lol
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I mean, Nintendo has never been shy about giving up their current consoles. The end of the N64's and GBC's life cycle was also really drab. And it was Nintendo's bread and butter consoles(especially the Gameboy line).
 
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Nintendo will never let Camelot die off. Mario sports games are too important to them I think. If it gets dangerous I can see them buying Camelot if they need too. This is only if Camelot starts struggling.
 
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