Phoenixmgs said:
Does any of the money from PS+ or Live actually go to 3rd parties for server costs? And server costs are usually pretty damn low anyway because most games are P2P.
Pay-walling game saves is a pretty dick move even more so than online play IMO but only just slightly.
I don't see how Nintendo's online service is going to facilitate more 3rd-party support. The only game that the Switch has gotten that is a current-gen game seems to be Wolfenstein 2. This new MH game coming is just a localization of a current Switch game, which was an upgraded 3DS game put on the Switch in the 1st place. Doom was a lot less work to put on the Switch because it got the VR treatment, which needs downgraded graphics so it was easy to put on the Switch without much work. Dark Souls is obviously a last-gen game so why not port it to the Switch. I've yet to see any 3rd-party put much effort into a Switch release outside of Wolftenstein 2, which could be due to it getting a VR release at some point. Again, I don't see how Switch's online service is going to change much of anything with regards to more 3rd-party support.
Because 3rd parties want to monetize their products longterm. Essentially big companies want an easy accessible, centralized online space where they can make money longterm with streamlined authentication without having to maintain personal servers and to release various expansion and game packs routinely for a nominal fee with better security for their assets. It's sleazy, but it's what everyone is doing. We live in a world where Monster Hunter World makes moolah from selling
greeting packs. The Nintendo iterations of its online consumer space did
not make this easy on the WiiU, for instance.
The Switch, however, if it wants to compete for longterm monetization, needs to make it as easy as possible for game companies to access existing customers to continue monetizing its product.
Which is why games bought in brick and mortars basically just tell you to download straight from Steam.
The problem is maintaining such services cost money. Steam gets a slice of the pie from all monetized downloads, and companies can't monetize their own products directly to customers on consoles. They need access to Nintendo's servers. So to manage this space, and maintain as cheap operating costs to 3rd parties as possible, meaning economic viability of maintaining servers even when a game is no longer making money, and to streamline a steady stream of accessible further monetization projects--Nintendo wants to create a larger central online space infrastructure that can handle that shift to long-term monetization.
It's sleazy AF ... but it's what
game companies are demanding, or there will simply be no 3rd party support.
Hence why for the first time in decades Nintendo has secured things like official licence FIFA games for instance. Because SOS (pretty fucking apt acronym might I say, gotta love the irony) allows that longterm monetization.
Maintaining such an online presence of such things are expensive, and Nintendo is a fiscally conservative company. It never releases products at over 10% net loss. Despite being the largest
videogame company (in terms of dedicated VG production, console producer, VG sales staff, and game-centric development) ... it's a smaller company over all compared with Sony and Microsoft.
The Gamecube was the last console it sold at significant loss and relied on direct licencing, and it cost the company dearly. The WiiU on the flipside didn't actually cost them all that much. Given that Nintendo's services cost a third less than conpetitors, despite that fiscal conservatism, tells me it's not planning to make money out of SOS on its own... or PS+ is a fucking ripoff.
It's also a pretty big sign Nintendo feels
very comfortable about its longterm prospects.
Nintendo is a weird company like that. In a world where corporations routinely operate through short term loans to bankroll projects, Nintendo operates with a permanent fiscal surplus of bank maturation investments and high-security assets to the tune of about Y890BN.
To put it in real terms, roughly US$7-10B (depending on exchange rate and where it moves its money) in accessible funds. And they seem to make damn certain to hedge this figure
above EU/U.S. inflation rates. Growing that veritable
videogame equivalent warchest every year. On top of its less secured intellectual property, which the company always devalues in total in order to reduce speculative gaze.
On top of that ridiculously high capital budgeting ratio in terms of reserves, the IP it does sit on is probably worth a trillion Yen on top of that. Its machinery, investment portfolio, and its ventures into other industries (medtech, etc) is worth a speculative US$1B on top of that.
And this is the company that told its executives to take a paycut, rather than axe workers or dip into its cash reserves... all so it could meet
having a higher than inflation cash reserve ratio to fiscal budget savings rate. Quite literally, the company is the very definition of
fiscally conservative. I've never seen a corporation act like it does, and its one of the few corporations one can point to and say the 'ideal' capitalist enterprise.
This is why all that screaming of 'Nintendo is doomed' is so fucking stupid. Nintendo can bankroll a WiiU level disappointment
every year until 2075 and still be in the black. Nintendo's bread and butter is still videogames despite it expanding into other sectors. Moreover it tends to do a lot of its own R&D, and using the natural design process to IP protect other industry tech. Like its work in motion controls and simulated equipment feedback tech into medtech R&D.
The Japanese government should just replace its Diet and its treasury with
Nintendo staff...
This is why Nintendo can be so creative with its products, and why it acts so weird with its IP. Playstation and XBox need a 'sure thing' to stay solvent or not dip into its other ventures to maintain them, Nintendo does not. Nintendo can be that flighty, whimsical videogame innovator because it's carved that niche out for itself.
But at the same time, Nintendo must listen somewhat to what third party interests want
on occasion. Despite it never wanting to (because why would you want to sacrifice control?) ... SOS is Nintendo's
compromise to 3rd parties.That compromise comes with an expensive online consumer service geared towards further monetization. And I think you'll find that what Nintendo is charging is effectively the baseline cost of maintaining that infrastructure.
Additional staff, servers, analysts, security experts, tech teams, support teams, specialist attorneys, etc...
17.5M Switch sales ... let's say 25% SOS uptake ... so US$80 odd million not including taxes or operating costs, to provide a PS+ style infrastructure which costs them or 3rd parties nothing in return.
That's
not bad (or good) in return. Assuming the performance rate is also up there, it's easy to complain about (and merit to the complaint) but on the flipside, it's what 3rd parties want.
You ever wonder why Nintendo didn't produce as many initial shipment consoles of the Switch? It's not 'manufactured scarcity'--it's because Nintendo tallied the numbers and set themselves to a budget it knew it could make returns on
in the worst possible scenario. It's that fiscal conservatism bent of; "We can't allow an XBOX event where systems are just sitting around, taking up store shelf space."
View Switch Online Services in the same light. They are likely charging the bare minimum of a devalued number of people purchasing it to make it cover the costs of implementing.
