Some interesting analysis from Mat Piscatella about the state of the industry.
- Exclusives aren’t driving console purchases anymore, as evidenced by Forza Horizon 5 most of all.
- Nintendo would likely benefit from this too, but they’re unlikely to do so anytime soon.
- It’s too early to predict any sort of success for Switch 2, as the numbers they’re seeing right now may be little more than the supply being great enough to reach their biggest fans.
- Overall demand for gaming hasn’t gone down and has stabilized. Those dollars won’t be distributed evenly, but the enthusiasts are showing up.
EDIT: And now Sony has a job listing for someone to head an initiative to bring more games to other platforms, including Xbox and Nintendo.
How many people are buying a switch BECAUSE of Nintendo’s exclusives? I would speculate damn near all of them.
Exclusives absolutely do drives sales and give the hardware a reason to exist. Nintendo figured this out ages ago.
Any logic about how the industry works based off things Microsoft does is…poor.
How many people buy Nintendo for exclusives isn’t super relevant. The important questions are how many more games would they sell if they were multi-platform, and how many fewer consoles they would sell if their games were available elsewhere. They would very likely sell substantially more games, but also likely see a significant reduction in console sales. This would still likely be a win as the games are far higher margin than the consoles.
Selling hardware if important for them and without exclusivity, they’re not selling it.
There’s more to it than that.
Nintendo have spent decades meticulously building up a powerful brand image. As such, there are people who are fans of Nintendo the company/brand to an extent you don’t see with Sony or Microsoft; other company’s individual games have fans, but you don’t get Microsoft Fans or XBox Fans so much as Halo Fans. This means Nintendo’s games and hardware reïnforce each other; someone who bought a Switch for Mario and Zelda is the sort of person who thinks “Ooh, Fire Emblem!” and buys that, too.
Plus, if you’ve gone to the trouble of buying a Nintendo console for one or two games, there is a psychological urge to justify your choice, to make it worth your while. So if you just got it for Mario and Zelda, well then you’ve spent hundreds of euros on a machine to play two games. But if you also get Fire Emblem, that’s three games. Kirby brings it up to four. Thus, every exclusive makes the console purchase feel more reasonable.
Then there are sales breakdowns. Nintendo gets 100% of the non-tax price of every one of their own games. To give a concrete example, Donkey Kong Bananza costs €69.99. Nintendo get €56.90 of that (€69.99 less 23% VAT). If they sell it elsewhere, they lose another 30% of the non-tax price in store fees. Thus, if they were to bring Donkey Kong Bananza to Steam, they would only get €39.83 per copy (€56.90 × 0.7). They would thus need to sell 1.43 times as many copies on Steam to make the same money as selling them on the eShop.
That’s the big thing right there. Some people for sure decide to go without Nintendo games if they aren’t on other platforms. A subset of those people would be willing to buy Nintendo games on other platforms. But is that cohort at least 43% the size of the cohort who just buy a Nintendo console?
But, of course, Nintendo don’t just sell their games on the eShop. There are also tons of third-party games, each of which pay 30% of their non-tax price per purchase. If somebody has a Nintendo console, even if those third-party games are on Steam and PlayStation, they might buy those games on the Switch instead. (Source: I have done this. If you own a Switch, so have you). That’s another chunk of money Nintendo would lose out on if they weren’t selling consoles.
In conclusion, for third-party developers, being multi-platform is good. But for Nintendo, a first-party developer, keeping their games exclusive is the logical choice.
Attacking fans is brand image ‽
Nintendo’s exclusives likely wouldn’t work as well on other consoles or would show significant bugs or problems. Their games are purpose built for their hardware.
There’s a few titles that have relied on gimmicks that would be difficult or impossible to do on other systems. It would be a temporary learning curve to get games able to support multiple platforms, but everyone else has already done it and Nintendo consoles have been the least powerful systems so it should be easier.
I’m not talking about being able to run on those other hardware. I’m talking about Nintendo devs literally being able to write code for that other hardware. You expand to numerous platforms you get more bugs. You need more devs. You need devs that know more platforms. It has nothing to do with Nintendo gimmicks. It has to do with building for more platforms just by default being more buggy (which is exactly what happens).
Cross platform games aren’t a buggy mess, everyone else has figured it out. Nintendo could do it as well.
All those cross platform games are basically re-downloaded as day-1 pstch. And how much times after that do they receive updete to fix them? A year or even more if I remember Cyberpunk.
Uhhhhh. Yeah, yeah they are. lol. Like, what a weird thing to claim.
It’s the only reason to ever own Nintendo consoles
Well yeah, that’s kind of the point.
Citing a racing game as being evidence that console exclusives aren’t moving consoles seems a bit of a stretch. Is the genre that popular that a racing game alone would push hardware sales?
looks at Mario Kart on Switch 2
OK maybe it is.
Imagine saying that one of (if not the most, we’ll see how it goes) successful consoles of all time should follow Microsoft’s example when it comes to administering their consoles and exclusives.
Like, wow. I despise Nintendo and everything they stand for, but this is just delusional on so many levels.
I don’t have to imagine it; he’s backing up his points with data.
The strategy worked for Xbox because the alternative was to curl up and die. There’s no reason for Nintendo to give up their 30% sales cut to reach audiences in their system of choice.
Nintendo also has a lot more visibility and brand recognition (and generally speaking, more prestige and goodwill) compared to whatever Microsoft is attempting to sell at the moment, which again, means there’s little reason to reach people who bought into other systems. People already know Pokémon and Mario, and know those are good games. If they wanted to play them, they would’ve bought a Nintendo console.
Porting Mario and Pokémon to PS and Steam would certainly bring in more sales, but it would also devalue a console whose entire shtick is that it lets you play games you can’t play anywhere else.The only concession Nintendo has done so far is to bring some spin-off titles to mobile, possibly in an attempt to corner the younger market that seems to be less interested in traditional consoles, and hook them with their games in the hope of them buying a Switch and doing their purchases on the Nintendo store.
Whoever says that Nintendo should follow in the steps of one of the biggest failures of today’s console market, instead of doing what they’ve done so far with resounding success, is nuts, especially since the “data” MS has released so far about their consoles and the revenue is muddy at best - they say, for example, that GamePass is profitable, but we don’t know how much profitable it is, nor how much does it cost for them to bring into the service all those games, nor the opportunity cost of releasing those games on the service instead of selling them, nor… Anything at all, really. Like, how many players are on GP that play regularly? How much money did those players spend on the store before subscribing to GP? How much do they spend now? How many of those players are subscribed for Gold and Call of Duty, and how many are interested in other titles? What’s the difference in sales between GP and selling the same game on a successful platform, ie Steam/PS? Is GP the fault of other titles selling poorly on the console, and if so, doesn’t that threaten the stability of the console, when the developers refuse to optimize or straight up release their game on the platform because it’s a waste of time and money to do so?
Microsoft knows that data and refuses to tell us, so we’re left wondering what “profitable” means. What we know for sure is that Xbox is dead, and Nintendo isn’t.
Did you read the article? Because the thesis is that even if this is working, they could stand to make more money by not doing it. Piscatella’s thesis would disagree with this statement of yours, for instance:
People already know Pokémon and Mario, and know those are good games. If they wanted to play them, they would’ve bought a Nintendo console.
And instead he’d say that people are happy where they are and would buy the game if it came to them, as evidenced by how high something like Stellar Blade or Forza Horizon 5 shoot up the charts when they get a port; FH5 already became one of the best-selling PS5 games for the year almost immediately, even though PS5 owners could have bought an Xbox to play it at any point. Or, not mentioned in the article, there’s the night and day financial difference that a PC port makes for the likes of a mainstay franchise like Final Fantasy. It’s not just an Xbox thing that he’s speaking to. Speaking for myself, I’d have bought Tears of the Kingdom if it came to PC, and instead I was happy to just not play it at all.
There’s no reason for Nintendo to give up their 30% sales cut to reach audiences in their system of choice.
There is if the volume of what they’re taking 30% of doesn’t make up for the money they would have made by making Mario Kart, Zelda, and Smash Bros. multiplatform releases. There are no guarantees that Switch 2 reaches the install base of Switch 1, especially with headwinds from the general state of the economy, and that can change the math on that equation very quickly.
The only concession Nintendo has done so far is to bring some spin-off titles to mobile, possibly in an attempt to corner the younger market that seems to be less interested in traditional consoles, and hook them with their games in the hope of them buying a Switch and doing their purchases on the Nintendo store.
They can hope that, but as Piscatella sees in the data, getting people to move largely isn’t happening.
And instead he’d say that people are happy where they are and would buy the game if it came to them, as evidenced by how high something like Stellar Blade or Forza Horizon 5 shoot up the charts when they get a port
Comparing Forza Horizon and Stellar Blade to the likes of Pokémon, Mario and Zelda is, frankly speaking, an exercise in futility. You can’t extrapolate useful data by comparing completely different products, catering to completely different audiences.
FH5 already became one of the best-selling PS5 games for the year almost immediately, even though PS5 owners could have bought an Xbox to play it at any point.
Why would a PlayStation user buy an Xbox, like, ever? It’s the same platform, doing the same thing, but worse. Heck, even Xbox users aren’t buying Xbox at this point. PS users waited for FH5 to come to them, because nobody in their right mind would buy a $500 console for FH5 alone, and there’s little from what the Xbox offers that entices them to buy their console.
Nintendo, meanwhile, offers them a different experience (handheld console) playing completely different games (a lot of award winning Nintendo exclusives).
not mentioned in the article, there’s the night and day financial difference that a PC port makes for the likes of a mainstay franchise like Final Fantasy.
Third parties have nothing to gain from exclusivity deals but the initial paycheck, while console manufacturers keep cashing in from people who bought into their ecosystem and are now locked into paying them a 30% cut for all their purchases. Final Fantasy went multiplatform because the exclusivity cash from Sony was not enough to offset the missed sales from other platforms. There’s also something to say about a shrinking playerbase which makes the franchise less prestigious in the long run (as less players grow up playing FF titles, they won’t develop interest in/nostalgia for the franchise and won’t buy future entries).
That has nothing to do with the argument at hand, though. It’s a completely different situation for two very different players in the market that have nothing to do with one another.
Speaking for myself, I’d have bought Tears of the Kingdom if it came to PC, and instead I was happy to just not play it at all.
A lot of people would be content playing Zelda on their PC, that’s the entire point. A Nintendo console has as much value as the exclusive games you can play on it. Port them over, and a lot of people would just… Not buying the console at all.
There is if the volume of what they’re taking 30% of doesn’t make up for the money they would have made by making Mario Kart, Zelda, and Smash Bros. multiplatform releases.
There is no chance in hell that 30% from all purchases from a healthy fanbase on all games, DLCs and subscriptions (and that’s not factoring in hardware sales, like consoles, Amiibos and other overpriced plastic thingamajig Nintendo fans spend their money on) is even remotely comparable to a 70% cut on some titles, especially if taking that 70% cut risks lowering the interest and engagement on their main platform. Basically, MS had nothing to lose, their 30% cut was shit anyway, but Nintendo’s cut is far more valuable and, at least so far, more enticing than the other option.
And again, that’s also comparing different products. Mario Kart, Zelda and Smash are not even remotely comparable to Forza Horizon. Most players either don’t know that FH exists, or know it but aren’t interested enough to buy a console just for that game. I know plenty who regularly buy Nintendo consoles because of their games.
They can hope that, but as Piscatella sees in the data, getting people to move largely isn’t happening.
Except that it is. Of the 70-80M XboxOne users who bought that console, only half that much have decided to stick with Microsoft through the next gen. Those people didn’t disappear, they moved onto other (more enticing) consoles. WiiU was a dumpster fire and Switch went on becoming one of the most successful consoles ever: where did all those people come from? Did they stop gaming altogether while waiting for Nintendo to put their shit together? No, they bought a different console, and came back for the Switch because what they saw interested them.
There is certainly a lot going on in the younger market and the generational shift will be something to analyze in the years to come, but Nintendo’s strategy is not without reason.
because nobody in their right mind would buy a $500 console for FH5 alone
But that’s exactly the same reason I stopped buying any console. I was more than happy to let the handful of Sony exclusives pass me by, and then they started coming to PC. Now I’m more than happy to let a handful of Nintendo exclusives pass me by.
Third parties have nothing to gain from exclusivity deals but the initial paycheck, while console manufacturers keep cashing in from people who bought into their ecosystem and are now locked into paying them a 30% from all their purchases.
But that’s not driving console sales like they used to. The last few Final Fantasy games seemed to do quite well on PC, indicating that people did not buy a PS5 to play them, and PS5 is having difficulty matching PS4 units sold even with the utter decimation of their closest competitor. That’s another point you made later in your post; wherever Xbox players went, it wasn’t to PlayStation. Data would seem to indicate that not even all of the PlayStation players stuck with PlayStation.
Port [Nintendo games] over [to PC], and a lot of people would just… Not buying the console at all.
Exactly, but potentially, they would stand to make way more money by selling more copies of those games than by selling more Switch 2s and getting those customers locked in.
There is no chance in hell that 30% from all purchases from a healthy fanbase on all games, DLCs and subscriptions (and that’s not factoring in hardware sales, like consoles, Amiibos and other overpriced plastic thingamajig Nintendo fans spend their money on) is even remotely comparable to a 70% cut on some titles, especially if taking that 70% cut risks lowering the interest and engagement on their main platform.
Yes, there is. If you got 30% of all sales from games on an install base the size of the Wii U, it’s not going to make up for a game like Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. selling 100M additional copies on extra platforms. We don’t know yet how well Switch 2 will do (probably better than Wii U and not as well as the Switch 1), but at certain thresholds, that 30% leaves them worse off than that other 70 that reduces the value of their platform.
But that’s exactly the same reason I stopped buying any console. I was more than happy to let the handful of Sony exclusives pass me by, and then they started coming to PC. Now I’m more than happy to let a handful of Nintendo exclusives pass me by.
I agree with you here and I wish more people did it as well, but it’s not how it works. Millions of people buy a Nintendo console for their exclusive title of choice, be it Pokémon or Mario or whatever. That’s how it’s been for the past decades, and judging from the
20M3.5M consoles sold in a few days, that’s how it’s going for the Switch 2 as well.Those people had plenty of alternatives, be it a traditional console (PS/Xbox), a PC, or a handheld (Steam Deck). They went and bought a Nintendo on day one, despite the alternatives offering equal or better performance, similar form factor and in the same price range.
But that’s not driving console sales like they used to. The last few Final Fantasy games seemed to do quite well on PC, indicating that people did not buy a PS5 to play them, and PS5 is having difficulty matching PS4 units sold even with the utter decimation of their closest competitor.
Yes, but again, that has nothing to do with the argument at hand. Third parties don’t have a horse in the race, they are content selling as many copies as they can because that’s their only revenue stream. It’s a completely different situation for console manufacturers, to the point that they are not even remotely comparable.
That’s another point you made later in your post; wherever Xbox players went, it wasn’t to PlayStation. Data would seem to indicate that not even all of the PlayStation players stuck with PlayStation.
Exactly, which shows that players do move to whatever platform is more enticing to them. There is certainly a “core” fanbase that sticks to their console - either because they have invested in a digital library, or want to stick go their profile and the achievements/trophies built over the years, or simply because of blind brand loyalty - but there are also lots of people who jump ship and take their money elsewhere. And judging from the numbers, it’s not a small amount.
Exactly, but potentially, they would stand to make way more money by selling more copies of those games than by selling more Switch 2s and getting those customers locked in.
That was never the question. Of course they would sell more copies of those games by porting them elsewhere. The question is, does that risk them losing more money in the long run, as players buy their games elsewhere?
A Nintendo player gives nintendo 100% of the cut in any Zelda sale (and other first party titles), and a 30% cut on any other third party game bought on their platform. Conversely, a PlayStation player will give Microsoft 70% of the revenue for one single sale (Forza Horizon 5) and 0% on anything else.
If your user base is small (the Xbox user base certainly is) and not accustomed to buying games (which many devs have lamented over the years - I remember this article from 2022, for example), then it’s a no brainer: port your game to the rival console and enjoy that 70% cut. It’s not as cut-and-dry for Nintendo.
Yes, there is. If you got 30% of all sales from games on an install base the size of the Wii U, it’s not going to make up for a game like Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. selling 100M additional copies on extra platforms. We don’t know yet how well Switch 2 will do (probably better than Wii U and not as well as the Switch 1), but at certain thresholds, that 30% leaves them worse off than that other 70 that reduces the value of their platform.
If your/Piscatella’s argument is that they should give up a 30% cut on all sales because of the possibility (insofar, with no backing) of their console selling less units than the predecessor, then it’s a bad argument.
Even if they somehow lost 10/20% of their previous user base, that’s still gigantic enough to make their 30% cut (and all adjacent revenue streams, like online subscriptions, hardware sales, etc) enticing, especially if those people are accustomed to buying games at full/near full price. Suggesting that the alternative - taking a 70% cut on a few select titles - would be better for them sounds, frankly speaking, ridiculous to me. I would be willing to hear that argument a few years down the line, after seeing how Switch 2 is really doing, but for now, there is simply no reason at all to even entertain such an absurd notion.
He’s backing it up by misusing data. He’s lumping games together and assuming that they all would hypothetically have the same market characteristics, then extrapolating that to other games.
As an example he brings up how the Pokemon Company has released basically the same software on both Switch and mobile platforms. Which is true, but that does not mean it makes sense for Nintendo to release Tears of the Kingdom on mobile. We can already see that Nintendo knows this because they maintain Mario Kart Tour separately from the console versions. They’re entirely different business models, control schemes, and experiences.
I would argue that a more complicated analysis is required than just saying “multiplatforms are better than exclusives”.
He also just briefly glosses over what is the main BENEFIT to manufacturers: the profits made on hardware sales. There is not a lot of publicly available information, but we do know what each company tends to do. Nintendo prices their hardware above cost, so for them the additional hardware sales could offset the reduced software sales. Xbox prices their hardware at a loss, which explains why they valued exclusivity the least and have finished last in hardware units sold every generation since the original Xbox. Sony usually sells PlayStations at a loss to start the generation, but through hardware revisions and scaling ends up turning them profitable after a few years- a more balanced approach. And we see this reflected in their approaches to exclusivity: Nintendo is super-exclusive, Xbox is loose, and Sony is somewhere in the middle.
You also need to factor in how exclusives impact the ecosystem. The marketing budget for Mario Kart World Tour is not merely helping them to sell the game, but also to sell consoles. And not just consoles, but controllers and cases and branded SD cards and the USB camera and extra docks. It also encourages more software sales: the same person buying Mario Kart World and a Switch 2 might also buy other Switch 2 (or Switch 1) games. Even if they buy 3rd party games, Nintendo is still getting licensing fees. So if they release these big games on other platforms they might gain some revenue, but they lose out on a lot, plus they have to pay licensing fees to Sony/Xbox/Google/Apple/Valve to sell on those platforms.
If we were just discussing software sales in a vaccun then this would be accurate. Any 3rd party publisher has a much easier equation to determine which platforms to release on. Will the additional costs (development of a port plus the fees and asded marketing) be less than the revenue from additional units? It’s a bit complicated because some consumers have multiple platforms and will choose just one to buy the game on. This also helps explain why Sony delays the PC releases: they want to sell as many units overall as possible, but they also want anyone choosing between PS5 or Steam to be pushed to PS5 where their margins are higher.
The author doesn’t have anywhere near the data required to do any of this analysis, so he’s reaching a fundamentally flawed conclusion.
The author doesn’t have anywhere near the data required to do any of this analysis
He works at Circana. He’s working with way, way more data than he’s allowed to publicly disclose, since part of Circana’s business is selling the in-depth stuff to partners, as well as analyzing it to show trends to their partners who want to know what is and is not working across the industry at the moment.
Does he have access to the proprietary sales data of Nintendo, Xbox, Sony, Valve, and Google?
I’d be shocked if he did, because those companies are all big enough to have their own in-house departments for that. He’s trying to sell consulting services to smaller publishers. Consults don’t get paid for saying "well I don’t really have enough information to say that for sure*, they get paid for making executives feel smart.
He posts an image like this one along with each monthly report, but that’s also the sort of thing you should probably know before you claim that the author doesn’t have the data he needs. The data they don’t have, they disclose that it’s an estimate. Nintendo doesn’t like to share, but the retail partners that sell their consoles do.
That still doesn’t include most of the data necessary to reach this conclusion, and furthermore the bigger issue is that THE ARTICLE ITSELF DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY. It is an unbacked claim that we cannot verify. If he can’t share the data because ris propriety, he shouldn’t be making the claim publicly.
He’s looking at software sales in a vacuum, and he is probably correct that any singular piece of software would sell more units if it were released on more platforms. That’s not new or interesting: that’s obvious.
What he’s missing, even in the screenshot of claimed data he has, is everything else.
Consultants like this are not trustworthy sources. They’re trying to sell their own product.
The article is a summary of an interview. If he was lying about any of this, competing firms or their business partners would call him out. I know how the world looks from our perspectives and how the console markets have always worked, but that’s why there are companies out there collecting data, and that’s why their perspectives can be worth listening to. No one can predict the future, but he’s sharing his insights into where the wind is blowing, and yes, it’s so that his company can sell a premium product to companies doing market research. The console business model has changed quite dramatically very recently and is looking like it will continue to change. He’s not the only one claiming that the console wars are over.
As a PC player I wholeheartedly welcome the demise of exclusives, but are the strategies toward them really changing? Near as I can tell it’s only microsoft that’s pivoting, and that’s probably because they have to. Sony is sticking to their strategy of the past few years of delayed PC releases, and nintendo does what nintendo does - keeps everything in-house and sues everyone.
This may just be me, but I see delayed exclusives as basically being equivalent to multiplatform releases. Especially for single-player games.
