Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa‘s interview with Nikkei, which has been getting reported on throughout the day today, has had multiple noteworthy moments. Well, you can now add another one of them to that list. And this time, it’s about a subject that Nintendo isn’t asked that often.
Nintendo‘s acquisition of Next Level Games, announced last month, has resulted in Furukawa talking about the company’s policy on acquiring companies. Furukawa said that “this is a partner that we have been working with for many years to develop various software, and we decided that we could improve the quality and speed of development by making it a subsidiary and working together. We are not just blindly acquiring companies because we want development resources. We don’t think that simply expanding the scale of our business will really improve the value of the entertainment that Nintendo provides”.
Aren’t or Can’t?
They just acquired Next Level games. The can, and in the future will get two or three other well established developers. It’s frugal purchasing Nintendo does.
F=ma.
Nintendo has a net worth of about 85 billion, their market value is near 40 billion (37 billion to be exact) and they have 13 billion in the bank for spending so it isn’t a matter of “ Can’t “ they’re just not interested in doing so for the time being (although I do think they should consider buying studios like Grezzo and Intelligent Systems since they’ve been working a lot with them) so it’s really a matter of “ Aren’t “
I think this is a great mindset! I don’t really mind Microsoft’s approach all that much, but I just think it’s better to have a creative-driven company – meaning a company that also makes its own games – treating it like tightening a partnership than to have a major corporation buying it so they can just add another notch to their belt, ya know?
Where are you getting at?
I…do not know what you mean, I’ll be honest! Haha
Makes sense to me. I feel like Microsoft doesn’t even know what to do with the devs they’ve acquired. They just kinda let them run wild which results in a lot of mediocrity.
yeah nintendo. Why make games for your customers?
““we aren’t just blindly acquiring companies””
ie. We don’t buy up companies just to drive them into the ground. There is a motto that “if you can’t be successful for us, you won’t be successful for anyone”. See Microsoft and Rare. Another level in the Sony/Microsoft attempted takedown of Nintendo.
Sony is smart because the apply the Nintendo formula of development and acquisition. Like the Nintendo the mostly buy companies for their PlayStation division that make successful games. Unlike Microsoft that buys anything Willy nilly on impulse, even if that company is king of buggy games. Here’s looking at you Bethesda lol.
F=ma.
Wondering if the acquisition has anything to do with the creative control of the company. Because there where restrictions on how to create characters in Paper Mario Origami King, and people pointed out that Luigi’s Mansion 3 was creating new characters. We’ll just have to see.
“We don’t think that simply expanding the scale of our business will really improve the value of the entertainment that we provide”. EA should take notes!!