Nintendo To Smartphone Game Makers: You Can Only Gouge Our Players So Much (arstechnica.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki took a Wednesday opportunity to review one game maker's financial reports: CyberAgent Inc, maker of smartphone games like the Nintendo-published Dragalia Lost. This report, published at the end of January, made vague allusions to a single smartphone game dragging the company down. Quoting from the company's own English-language press release: "At the time of the original earnings forecast announcement on October 25, we looked a new game title made a good start [sic]. However, its performance is being slower than we expected as of today." That resulted in a whopping 20-percent drop in revenue expectations in the company's gaming sector, from 50 billion yen to 40 billion. Mochizuki pressed the company to confirm which game that was, and CyberAgent confirmed the game in question was indeed Nintendo's Dragalia Lost.
The company clarified things even further to the WSJ, alleging that Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally. "Nintendo is not interested in making a large amount of revenue from a single smartphone game," a CyberAgent representative told the WSJ. "If we managed the game alone, we would have made a lot more." When asked by the WSJ, Nintendo's Japanese arm replied with a statement that apparently confirms CyberAgent's allegation. "We discuss various things, not just limited to payments, to deliver high-quality fun to consumers," the Nintendo rep told the WSJ. The report says the reason why Nintendo's revenue goals for its entire smartphone-gaming sector are considered modest compared to other large Japanese publishers may be "because its smartphone games are positioned less to make oodles of cash and more to raise awareness of Nintendo's IP (which Nintendo will soon leverage with theme park attractions and a feature-length film)."
The company clarified things even further to the WSJ, alleging that Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally. "Nintendo is not interested in making a large amount of revenue from a single smartphone game," a CyberAgent representative told the WSJ. "If we managed the game alone, we would have made a lot more." When asked by the WSJ, Nintendo's Japanese arm replied with a statement that apparently confirms CyberAgent's allegation. "We discuss various things, not just limited to payments, to deliver high-quality fun to consumers," the Nintendo rep told the WSJ. The report says the reason why Nintendo's revenue goals for its entire smartphone-gaming sector are considered modest compared to other large Japanese publishers may be "because its smartphone games are positioned less to make oodles of cash and more to raise awareness of Nintendo's IP (which Nintendo will soon leverage with theme park attractions and a feature-length film)."
So good guy Nintendo (Score:1)
Nintendo is preventing these scum of the earth from gouging their customers for all they are worth with predatory monetization and other mobile bullcrap ? I'm 100% fine with it.
Just because a game is doing "fine" financially because of a couple whales who can't help themselves from gambling their money away with lootbox, doesn't make it successful. Those "games" are basically just slotmachines, not real games.
Most game makers can't afford a loss leader (Score:5, Interesting)
For those of you who made it to the final paragraph where they finally explain why Nintendo is "gouging" less than other game makers, it turns this whole story into a big "so what?"
The report says the reason why Nintendo's revenue goals for its entire smartphone-gaming sector are considered modest compared to other large Japanese publishers may be "because its smartphone games are positioned less to make oodles of cash and more to raise awareness of Nintendo's IP (which Nintendo will soon leverage with theme park attractions and a feature-length film)."
So for Nintendo, the benefit flowing from the game is both its own revenue stream and what amounts to advertising for other revenue streams. For all but a handful of game makers, the game itself is the only revenue stream they're going to have.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In this case Nintendo isn't the game maker though. They're concerned that if the company who built the game takes all the players money with microtransactions that they won't be able to buy other "nintendo" products.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nintendo gets a cut of every game sold on its own platform. Ergo, games it makes for its own platform amount to having a larger buffer on how much it can "gouge" customers. When it sells on someone else's platform, it's merely competing in the same way other game makers always were. Ie, it's not a "loss leader". It just means they won't "make oodles of cash" for the same number of games sold. It's also pretty absurd to argue that other companies don't do the same and sell on one platform as an effectiv
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Its worse that that. On their own consoles, Nintendo has a pricing policy for digital games on their walled garden store that links the price to physical copies of the game. As the game cards for the switch sell relatively few and cost a lot to produce as they need special fabrication plants that along with licensing fees, they won't achieve a good ROI for the game maker without being priced somewhere above what you could call a budget price bracket. The price of the physical copies is significantly high
Re: Most game makers can't afford a loss leader (Score:2)
So the solution would be to release a full priced version on a console, without the bullshit micro transactions?
a CyberAgent representative told the WSJ. (Score:2)
"If we managed the game alone, we would have made a lot more."
So just a bad business decision then.
Re: (Score:2)
So it's not a bad decision for them. They're making a profit through engagement with Nintendo's audience.
They could profit more in the short term without Nintendo's constraint but long term they'd damage the IP and have to develop and market new ones. If they could do that they would have (and may well be), but there are no circumstances in which working with Nintendo is a bad decision for them.
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I feel this isn't cynical enough.
In RL space you tend to go for the best and brightest for things like architecture, and then the cheapest lowest mandatory standard for actually building the buildings.
Occasionally people want to build things that are slightly larger or safer, which leads to buildings that end up standing against the wear of time far better compared to its peers. Building codes vary between nations and states, leading to standards being capable of being evaluated for what they are.
So in RL s
Game publishers are smoking bad crack these days. (Score:5, Insightful)
Jim Sterling - an independent game critic - has been harping on this issue for a few years and it's only gotten worse. The revenue expectations of game publishers are totally bizarre and outlandish. Which is one of the reasons asshole execs are bleeding the AAA industry dry of anything resembling artistic integrity or innovation. ActiBlizz is a husk of former glory days of Blizzard, famous studios get bought up, squeezed for the next open-world-live-service shite and then closed down. Even as revenues are through the roof and higher than ever before people get laid off and/or are still expected to risk their health on some death-march to some large release. At the same time shady tactics for squeezing even more money out of people move AAA publishers towards gambling companies and their shady business. (Star Wars Battlefield anyone?)
Game publishers are just about the worst right now and Nintendo whining that they "only" make 40 billion as opposed to 50 billion (give me an effing break) doesn't make them look to good either IMHO.
For all I care AAA publisher execs can go die in a fire, preferably one fired by all the obscene amounts of cash they can't get enough of.
F*ck this bullsh*t!
I'm sticking to well-aged titles, last-gen systems and indie studios.
My 2 cents.
Re: (Score:2)
...Nintendo whining that they "only" make 40 billion as opposed to 50 billion (give me an effing break) doesn't make them look to good either IMHO.
You've misread the article. Nintendo may have published this game, but CyberAgent Inc. are the whining developers here:
...Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally.
(emphasis mine)
This is honestly quite refreshing to see.
Re: (Score:1)
> I'm sticking to well-aged titles, last-gen systems and indie studios.
Appropriate for someone whose nick is "Qbertino", I suppose. (Q*bert rocked!)
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That game is not the evil loot box monster everyone made it out to be
That's because the backlash was so fucking strong against the attempted exploitation:
https://www.polygon.com/2017/1... [polygon.com]
https://www.polygon.com/2018/3... [polygon.com]
The problem with AAA games are the mobs of people smearing them online
Is it fuck. People were begging for Star Wars Battlefront, for Red Dead Redemption, for Anthem. They want an experience, they want high production values, they want fun.
What many publishers are trying to deliver to them is a microtransaction hell with gameplay compromised to 'encourage' ongoing revenue. No fucking wonder the gamer demographic is responding s
The Problem (Score:3)
The problem is that Dragalia is a pretty shitty game. The best thing about it are a hdnful of the music tracks. The gameplay is completely pointless and amounts to nothing but a chore. The story is the most generic and pointless you can imagine. The draw of the game is gambling to buy sexy/cute animu girl characters.
The problem is that there are so many other games that do it better. Fire Emblem Heroes, for example, is a great game, with a better (but still generic and predictable) story, better animu girls (and guys) that actually rise to waifu (or husbandu) status, and the game gives a lot more for less monetary investment (or none at all).
Dragalia can't even get its notifications on Android to display in English.
Game makers gouging our customers?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Nintendo: "Back off! That's our job! And don't even dare consider using any of our IP under the fair use doctrine"
Color me shocked! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Reading your commend made me laugh so hard I fell over onto my collection of UMDs, Memory Sticks, and proprietary Vita charging cables.