“It would be great if the two companies could jointly invent a brand-new business model.”
☆ NintendObs Event – Nintendo and DeNA Q&A.
Question:
Will Nintendo’s smart device game apps be exclusively developed with and operated by DeNA? Will Nintendo’s business model for smart devices significantly differ from those for its dedicated video game systems? Specifically, what kind of direction is Nintendo aiming to take for its new business model?
Answer:
Iwata:
We have just announced this alliance, so we would not consider jointly releasing the first Nintendo smart device game with any other company. Of course, we have created this alliance with the belief that it will go well. On the other hand, nobody can guarantee that any collaboration like this will result in a win-win situation for both companies. So, we naturally cannot say we will continue doing business this way forever. But first and foremost, we will focus on our alliance to jointly develop and operate game applications for smart devices.
As for your question about the business model, in general, the free-to-start style of business model, where players can play for free initially but are required to pay money in order to advance further, is more widely adopted for games on smart devices while, for dedicated video game systems, we principally sell packaged game software as a finished product. Looking at these differences, only when we can encourage a great number of smart device users to accept our offers and play with our game applications can we say that expanding our businesses on smart devices makes sense to Nintendo.
So, while we want to consider how to encourage as many people as possible to accept our offerings, Nintendo, on the other hand, is a bit of a contrarian. More specifically, while others may be tempted to follow in the footsteps of other successful companies, we are not interested at all. We will take a variety of approaches by repeatedly discussing with Mr. Moriyasu such things as where there is room for improvement and whether we can create a brand-new business model. I thought it would be premature for me to share my aspirations, so I did not include them in my presentation, but it would be great if the two companies could jointly invent a brand-new business model.
— Nintendo Co., Ltd.
DeNA Co., Ltd.
Business and Capital Alliance Announcement
Source: Nintendo JP.
At NintendObserver, the comments are on Discord.
Click on Community to learn more. 🙂
…
…Wanna play? Buy a Wii U.
And if you’ve already got yours, here are all the games already available on the platform. 😀
