Nintendo has maintained their first party face for a long time and with the Nintendo NX approaching, people are thinking whether the company will finally go third party or not.
We don’t know about the rest, but analyst Michael Patcher of Wedbush Securities thinks they will not because of the level of success expected from the NX – an alleged hybrid whose handheld part is reportedly coming in 2016 with the console part to follow later.
So basically, what Patcher thinks is that going third party or staying the way they are will depend on how successful NX is. If it overperforms and manages to be a massive success like the Wii, the company should not go third party as their original policies would be largely beneficial in that situation.
However, if the new console manages to be a failure like the Wii U, Nintendo will probably need external help rescuing themselves. The analyst compares the expected sales to that of PS4 and Xbox One although some others suggest that the console doesn’t even need to beat them in order to succeed.
If they go third-party, you’re talking about an install base around 55 million consoles. I think ultimately you will get an install base of 200 million PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Nintendo will need a 20 percent share on those platforms to replicate the success it had with Wii. That’s possible, but it’s not likely.
Not only that, he even went on to speculate what the situation could be if they went third party. Surprisingly, Patcher thinks that Sony will do some “interesting things” because both the companies are Japanese.
If Nintendo says ‘we’re going third-party all the time,’ a lot of Nintendo fanboys will buy an Xbox One or PS4 and I actually think Sony would do some interesting things with Nintendo. Because I think, both being Japanese companies, there’s just a lot of opportunities for those two to work together. I actually think you would see some really cool things on PS4. But, we’re speculating for speculation’s sake.
Anyhow, closing in on the argument about whether Nintendo NX should usher the company into a third party business or not, Patcher says that the upcoming console “will sell more units than the Wii U. So, better than the Wii U, and that’s enough to keep Nintendo continuing to stay in the console business and as a first-party.”
He says that because in his opinion, Nintendo is not going to let go off its ways unless they produce a complete failure.
What is your take on this?
