If you were to ask someone on the street who would be the first video game company to come to mind, chances are you’d hear “Nintendo.” That’s not an accident. Nintendo has been doing this for longer than just about anyone, and they’re responsible for getting most of us into gaming in some way, shape, or form.
Which is why Friday’s talk of mergers and acquisitions not only caught many off-guard, it caused some genuine concern among many, and my household wasn’t immune to it either. Now we hear that Nintendo is buying back stock from its founding family, as well as other investors. Typically when you see a company start to reacquire stock, it’s part of a larger plan to be bought or to combine with another company. Once a company owns enough of its own stock it can go ahead and do what it will, remaining stockholders be damned.
How did Nintendo get here? This is the company that made money hand-over-fist with the Wii, who completely decimated opponents time and time again in the handheld market, and whose most popular character rivals Mickey Mouse?
In short: an unwillingness to adapt, a failed marketing strategy, and a changed gaming landscape where now it’s cooler to bash Nintendo than it is to like the company. Company execs have admitted in recent interviews that Nintendo‘s folks didn’t even know how the PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE work, yet they wanted to launch their own (the Nintendo Network). They’ve admitted that they messed up by not calling the Wii U literally anything other than the Wii U. They’re just now getting around to admitting that most of their target audience has a smartphone, which would be useful for getting some eyeballs focused on their products once again.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that so many third-party developers have jumped ship that I’m thinking of renaming the Wii U the Titanic.
So what now? What options does “The Big N” have left? Sell Reggie Fils-Aime’s services to birthday parties? Make Mario and Luigi actually get plumber jobs? Well, here are what I think are the most likely options:
Third Party Development
Let me stress that this is the second-least likely thing to happen. Nintendo is an insanely good game developer, and their consoles and handhelds are the only way to play their games. Essentially they’re holding gamers hostage: if you want to play Zelda, buy a Nintendo system. It works, too, because we always do, but at least they follow up by making it worth our while (at least as far as the game we bought goes, maybe not so much for the device itself). However, there’s a very vocal subset of gamers who have demanded – for years, mind you – that Nintendo take Sega‘s approach and abandon hardware development, choosing to make games for other systems. It made sense for Sega, who were coming off a string of flops (Game Gear, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast), but Nintendo‘s still got a war chest left from the Wii alone. I doubt they’ll take this approach, at least for the foreseeable future.
Bought By/Merge With Sony/Microsoft
You know how the prior entry was the second-least likely thing to happen? That’s because this is the absolute least likely thing. That being said, some are of the opinion that MS or Sony should scoop up Nintendo, usually with whatever their console of choice is determining which company they want to do the scooping. Only problem is that Microsoft‘s board has been wanting to get out of gaming for a while, and Sony may not still harbor a grudge over the last time they teamed with Nintendo, but “once bitten, twice shy.” That being said, if either company did buy or merge with Nintendo, they’d most likely be the most dominant force in gaming history.
Nintendo Goes Shopping
This is what I most expect to happen: Nintendo‘s buying all of those stocks back, in turn causing their stock prices to rise, so they can sell them (again) in one fell swoop, giving themselves a big enough boost to buy some game studios. Maybe Capcom? Platinum Games? 5th Cell? Retro? I’d expect Nintendo to go directly after third-party studios that have worked well with them in the past… don’t expect EA or Activision obviously, but the smaller ones not yet snapped up by those two aforementioned companies.
Or nothing could happen, and we’re all speculating for no reason, as Nintendo somehow relaunches themselves at this year’s E3 and obliterates the competition.
Hey, if we’re talking about “what if” over here, I can dream, right?
