As Wii U sales plummet, despite price cuts, it appears the Japanese gaming pioneer may finally be ready to embrace third-party hardware. From Nintendo President Satoru Iwata:
If we stay in one place, we will become outdated. We are thinking about a new business structure. Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business.
While Nintendo has produced all sorts of compelling hardware (Virtualboy!) over the years, they haven’t always found sales success and aren’t nearly as relevant as Microsoft and Sony in the console space… which I attribute to their slow embrace of HD. In portables, Nintendo has always done well. Yet, thinking ahead, how many families will invest in multiple smaller form factor devices? Not to mention app ecosystem pricing may seriously turn the market on its head. There’s clearly risk in cannibalizing hardware sales, but there may be more longterm upside in porting their highly bankable portfolio onto other platforms. I know I have no desire to invest in Nintendo hardware… but I’d certainly gobble up Nintendo titles for Xbox, PS3, iOS, and/or Android.