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Saturday, 21 January 2017

How Nintendo can turn public opinion around on The Switch.

Can we all be honest for a minute the Nintendo Switch live event last week was to be kind real awkward and uninspiring to say the least, oh yeah uncomfortable also. I realize they where playing to their Japanese base being based in Japan, but that was down right cringe worthy for anyone outside of Japan. I speak some Japanese and even I was cringing at a lot of points of the presentation, it was Nintendo once again being weird as hell as always. As for the sentiment " Well it was directed at the Japanese press and Nintendo shareholders" yeah that worked realllll well. In a span of 3 hrs during and following the live event Nintendo stock plummeted almost 6%, yeah investors where real impressed with the event.
 I follow stocks a lot matter fact watching Bloomberg Asia as I am typing this, and can not recall last time their stock dropped that fast and much. Was not all bad the console would have limited region locking, granted no device should ever be locked to start with. However that is a step in the right direction, they also announced storage can be expanded using easily bought Sd cards, no weird format memory cards (You listening SONY) again another great choice.

  One Youtube personality I follow regularly is Jim Sterling, watching this event reminded me of a video he made a year ago or so. It was called IIRC " Everything that is wrong with Square Enix " it is not safe for work unless wearing headphones, but it was so true in it's content, same apply's to Nintendo IMHO
  Stop being so bloody weird Nintendo, do something normal for once, just be normal for godsake, weird is not working for you. Other then the Wii every iteration of your consoles have sold less and less, just be F'ing normal for once. What games they showed where fine, just the presenters my lord and that translator was all I could do to stay awake. Okay so enough ranting, sort of I offer up these ways that Nintendo can turn around Public opinion surrounding the Nintendo Switch.

Let's get started shall we!

So Nintendo chose the location and event time based on showing to Japanese Investors, and of course the media, fair enough, but did you consider the time on the East coast of the US. Now I live in the West of Canada so it was early enough for me, but to be honest at 57 I am not your target audience. The younger kids are who will bug their parents for that Mario Game, or Arms, not me not their parents in some cases. You held the event not only at 11pm ET but on a Thursday night to boot, a School night for heaven sake. I have dual time zones on my PC and my watch, one is set to Vancouver the other to Osaka where I visit as often as possible. You could have easily held the event 3 hrs earlier and still had the press and investors ear, it would have been 10am JST 8pm EST.
 Your largest market in combined sales is not Japan so keep that in mind for the future, other things came out the same night and the following days.

1) The Switch will ship with no Netflix support at launch, are you freaking kidding me, even the Vita and 3DS has a Netflix app. Now this could be a temporary thing, but if you google around Netflix has said they have no plans at present to support it
 Come on Nintendo get on it this is 2017, not 1997 get with the times. Regardless what some people de-cry about consoles are for gaming not for media watching, millions do. 85+ million people subscribe to Netflix in more countries then I can remember., your device has no UHD or Blu-Ray drive even and people watch movies, animes and tv on their consoles daily. 
 Now this is not Nintendo's fault for there being no app, apps you use like Hulu, Youtube, Amazon Video etc are created by the respective companies. That said they are not going to invest the time and money to make those apps if they do not think it will be used due to low sales numbers of a device. Nintendo your a Billion Dollar company open the damn wallet a TINY bit and tell Netflix, Hulu the like we want your apps on our device at launch and we will help fund the development.

2) One game a month if you pay for their online service, and not only is it a NES or SNES game but you don't even get to keep it. Once your month is up regardless if you payed for a years subscription the game leaves your library. You can not be serious, even Sony with it's PS+ service which has been criticized for removing your free games if you quit PS+ allows you to keep them so long as you are a member. On Xbox Live which is the same price as your service you get your free games every month it is yours for life, regardless you stay a Gold member or not, get with the times Nintendo.

3) You need to somehow re-work the pricing on your peripherals, $70USD for the pro controller is insane that is close to $90+ CDN, unacceptable. The Joy-Cons are even worse, you promote it as the couch co-op family gaming system but Joy-cons are $80USD, your out of your mind. You could end up spending $300 for 4 controller for the family, and don't give me you can play with them split. So sane person in their right mind are going to play with a single dinky Joy-Con and enjoy it.

4) Just hold normal events without all the goofy weird awkward moments, and don't tell me that is what fans want as thats bullshit. Yes there are some of course who do love it, they are quite vocal but it does not translate into sales. This mantra you like to spout that people buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo games is utter rubbish. If this was the case then the Wii U would be a runaway success selling 80 million units + as Nintendo games was all it had for the most part.

5) Improve your relationships with those who create media such as Twitch Streamers and YouTube creators, you know the people trying to help you sell your products. Your draconian enforcement of copyright strikes and claiming all revenue from those creators unless they give you 80% of it is beyond redemption.
 Those people have millions of subscribers in a lot of cases like Boogie2988, Angry Joe and others to numerous to mention, YOU NEED TO STOP THIS CRAP. Oh and before anyone says anything, I do not make You Tube videos, nor do I monetize this blog though I have the option, I am grateful  if even one person finds my blog and posts entertaining, enlightening or down right amusing.

With that I will end it those are just 5 ideas I have to help Nintendo turn around a lot of the bad press/comments regarding The Switch.

If hope you enjoyed my take and suggestions, by all means you have Ideas what Nintendo can do to turn it around share them in the comments.
 Till next time as always play nice with each other.

David


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