 An interesting game has released over the weekend, known as PAL World. And I'm not here to give you my thoughts on the game. I haven't played it. I know it's available on Xbox Game Pass. I could download it on the Xbox back there and not have to spend a dime, early access on Steam as well. And there's like three plus million players of this game between the systems. They're claiming three million in sales might be a little bloated because I don't know if they're separating sales from players. Again, this is an early access game. So it's not as if this is like a standard video game release. They fully polished experience. But PAL World is taking off and that is beyond a doubt noticeable over the weekend. It's hard to go anywhere as Nintendo fans and not hear about this game. Now, I'm not here to criticize the game or get into any of the supposed copyright claims that are coming up where people are like, oh, these designs are so similar to normal Pokemon. Did they AI generate art and stuff? That's a whole different conversation and one that I honestly think is best left to legal teams. I did throw an opinion out on Twitter about it. Maybe should have kept my mouth shut. I don't know. It's not like I am a lawyer or involved in the law and copyright laws at all. So that's for them to sort out. But what we're really aiming to talk about today is really another question that's cropping up with the release of PAL World. And this question is about Nintendo and why they keep their games, their exclusive IP on their systems instead of being like PlayStation and many other companies and also putting them on PC. And I think Nintendo is in a very unique situation with this that is easily explainable but maybe not understood by the general public. Now, I believe I'm in a unique position as someone who plays games on all platforms, PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC, even on Macs. Like I play games on everything. So I feel like I might be able to give a unique position while also recognizing I'm obviously a bit biased for Nintendo, but a lot of this is really about business. I love Nintendo games. And no matter where Nintendo games are, I'm going to play them. They released the next Zelda game on PlayStation 5. I'm gonna play it on PlayStation 5, right? Like it doesn't matter to me. I wanna play the games. But from a business perspective, I think there's a lot to get into. Now, how do we frame this conversation? Well, let's start by somebody over on Twitter who made one of the complaints in the first place. And this person is Alex. Now, in his original tweet here, he says, so explain to me again why Nintendo refuses to put their games on PC, showing the currently active player base on Pal world, which, look, there's been a lot of debates about is that even a big player base compared to Nintendo? All this stuff doesn't really matter because Nintendo doesn't give us currently playing metrics. But this was the response I wanted to get into was this part here where it says, the funniest response to this tweet has been, because Nintendo wants to sell the console. You effing morons. People are simply emulating the console and games for free, but are willing to buy their effing games if they didn't have to buy an effing console. Now, I understand the premise, which is an extremely emulated product that a lot of people are just playing the games for free. But I had an interesting response to this and we're gonna continue to discuss after I read it to you. So let's go ahead and head over to my response to this where I said, if the argument is releasing games on PC, stops piracy, let me stop you right there. Piracy is pretty rampant on PC, even of PC games. This is a well-known thing and I've known this forever, I'm a PC gamer. Nintendo just sold 1.3 billion pieces of software and 130 million plus, it's probably gonna be around 140, systems, million systems, all at profit. So they sold all the systems at profit, all the games were at profit, as the company is now worth more than ever. Yes, Nintendo values exclusive games as value adds to their platforms that they also sell games where they get 30% of all profits from third-party game sales. There's a much larger game being played. But a response to this, I think needs to be brought up as well, if we go ahead and scroll down here, we'll see that Derek said, I don't think PC releases would hurt any of the console makers. It seems like money from audiences they otherwise wouldn't get money from. It completely baffles me why Nintendo won't release some of their legacy content on Steam, despite their old games being pirated on PC. And I said, because unlike Sony, Nintendo relies on their exclusive games to sell systems. Then he says, and yet I'm talking about PC games who don't get to buy any console games but have no problem emulating Nintendo games. And somewhere in here, maybe it was in response to Tetra here. Somewhere in here, I made a response where it says I'm not talking about new games. I'm talking about older virtual console style games. And I said, Nintendo Switch Online, they won't devalue their subscription service that makes them billions. What we need to remember is Nintendo does not operate like other companies because the way that they create value isn't like other companies. I'm well aware of how easily emulated Nintendo Switch games have been since the very beginning back in 2017. And despite this, they've moved 1.3 billion in software. Despite this, they've had the best selling games they've ever had. Despite this, they've had console sales, which if it passes DS, they've literally never experienced. And again, Nintendo isn't like their competition. You see, Sony sells PlayStation 5s whether they release games or not. You want proof, but the current PS5 is rapidly surpassing 15 million in sales since 2020. And when we think about that, how many exclusives do you think Sony's been dropping a year that you can only play on PS5? There's like less than a handful in the history of the platform that's been out for like four years. Meanwhile, Nintendo, well, I guess, sorry, to be fair, just over three years we're in the fourth year of PS5. For Nintendo, they had more than five in the very first year the system was out. Nintendo is different. Sony can get a lot of interest from gamers for third-party games, your Madden's, your Call of Duty's, your Minecrafts, you know, stuff like that, the Assassin's Creed mirages of the world. These sorts of games sell gangbusters on PlayStation 5 and help carry the system. In fact, if you ever look at the best selling games year over year on PlayStation, a lot of it is third-party games because third-party games are ultimately what sells PlayStation. Amazing triple-A third-party games move units. For Nintendo, they move units with games like the whole thing behind me, Super Mario RPG. Nintendo's IPs are what move their units. If you remove Nintendo's games from their FN console and then you can play them on PC or why are we stopping at PC? Why not say PlayStation 5 or any other platform? Suddenly, you don't need to buy Nintendo's console anymore. If you don't need to buy Nintendo's console anymore, console sales go down. By the way, they make profits on console sales just on the sale of the system itself. If Nintendo loses sales on their console, they then also lose Nintendo Switch online subscriptions to play multiplayer games on their console. So now their subscription services are affected. And then on top of that, with them selling less consoles, third parties and indie companies have less incentive to bring their games to Nintendo's system because there isn't a unique audience anymore on Nintendo's system. And because of that, Nintendo stops getting 30% cut in software sales from third parties and indie titles and triple-A titles that are no longer coming to the platform. Overall, you would have to argue Nintendo would essentially make more money being a third-party publisher than they would doing what they're doing now. And think about how scary it is for a company like Nintendo that's as healthy as they are to go, you know what we're gonna rely on? The viability of other people's creations. We're gonna rely on Sony never messing up the PlayStation. We're gonna rely on Xbox, never messing up the Xbox. We're gonna rely on PC gaming being the only way in which people get to consume video games. Obviously that isn't true with mobile phones and all the rest, but you know what I mean. It would put Nintendo in a very precarious decision. Let's look at another company that actually made this decision ages ago in Sega. Sega made the decision to go third-party and for the most part, it's been successful for them. It helped save their company. Sega right now is worth a fraction of what Nintendo's worth. It's safe to say Nintendo knows what they're doing because Nintendo has full control of everything that they create. I understand the desire to bring their classic games and make them more available on other platforms if that's the route you're talking about, but now that they put their classic games on Nintendo Switch Online, it would devalue the Nintendo Switch Online subscription. And if they take all their exclusive games and just put them on PC, it now devalues the Nintendo market, making people not need to buy, as you said, their effing console where Nintendo makes profits and also makes 30% off everybody else. It would ultimately harm the company overall as they would lose control over platform viability and be literally at the whims of companies, other companies, hardware, staying popular. That's just not a good decision for a company that, by the way, creates one of the most popular video game platforms in the world. Like, let's be realistic here. Nintendo isn't this struggling company like Sega was when they made the decision. Nintendo is literally one of the most popular video game companies in the world and one of the most popular, literally the most popular standardized gaming console company in the world. Look, we all want our cake and to eat it too. And yes, Nintendo could release games on PC that might deter some of the piracy going on. But let's just be real. A lot of the people pirating games on PC happen to also own a Switch. Those PAL world numbers of players, it looks nice, the three million impossible sales and 900,000 active players. Pokemon did 10 million in three days. You know, it's fascinating to think about the PC market and how big it could be with a game that is relatively inexpensive to get into. Let's take a look over here at Steam and we'll see PAL world listed here. And as we scroll down, we see that it's 10% off right now. So it's a 29.99 game being sold, by the way, early access, not even a complete full done being developed video game at 26.99. Pokemon launches at 59.99. There's just a stark contrast in business strategies and Nintendo is not going to release their games and devalue them that low down the totem pole, especially since Nintendo releases complete games, mostly complete games, I know, Pokemon's got its issues. But so does PAL world. Like if you pay any attention, there are bugs in PAL world, there's a lack of story. There's a lot of things that aren't really there. A lot of basic Unreal Engine assets and unoriginal creations. But still, that doesn't mean PAL world isn't fun to play. And it does have some unique concepts and ideas that maybe Pokemon couldn't learn from. But really, this isn't about that. This is about Nintendo and the reason they keep their stuff exclusive. And it's all about value adding to their own ecosystem that they have 100% control of and also make money off of everyone else's creations that are put on said system. They have their own ecosystem. Why not ask Apple why they don't make all of their apps available? Why isn't iMessage not available on Android? Like an actual Apple version of iMessage. Why isn't it on Android? There's a reason for that. It creates brand value. You can't just worry about what's always best for the consumers when you're a business. Because sometimes what's best for the business doesn't line up with what's best for very specific user bases. You think PlayStation fans wouldn't want Nintendo games on their platform? You think I saw something that we think Xbox fans wouldn't want Nintendo games on the platform? Why is PC any different? Oh, because you're emulating the games on there anyways. Did you know you could activate dev mode on Xbox and emulate literally right on an Xbox? Did you know there's hacked PlayStation 5s playing emulated Switch game? Why are we not just releasing it on everything? Why does Sony even have a platform? You know what? Why does PC hardware exist? Why are we all not just using streaming platforms from our phone? Again, there's a value to dedicated stuff and you shouldn't want that to go away just because you're unwilling to fork over $200. By the way, that's all it costs, even cheaper used to get a Switch Lite to invest in the Nintendo ecosystem. And then all the complaints would be on PC is why does Nintendo not drop their prices? Why is Breath of the Wild still $60 on Steam seven years later? It won't matter. Nintendo isn't gonna win in that market. They win in their own market. Thank you guys so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.