 Ah yes, Nintendo going third party. Often referred to by Nintendo fan as the words of Nintendo haters. Sometimes even synonymous with the words Nintendo is doomed. Of course, reality is that many just hope this happens simply because they don't want to have to buy yet another platform just to play Nintendo games. In an ideal world, we would really have just one unified gaming platform and every video game ever made would release on it. This would take care of a lot of the console war mentality, the bickering and we could just get back to talking brass tacks about if Sonic Mania is better than Super Mario Odyssey or if Breath of the Wild did open world better than the Witcher 3 and the upcoming Assassin's Creed Origins. Every the new South Park game wants to take a stab at RPG of the year. Certainly, these are all conversations that can and often do exist, but they are massively drowned out by the endless debates about who has the better system or how much better or worse does this game perform on that system compared to the other. This happens frequently with the Nintendo Switch, now with Doom coming to the Switch along with several other 3rd party games, but it's not an isolated conversation. These debates have existed for decades and so long as there are many dedicated gaming devices out there, it will continue to exist. But one conversation seems to keep coming back to the forefront, Nintendo going 3rd party. Obviously, when we frame this conversation, this is not coming from the perspective of what we want to happen. We actually prefer Nintendo maintaining the path they are currently on. In fact, with the massive success of the Nintendo Switch, it's not really even fair to apply this 3rd party mentality to the current situation today. No, we have to dive back further to a key turning point in Nintendo's console history where they could have potentially made as drastic a shift as Sega did when they bowed out of the console race. This is our What If series, where we look at gaming history and ask ourselves, what if something went differently? These scenarios were based either on actual events that could have happened but fell through or simply scenarios many folks often clamor for but rarely flesh out what the end result would be. This series is speculative based on our own varying opinions. Given these alternate realities don't exist, we can only guess what the landscape would look like today if these situations had occurred. So what would happen if Nintendo had gone 3rd party making multi-platform games? It's important to remember that no time during Nintendo's 30 plus year run of being a video game company have they ever been in as dire of straits as Sega was when they dipped out of the console industry or even worse than that as dire as Atari became and still is to this day. Nintendo has remained highly profitable throughout the majority of its existence even as systems declined in sales over the years before the launch of the Wii. Now one thing we have to accept along the way is that we're strictly talking about Nintendo as a home console maker. Their pure dominance in the handheld gaming space is completely unquestioned and as such Nintendo would have likely kept that division going regardless of what else was happening inside the company. Nintendo is a very business savvy company, but there was that one specific moment in its history where everything seemed to turn on a dime. If you look at the sales charts of Nintendo's home consoles after the release of the NES you'll notice that every generation Nintendo lost more and more market share. There was the fierce competition of the Sega Genesis during the Super Nintendo era and then with the Nintendo 64 they had to deal with the introduction of PlayStation something Nintendo played a key role in pushing to existence which is something you can find out in our previous what if video detailing how Sony and Nintendo once were working together. During the GameCube era they had to deal with the realities and success of the PlayStation 2 along with the late edition of the Xbox. Nintendo once at the forefront of gaming during the NES era was some 15 years later starting to become one of the afterthoughts in the console market. We could talk at length about why this happened. The slow adoption of the CD slash DVD standard technology, the continual pressure they put on quality standards with the Nintendo seal of quality, the inability to recognize the market being ready to move into an online world among many other reasons Nintendo eventually fell into last place. One thing did stay consistent however throughout all of it. Nintendo continued to make great games and some of the best games in the entire video game world. Heck, the GameCube itself became the birthplace of games like Animal Crossing and Pikmin the former of which stands today as one of Nintendo's most popular franchises. However, because of the consistent decline in sales combined with a change at the top of Nintendo with the long time CEO Hiroshi Yamuchi stepping down in 2002 as Situra Owada took over, Nintendo changed directions almost immediately even as the GameCube was still in its infancy. Owada decided it was time to do something drastic with their next system, deciding to go with simplistic motion controls, a controller that looked like a TV remote and greatly reducing the buttons needed to play games. The idea was simple enough, simplify the way people can control games. Nintendo worked to the tune of 100 million units sold, but let's step back from that. What if instead of deciding they should do that, Nintendo looked at the success of the PlayStation 2 and the early numbers from Xbox and decided it was time to pull a Sega. You see, Sega was nearly bankrupt when they left the console space, but recovered quickly by releasing their software across multiple platforms. While Nintendo wasn't even close to not being profitable, let alone going bankrupt, it was not too unrealistic to see a small window where they could see a wider benefit of getting out of the dedicated home console space. If Sega turned things around quickly, just how profitable would Nintendo be doing the same thing? Obviously, Nintendo was not going to make more money going third party than the whole of the Wii era. Every Wii sold for profit, and while there may not have been huge AAA third party figures, every call of duty on it sold over 1 million. Some third party games like Just Dance sold over 10 million, and the profit margins on hardware combined with the royalty fees on the games sold on the system that were not created by Nintendo is way bigger than this alternate reality will suggest possible. So Nintendo probably made the correct decision in hindsight. However, if Nintendo had gone third party, it's hard to deny that their software would have sold well. Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy being available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and yes, even the PC. All of this legally, and Nintendo actually getting a foothold in that PC space just as Valve's own gaming platform, Steam, was really starting to catch on. They would have been there in the infancy of all three of those platforms, allowing Nintendo to grow as they grow. Over time, Nintendo's games would have likely reached the highest combined sales plateau they have ever seen. Even considering the crazy numbers we did, they would have had an audience to sell games to in a home console and PC space north of 200 million consumers. More than double the available player base on Wii. Things are never that simple, of course. Development costs would rise, as Nintendo would need to develop their game to work on three different platforms, including a wide range of setups on the PC side, but with sales that may have turned Zelda games from 5 million sellers into 15, the increased costs would have been more than justified. Of course, you'd also have to accept the fact that Wii Sports would have never been a thing, nor would have Wii Fit as the marketplace just wouldn't have existed for those titles. No doubt, Nintendo would have been highly profitable going this route, and even up to this very day in 2017 would remain as one of the leading AAA multi-platform developers in the industry. Imagine how many units Breath of the Wild would have sold if it was on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It's hard to even fathom. In many ways, this would have been a big boon for the company. They would have likely dived deep in the smart device gaming sooner, and began capitalizing on the multi-platform cash cow now that many other savvy AAA publishers and developers took advantage of as well. All the while maintaining their dedicated handheld dominant, possibly even leading to partnering with companies like Sony on the platform, rather than releasing competing devices. Imagine Aveda slash Switch slash 3DS like Hybrid strictly for on the go. It sounds kind of crazy. Obviously, the gaming landscape changes as well. Would motion controls and the Kinect even be a thing today? Would VR be using motion controls if Nintendo didn't popularize their usage in games? Would there be offerings of huge libraries of classic games on PlayStation and Xbox if Nintendo didn't push forward a virtual console? Heck, would Just Dance even exist? Lots of questions, with most of the answers likely being a resounding no. Nintendo would be stabilizing their yearly profit margins to the benefit of investors. And while they don't hit the Wii and DS peak, their stock could reach figures that are higher than they are even today. And simply stay there. That's a reality their investors would love, a stable in value Nintendo, especially for those that aren't looking to make a quick buck. Honestly, as much as I hate this what if scenario, I am hard pressed to deny that it wouldn't have been a wholly terrible direction. Would I really be upset if I was playing Mario Odyssey on PlayStation 4 instead of Switch? Would I really be upset if it became suddenly much easier to get my hands on Nintendo products regardless of what platform I own? Of course not. It's a good scenario. This as it would be for Sony and Microsoft to also go multi-platform. As noted earlier, in an ideal world you could just get every game on every platform or even just one. There are many many benefits to this, both financially for Nintendo and for consumer choice. The biggest loss then is obviously that Nintendo touch. Would a hybrid home console in handheld exist today? Probably not. Honestly, I think Nintendo couldn't have gone wrong going third party after the Game Hume era, but I'm thankful they didn't. What we got instead was a Nintendo still trying to push the boundaries and bring something fresh hardware wise to the table. Taking risks that other companies seem to avoid. That's the world we live in today and I'm glad that that's our current reality. As always folks, thanks for tuning in to this what if video. I am Nathan DeRuffle Jantz from Nintendo Prime. If you'd like to support us head on over to patreon.com slash nintendo prime where you can support our news videos or shows just like this. There's a lot of different tiers, you go over there, you get access to lots of exclusive things, early access to the podcast, Q&As, all that great jazz. Otherwise folks, if you liked this video you know what to do and if you disliked the video hit that dislike button. Subscribe for more content and I will catch you in the next one.