 Right now we are entering the most critical juncture probably in Nintendo's history when it comes to transitioning to the Nintendo Switch 2. There have been a lot of problems in transitioning in the past for Nintendo and this stuff is well documented. It is impossible to ignore but also Nintendo has seen incredible highs. They've also seen incredible lows and in an ever-changing landscape with phones being as popular as they are, this all digital potential future coming, cloud gaming, movies and maybe whether movie theaters are even going to matter in a decade or two and a whole bunch of other stuff. We have in-person theme parks from Nintendo. It's interesting thinking about the future of the company and how important it is that they get this transition right and what could happen if they don't and we're going to explore both sides mostly focusing on how important it is why it's important what they could possibly do to make sure that they make a proper transition but besides that we also have to just mention what happens if they don't and what could Nintendo possibly be facing as Nintendo could be in a very critical period in their company history that could fundamentally change what they're doing moving forward. Now before we dive into this I just want to remind you we are on a road to 150,000 subscribers so I would appreciate if you would go ahead and like this video leave a comment below subscribe to the channel and go ahead and hit that bell icon to be notified of all future uploads. Alright so first we need to just look at them from a company standpoint right Nintendo is a business a for-profit business they have a lot of investors and naturally that means that you can't really ignore how well Nintendo is doing without talking about their stock valuation. Now back in the middle of the we and DS era their stock peaked in value at $15 and 36 cents per share and that was back in December of 2007 which is widely considered that 2007-2008 period the peak of the we and DS era that's also at the time Nintendo's peak they had never been worth more money than they were in December of 2007 now they actually eclipsed this peak during the switch era with their highest stock valuation hitting $16 and 10 cents in December of 2020 which we all know was the pandemic year and was the highest selling individual system year in Nintendo history that fiscal year 2020 to 2021 Nintendo sold 28 million systems they had never done that with any individual platform in the past not the DS not the we this is the most unit for any one system they've ever sold they have sold more combined units but not more individual units for just one system now looking at the peaks of a company in terms of stock valuation isn't always a great way to you know establish the health of a company every company has peaks and valleys instead what I like to look at is what was happening before that peak and what's been happening since that peak and if you just kind of look at the general time period of the we and DS era and then compare it to this Nintendo switch era well you'll notice is that the switch era in general has a much higher consistent value for Nintendo they are making more money more consistently holding value for longer during this entire switch era than anytime in Nintendo's history including the we and DS era when by the way they sold 250 million let us think in 250 million pieces of hardware and guys over 1.5 billion pieces of software you could argue they were selling more than than they are today the differences they're making more money today than they were back then why why is that the case well there's a few things to consider obviously number one the Nintendo switch is success yes it can't mimic 250 million pieces of hardware sold but if the profit margins on every single model of the switch be it the light the version two or the OLED are extremely high they might possibly be higher than that DS and we era leading to more profits per system sold but not just that like yeah Nintendo is you know basically sold over a billion in software at this point and just in general and it will probably end around 1.2 1.4 1.5 billion on switch we have no idea when the software sales are going to slow down on switch but Nintendo's own properties that they make the most money from are actually selling better now than they did in the we and DS era which sounds crazy when you had like switch sports doing 80 million copies but that was as a packing game they weren't actually making money on those individual game sales you can liken the closest thing to a packing game they have being Mario Kart 8 deluxe because they pack it in every single holiday but actually if you eliminate the holiday bundle sales they've still sold over 50 million copies of Mario Kart 8 deluxe at $60 a pop this isn't even including the DLC that they were selling as well and including with NSO that obviously has led to a major uptick in profits compared to something like we sports and the thing is it's not the only game doing these crazy numbers we're seeing it with animal crossing we're seeing it with Zelda seeing it with Pokemon we're seeing it with Mario everything like every major ip nintendo has is doing better and healthier today than ever before the only one we can argue isn't would be something like Nintendo switch sports because it's not hitting the peaks of we sports and we sports resort but still selling 15 million is nothing to scoff at and i i do think that nintendo is pretty happy that switch sports still has that level of audience still sticking around but yeah nintendo is selling more individual pieces of software per game released than at any time in company history and that is obviously helping stabilize their revenue but nintendo did a lot of smart things during this generation to also help add to their revenue right theme parks we already brought them up before but they are clearly a big deal they're about to open their third theme park and they're expanding the current ones that are already out there and honestly this is proving nothing but a success for nintendo they're part of the universal theme parks they seem to be packed every single weekend it's insane the photos and the video footage coming out every weekend from these parks clearly they're doing very very well and they become one of the primary attractions at universal parks actually leading to an attendance uptick according to universal so yeah nintendo is driving in money that way obviously we just had the mario movie this year the long-term effect of movies i think is hard to project right now just because you had one mega successful movie and yes it was a mega success it is by most people's measures the best like box office animated film of all time in terms of money made you know technically it's behind the lying king the redone one which some people don't really count as an animated movie even though it technically is but whatever that's still really really impressive when you're beating out things like the behemoths of frozen yeah i think they're doing pretty damn well now granted projecting future movie success isn't going to be a for sure thing like can zelda be a billion dollar movie i don't know could a curbie movie do a billion could donkey kong could anything but mario from nintendo pull these kind of numbers we don't know so that's why i say we got to be careful in projecting future movie value for nintendo but i do think obviously a second mario movie is going to be another billion dollar movie as well so nintendo is in a good place anyways a better place than they were with movies obviously when they weren't even making them but beyond that nintendo has other success stories going on we don't talk about it hardly ever at this channel but nintendo is finding success in the mobile phone space and yeah pokemon goes the big one and nintendo only makes a certain percentage off that because the revenue is split between the pokemon company niantic and nintendo with their copyright rights but i will say that nintendo does make some money off of that but they have other success stories mario kart tour has a pretty big install based on phones the fire emblem game has a pretty big install based on phones so they have a couple success stories out there and they're still pushing other games like pikmin bloom and i believe animal crossing pocket camp and those games are smaller successes but they're still out there and i think as nintendo continues to go they're going to find more and more success i think they will eventually find a way to get mario to be successful on phones the whole mario run thing didn't really go the way they wanted they treated it in a more traditional sense spend money one time get all the levels that's not really what works in the mobile phone space i think they'll find a way to tweak a future mario release to find success there but the point is nintendo does have some success in the mobile phone space and that is really important they have over a hundred million people on phones with nintendo accounts and that is crazy to think that they even have a user base of a hundred million people on phones to even you know just communicate to that that that is pretty good stuff for them and obviously a help in stabilizing revenue nintendo has also made a lot of partnerships over this generation they're not partnered with lego like one of the most obvious partnerships that many of us feel like should have been happening a long time ago mario lego sets we got animal crossing one coming out we already know that there's zelda ones in the work and who the hell knows whatever i mean at some point in the future there's going to be lego sets for pretty much all of nintendo's major ip's and they're not just that they have the sets so far the mario lego sets have been the fastest selling new lego sets from the lego company since star wars in the 80s that is massive and huge you consider how big the lego company is the fact that nintendo can make that claim is pretty insane and that obviously helps nintendo you know with their revenue they're having more streams of revenue than they've ever had before which can help with the transition to switch to but you're only as relevant as you can keep your ip relevant and while the mario movie might help keep mario relevant on his own what's going to keep all the rest of your ip relevant and that's going to have to be obviously the continued success of their software and hardware and this is where we get into the importance of the nintendo switch shoe and some of the challenges that nintendo faces here as an example shintaro furukawa the current president and ceo of nintendo japan and all of nintendo has literally never launched a new generation of hardware he wasn't the person launching the nintendo switch that nintendo switch was owada's idea and then lost then launched by a temporary fill in ceo it was never furukawa directly that was launching that hardware you can argue he's launched obviously some refreshed hardware but he's never launched brand new hardware before so there could be some lack of experience there even though he's been at nintendo a long time and nintendo obviously has a history of just failing to release successful hardware back to back they just really haven't even like the most success they've had was like going from the nintendo entertainment system to the you know super nintendo and even that represent a market follow-up as they started to lose market share to things like you know the sagagenesis and stuff so nintendo hasn't you know always been able to encompass and recapture the same success that they've had you know in a successful generation so it's really interesting thinking about that and then does nintendo recognize all of the problems that they faced in falling off like furukawa has talked a good game about not wanting to fall off a cliff and and nintendo wanting to maintain and stay at top but have they figured out all of the issues that have caused this in the past we see nintendo having a recognition of some of the problems as an example doug bolzer recently going out there and talking about how nintendo accounts are now exists and nintendo always used to reset the accounts of regeneration now they have a universal account system they're going to carry forward that's going to help them communicate directly to consumers and sure that's not going to hurt or anything that definitely helps and we obviously see them recognizing that hey game momentum and system momentum usually is dead in the final year of a platform and nintendo is trying to address that this time around again these are the words of doug bolzer himself so i'm not just pulling this stuff out of a rabbit hat or out of a hat like a magician this is stuff that nintendo themselves is fully recognizing have been problems and doug bolzer is not wrong those are problems but those haven't always been the only problems as an example nintendo hasn't always had a great launch game a must-have launcher they always talk about how important games are in game cell systems but then when you're launching with new super mario brothers you that's not really the sort of go-getter game that nintendo really thinks of it when you're launching with a luigi's mansion that's not really a go-getter game that you might think it is even mario 64 for as amazing as that game is that alone is not enough to launch a system and i can argue that breath of the wild as awesome as that was to have it launch and how more copies of breath of the wild sold on day one of switch than switches were available it's an incredible stat and a nice story but the continued success of nintendo switch wasn't just about breath of the wild in that first few months you had mario kart come out you had splatoon come out you kept releasing big game after big game it really felt like every single month there was a big game dropping and nintendo did this in a way that no other company really has sony never really had a first year out the gate like this uh xbox has never had her first year out the gate like this only nintendo really had that level of software support in year one was switch and again nintendo hasn't always had that i mean i we you let's say it was a 3d zelda game instead and then there was even a say a 3d mario game two months later but if you still have a nine month gap after that till pikmin 3 which isn't even a huge seller yeah that's going to end up being a software drought problem that probably would lead to the lack of success of the system nintendo's naming conventions for systems haven't always been the best like hey i can look back on all of nintendo systems and tell you how much i love the name of the game cube and i love the name game cube but is it a market selling name doesn't really feel like it when you're making a system that looks like a lunchbox with a handle on it like you're calling it a cube yeah it's factually a cube but i it's kind of a weird a weird name right like before you were always like oh nintendo entertainment system super nintendo entertainment system and then nintendo 64 which is talking about the 64 bits i it's just confusing you you went from you know entertainment system to now we're putting numbers that are about graphic bits in a system to calling it a cube and now we're going to we and resetting everything with we and then we think we is so great that we're gonna keep the we going and then we're gonna drop a we you which sounds like a accessory and it doesn't help that the system itself kind of just looked like a remodeled we you know a still white still keeping that theme as well and just honestly it was it was a bad marketing name and that we can get into all the problems we you had in terms of uh how nintendo you know marketed it the technology in it and everything in between but the point is that nintendo has a bad history of following up successes with more successes even like the ds to the 3ds look the 3ds is still a successful platform overall i don't know that nintendo would ever say the 3ds is a failure but it's sold half as many systems as the ds uh and maybe that was part of nintendo not recognizing that hey touch gaming has gotten better it's moved beyond this whole dual screen thing you don't need a dedicated touchscreen anymore because all of us are used to using smartphones now and tablets where the entire screen is a touchscreen we don't really need a separate touchscreen anymore and it just became this really interesting concept and obviously you know the failures of 3ds and we you and again i don't think that nintendo thinks 3ds is a total failure but i do think that that culminated and then deciding to release the nintendo switch a combination platform with honestly a brilliant marketing name we was a brilliant marketing name because of the we would like to play and you know all that stuff like the whole family gimmick that was really good but switch is a clever marketing game as you know a name as well because it involves switching from playing on your tv to on the go and if the next platform also does that which according to all reports rumors and all that it is another switch like platform then puts nintendo in an interesting perspective because are they going to keep the switch brand and this is where we need to get into like why this is so important because if nintendo flubs this transition and let's say that they do what they've done in the past they go with some weird out their name let's say they call it like the nintendo universe or something like that right where they're like all of your nintendo goodness in one place because they create a streaming platform on it for their movies and shows they create a nso that you know it's supposed to be every game we've ever released but then you're not going to get them for like a decade as they slow release them uh they have obviously all their new games coming there they have it's backwards compatible sure but then it's backwards compatible in a weird way like say we you already had a boot into a separate mode so it wasn't like a natural thing and let's say they still don't address like you know being able to message your friends or improving nintendo switch online in a meaningful way in the end you just end up with this platform that i think people might not even know what the hell it is and move on again i don't think they're going to call the damn thing to the nintendo universe but i'll just give it an example of how easy it can be for nintendo to maybe get in their own way and mess things up and if they do that suddenly less people might go to their movies less people might play their mobile phone games less people might be wanting to go to those theme parks nintendo is only as relevant as the thing that made them relevant in the first place is relevant so this switch era has been incredible for nintendo but if their brand their consoles their games start to fall into the background like they have in other times when they've transitioned all these other things that they're successful in are just going to be a little bit less successful and while nintendo might still be overall more successful than in a typical down period what happens if attendance goes down to a point they got to start closing theme parks what happens if you know the next mario movie only gets 500 million at the box office still most people will consider that pretty good but compared to the first movie man nintendo could go they're losing interest this isn't really their way to go so a lot hinges on this successful transition and this isn't me saying nintendo is going to go out of business or nintendo is doing they have one of the biggest war chest in the entire video game industry they're going to be fine and all they got to do is find that success again find another lightning in the bottle idea in the future but i think that nintendo switch hasn't really ran its course in terms of the type of system it is and i think there are a lot of things nintendo can do to ensure that success we talked about it before big things branding look it might sound boring it might be totally not nintendo was something just call the damn thing nintendo switch to let's stop messing around and thinking you're more clever than the actual consumer base where everything we buy you know when it's a new one is indicated by a number when people talk about the new iphone they they say hey do you have the iphone 14 or do you have the iphone 15 and then they might ask you which version of the 15 you have if they care to get into versions uh when people ask you know hey do you have the playstation 4 or do you have the playstation 5 people understand from a fundamental level because the rest of the technology around us uses numbers to indicate a newer better platform i mean even what i'm recording through right now which is a roadcaster pro 2 that already lets you know there was a roadcaster pro one and that since this is the second one it's probably better and has more features than the first one and yes absolutely it does that is a thing that exists out here for a long time all these consumer electronics use numbers to indicate so nintendo needs to stop messing around stop thinking that they're more clever than everybody else and throw out weird names for a system that's very similar to the old one in terms of you can switch it off your tv and take it with you on the go it's still docks okay then call it the nintendo switch 2 let's not beat around the bush and i'm not just saying that because we've been calling it for so long i'm saying it just makes logical sense and i think we'll confuse the marketplace but that's not good enough you can't just call it nintendo switch 2 and boom everyone's gonna buy it you gotta kind of look at it like the switch in the switch era when that year one happened they really blasted you with software after software to the soft one the musket the zeno blades the zeldas the marios the the spatunes the mario carts they really just kept hitting us with big game after big game that entire first year on the market they need to do that again nintendo needs to approach every system launch like they're desperate the switches launch was desperate that entire launch lineup for that first nine months was a desperation launch it's we're going to hit this system with the best of what we got and if we can't find success doing that then maybe we do need to change what our company does maybe we might have to contemplate going third party instead it led to switch exploding off the store shelves they need to do that again they need to have that same attitude heading into this game well you're not going to get a 3d mario and 3d zelda again in the first nine months it doesn't mean you can't have other major stuff going to go along with that 3d mario game it doesn't mean you can't have a brand new mario card game it doesn't mean that you can't have a luigi's mansion you know for ready to go it can't mean that you don't have other very strong ips that you could drop in that first year including key games from third parties to really help push the system sales wise so i do think they kind of need to look at what they did with switch and realize we need to do that again we really need to buy into software sales hardware because one thing nintendo does is put out more games every year than any other first party you know hardware company they put out more games per year than xbox does in terms of exclusives they put out more games per year than sony does in terms of exclusives yes nintendo needs to recognize that is one of their strengths their ability to make high quality video games and get them actually out the door at a quicker pace is a strength of nintendo and take advantage of that again they're developing all their games for one system right now that was the switch well now that their development teams are probably moving on to make all their games for switch to you need to do it again now i don't have all of the answers of course i'm not a businessman i can't tell you the best way to market it or the sort of commercials you want to shoot i have my own ideas i have my own ways i would handle how you would tease and announce the platform and what the best release timing would be i have my own ideas for that but my ideas aren't necessarily good ones again i'm not a pr marketing firm that has studied millions and millions of surveys and all this different stuff to determine when the best announced and the best way to announce and release and the best launch lineups and i'm not someone that could sit here and tell you that i can only give my personal opinions on what would appeal to me well let's be honest i bought a wii u so i'm going to buy this thing anyways regardless if there's a mario game if there's a zelda game i'm probably buying the system right i mean look wii u didn't even get a dedicated zelda game it got a cross gen one which breath of the wild is really good on wii u uh but yeah i mean the wind raker and father princess hd were good enough for me and i don't even really replay games that much and then obviously uh we never really had a 3d mario game but we did have you know 3d world which was fine it was like an in-between game it was it was cool i enjoyed it so yeah if there's mario and zelda there i'll probably buy the system anyways uh mack metroid metroid prime four is there i'm gonna i'm gonna buy the system so i'm just throwing out there that i i don't know all the answers but what i do know is that this is a very critical time for nintendo and they do need to get it right let me know your thoughts on how nintendo might mess this up or how nintendo might get it right what you think needs to happen one thing i never really touched on obviously are the specs and the power look uh we could talk about that stuff all day we've talked about a lot on the channel based on all the rumors and reports i think nintendo is already on the right path you know it looks like at least 12 gigabytes of ram no one seems to be hearing eight gigabytes so it's at least 12 maybe 16 a lot of storage 256 512 something like that uh something that's around ps4 slash ps4 pro power but then you throw dlss on top and you know ray reconstruction like everything pretty much sounds good it sounds about what i want that to see in the generational leap forward so that's why i didn't really go into that but obviously important nintendo gets those specs right gets the launch price right if there's going to be multiple models they got to handle that correctly so and obviously you know backwards compatibility would be really nice to have i don't know if it's a make or break feature but i definitely think it would at least serve them well to have it at launch even if they drop the feature in future models later i'm just saying like there's a lot that nintendo can do right a lot nintendo could do wrong and i want to hear your thoughts on this down in the comments below i am rithanna rubble jans from nintendo prime and i'll catch you in the next video