General Nintendo sales/business discussion topic (previously: The Wii U Thread)

[Mauro Fonseca]

No, no, the jaundice skin gives the Oliver model an advantage in horrifyingness

[Willsy]

Whatever model DK has, his dong is and always will be expanded.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

well Nintendo won one of the lawsuits

http://www.gonintendo.com/s/228582-nintendo-defeats-non-practicing-entity-in-global-patent-fight

 

Nintendo Defeats Non-Practicing Entity in Global Patent Fight

May 19, 2014 by RawmeatCowboy

 

REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Nintendo has won a patent infringement case in a U.S. District Court in Texas. The case was brought in February 2009 by Wall Wireless, LLC, which claimed that the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi systems infringed a patent. Wall Wireless is a company whose primary business is enforcing patents. The court dismissed the case on May 19, 2014, after the United States Patent and Trademark Office canceled all the patent claims Wall Wireless was relying on in its case.

This dismissal follows a decision by the Japanese Patent Office, which also found that Nintendo’s products do not infringe Wall’s Japanese patents.

“We are very pleased to see the U.S. case dismissed, and also to have the Japanese Patent Office confirm that Nintendo does not infringe Wall’s Japanese patents,” said Richard Medway, Nintendo of America’s vice president and deputy general counsel. “Nintendo vigorously defends patent lawsuits and other proceedings when we believe we have not infringed another party’s patents. It does not matter where such cases are filed or if it takes more than five years to vindicate our position. Nintendo continues to develop unique and innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others.”

[PSI Wind]

Nintendo planning to split the revenue between Youtubers

A nice middle-ground that satisfies both sides? Who are you, and what have you done with the shitty Nintendo?

[JaidynReiman]

Nintendo planning to split the revenue between Youtubers

A nice middle-ground that satisfies both sides? Who are you, and what have you done with the shitty Nintendo?

Its more like they're learning that they need to allow more people to see their products. Blocking people from making money off of Youtube when reviewing or showcasing Nintendo products/games gets Nintendo less publicity and they've realized this.

[PSI Wind]

Its more like they're learning that they need to allow more people to see their products. Blocking people from making money off of Youtube when reviewing or showcasing Nintendo products/games gets Nintendo less publicity and they've realized this.

It probably won't change anything though. A lot of them will probably want 100% of the revenue :l

[SuperLink]

Its more like they're learning that they need to allow more people to see their products. Blocking people from making money off of Youtube when reviewing or showcasing Nintendo products/games gets Nintendo less publicity and they've realized this.

It's about time too, because YouTube is one of the key things in game popularity nowadays, user generated stuff.

 

I actually thought about this when Nintendo tweeted a SmoshGames video of them playing MK8 the other day. I thought it was weird that Nintendo not only acknowledged but promoted a YouTube-user-created video of their stuff. Hopefully this is the beginning of Nintendo being less anal about who shows footage. Who knows, if they really care about it we might see some sort of Twitch news regarding Nintendo sooner or later.

 

Speaking of Twitch, if anyone knows whether TwitchPlaysPokémon influenced Pokémon sales or not, it's Nintendo. I can't imagine it had a bad affect at all, and Nintendo may not have ever acknowledged TPP but there's no way they don't know about it. It was a phenomenon when it first started.

[Sami]

This is good? What?

What this means is that you sign up to be a Nintendo "affiliate" on YouTube so that they can take a portion of the money you earned thanks to the content you created. That's like Universal Studios knocking on Doug Walker's door and demanding a percentage of his profits because the Nostalgia Critic reviews their movies.

This is to say nothing of the possible corruption it could lead to, like when Microsoft and Machinima got caught forcing their affiliates to say only positive things about the Xbox One.

This is still crappy. They're trying to take money from people that are essentially advertising their games for free anyway.

[SuperLink]

No one said it was good, but it's something. It's allowing something that up til now they keep trying to flag or disallow completely.

 

I personally still have an issue with the idea that an unemployed gamer can sit at home and scream at their TV for a few hours, call it "entertainment" and make a living off it because it gets some views on youtube, but that's a different discussion.

[VO.SUPER]

Technically reviews are fully under fair use. Let's plays and other such are still in the murk.

[Marcello]

You can't just say the Youtubers are earning money with content they created without acknowledging that they're working with content Nintendo created. They created the commentary, but without Nintendo's game it's useless.

[VO.SUPER]

You can't just say the Youtubers are earning money with content they created without acknowledging that they're working with content Nintendo created. They created the commentary, but without Nintendo's game it's useless.

 

Not necessarily. I could have fun watching game grumps without the game behind it. (It'd probably be less frustrating too. XD) This doesn't apply to all videos, but it applies to the best.

[Chronozoah]

You can't just say the Youtubers are earning money with content they created without acknowledging that they're working with content Nintendo created. They created the commentary, but without Nintendo's game it's useless.

Yes, but in this case it is content Nintendo created which has already been paid for (in all likelihood) and is now being given free publicity. Nintendo already benefits from this type of situation in a pretty big way, and asking for more beyond that seems entirely unnecessary and counter-productive.

[Sami]

No one said it was good, but it's something. It's allowing something that up til now they keep trying to flag or disallow completely.

 

I personally still have an issue with the idea that an unemployed gamer can sit at home and scream at their TV for a few hours, call it "entertainment" and make a living off it because it gets some views on youtube, but that's a different discussion.

 

It comes off as an attempt to control the community as opposed to shunning it completely. They shouldn't be taking people's money like this.

 

As for the second thing - you're oversimplifying it. For someone to make a living off of what they do, they have to do more than simply scream at their TV. I've done Let's Plays before - it's time consuming, and I wasn't terribly good at it. Had I monetized, I'd have made... maybe, at best, $10? There's more to it than just "scream at TV and watch the money rain", you have to be good at it.

 

 

You can't just say the Youtubers are earning money with content they created without acknowledging that they're working with content Nintendo created. They created the commentary, but without Nintendo's game it's useless.

 

So? It's fair use. It's protected by the law, and they're advertising the game they're playing for free.

 

It's already a mutually beneficial relationship when free advertising leads to increased popularity and mindshare. How many people do you think would have been talking about Goof Troop last year if Game Grumps hadn't played it?

[SenEDDtor Missile]

It comes off as an attempt to control the community as opposed to shunning it completely. They shouldn't be taking people's money like this.

 

As for the second thing - you're oversimplifying it. For someone to make a living off of what they do, they have to do more than simply scream at their TV. I've done Let's Plays before - it's time consuming, and I wasn't terribly good at it. Had I monetized, I'd have made... maybe, at best, $10? There's more to it than just "scream at TV and watch the money rain", you have to be good at it.

^This. You need good equipment so that you can be easily heard and your recorded footage doesn't suck. you need to have some degree of planning in your LP so that your commentary doesn't suck. You also need a good bit of luck and choice, since depending on the game you choose, combined with your current status, you could either hit it big, or end up being a nobody due to your particular game being overdone to the point that no one cares.

 

Honestly being a big time LP player and getting decent money off of it is like the lottery.

[PSI Wind]

It's still bad, but it's a hell of a lot better for both sides. We don't even know how much the profits will be split with. Just be thankful Nintendo isn't outright banning the practice for their games anymore or even taking down the videos. And as stated a year ago, Nintendo wasn't the only one at vault for doing this, as Microsoft and Sony did it as well, but theirs was a much bigger scale.

[Sami]

It's still bad, but it's a hell of a lot better for both sides. We don't even know how much the profits will be split with. Just be thankful Nintendo isn't outright banning the practice for their games anymore or even taking down the videos. And as stated a year ago, Nintendo wasn't the only one at vault for doing this, as Microsoft and Sony did it as well, but theirs was a much bigger scale.

 

I'm not going to be thankful for jack shit when the policy is still bad, and it's only "better" than the ludicrous one they themselves instated last year. Don't let yourself fall for the foot in the door phenomenon. I'd be saying the same thing if this was a Sony or Microsoft thread.

[Tornado]

What this means is that you sign up to be a Nintendo "affiliate" on YouTube so that they can take a portion of the money you earned thanks to the content you created.

That is only interest building (and thus revenue building) because of the content they created that you are using directly.

 

That's like Universal Studios knocking on Doug Walker's door and demanding a percentage of his profits because the Nostalgia Critic reviews their movies.

It's not like that at all. It's much more like Universal Studios knocking on someone's door and demanding a percentage of someone's profits when that someone sells a running commentary track recorded over the entirety of a copy of Jurassic Park.

There's a reason MST3000 (which is about the closest comparison to a quality Let's Play video) only usually did shitty B-Movies that no one ever cared about, there's a reason that as soon as they lost the rights to those movies they stopped airing the episodes in syndication, and there's a reason that the two followup ideas from the creators of that show either directly continued the original idea (Cinematic Titanic) so they can clear copyright issues or do big budget new movies (Rifftrax) but only release commentary tracks with instructions for how the viewer can sync it up with the version of the movie that they already bought.

 

So? It's fair use. It's protected by the law, and they're advertising the game they're playing for free.

Except that's not how fair use actually works, and it is a huge assumption to act as if a Let's Play of a game automatically falls under fair use in the first place. That's even before we get to the fact that the specific issue in this case is monetization of someone else's copyright works for your own ends, which does nothing but further muddy the waters of whether something is a fair use of a copyrighted work or an illegal derivative of a copyrighted work.

 

 

 

 

It's great that Sony and Microsoft (and going back further, Sega never gave one ounce of a shit about it) have decided that they want to allow you the chance to stream games with built in services even though that's not really the same thing (but I will note that Microsoft in particular has allowed people to go all out in monetization since virtually the beginning of the XBox division) compared to Nintendo's Disney-esque history of a strict copyright leash; but let's not for a second pretend that those two companies are obligated to do it.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

well, even though I dislike coming in here, MK8 release is approaching, and the wii-u is currently outselling the ps4, I expect a huge bump next week in all regions

http://www.gonintendo.com/s/229227-japanese-weekly-sales-figures-5-19-5-25-wii-u-outsells-ps4

 

Japanese Weekly Sales Figures - 5/19 - 5/25: Wii U Outsells PS4

May 28, 2014 by Eggmond

Hardware

1. Nintendo 3DS LL – 20,304
2. PS Vita –13,334
3. Wii U – 8,858
4. PS4 – 7,387
5. PS3 – 7,383
6. Nintendo 3DS – 4,711
7. PSP – 1,201
8. PS Vita TV – 762
9. Xbox 360 – 104

Software

1. World Soccer Winning Eleven 2014: Aoki Samurai no Chousen (Konami) PS3 – 47,726 (New)
2. Infamous Second Son (Sony) PS4 – 39,757 (New)
3. Yokai Watch (Level5) 3DS – 26,026
4. To Love -Ru: Darkness Battle Ecstasy (Furyu) Vita – 22,959 (New)
5. World Soccer Winning Eleven 2014: Aoki Samurai no Chousen (Konami) 3DS – 19,434 (New)
6. Amnesia World (Idea Factory) Vita – 13,701 (New)
7. Idol Master: One for All (Bandai Namco) PS3 – 10,224
8. Genkai Tokki Moero Chronicle (Compile Heart) Vita – 7,213
9. World Soccer Winning Eleven 2014: Aoki Samurai no Chousen (Konami) PSP – 7,170 (New)
10. New Super Mario Bros. U (Nintendo) Wii U – 6,410

Interesting to note it was also Infamous Second Sons opening week in Japan.

Link

[SuperLink]

Considering MK8, the Wii U's biggest title, is out this week, sales like that last week are far from impressive unfortunately D:

 

Also like VEDJ-F said in the MK8 thread, there wasn't much of a queue for the booths where people instead were crowded around the PS4 and XBO, sounds like it might actually perform kinda underwhelmingly :c

[canderson]

Geez, seeing the Media Create and Famitsu weekly sales week after week is depressing.

I wonder how much the Wii U will jump next week in Japan. I'm not expecting much, maybe 30-40K.

[Sami]

Japan's a horrible region for all consoles right now, unfortunately. Horrible numbers for everything. Wii U will probably pull ahead of XB1 in the US this month, but that's also on account of the projected price drop for that system. I'd be surprised if it pulled ahead of PS4 here.

[VO.SUPER]

I don't expect too much of a jump from Mario Kart. Maybe a million more Wii U's, if I'm being generous. 

[Jolt_TH]

As much as I love the console, Mario kart or Smash Broa won't save the Wii U, it may spike for a couple of months, but pretty much everything else is selling much higher numbers almost continually

[JaidynReiman]

As much as I love the console, Mario kart or Smash Broa won't save the Wii U, it may spike for a couple of months, but pretty much everything else is selling much higher numbers almost continually

No, but they'll help to ease the pain a bit. They just need to keep releasing great games and, although they'll never catch up, they may be able to slow down losses and perhaps even start making a profit again while they make plans for the next console to come out in a few years. They're already no longer losing money on Wii U, so any sales will greatly help.