Nintendo acquires Shiver Entertainment from Embracer

[ItsOKAY]

This is going to be a tangent so bare with me.
As of late, been really getting into motorsport. World Endurance Championship and International Motor Sports Association, mainly. A lot of manufactures have jumped into a new set of regulations (the Hypercar class and Grand Touring Prototype class) have have been battling for wins in the last two years. One of those manufactures is Porsche, and unlike the rest of the grid (for now), they are the only ones that field cars that are privately owned, operated and run. They are the privateers. They are customers of the 963, the Porsche LMDh prototype.
Now why is that important? Because as a part of the purchase of the car, Porsche has at least one engineer on site for every single race in each of the privateers pits on top of other supports.

Why is this important? Because I get the feeling that Nintendo wants to do something similar here. You call them up, agree to have a game on the platform and Nintendo will bring in at least someone with porting expertise if you need it to help bring the game to market. That kind of thing is invaluable and it has been something that developers have bemoaned about before.

As a german i totally can understand your example with Porsche

No, but for real. I think that is exactly one big point, what Nintendo wants to do with Shiver!! Like, outsourcing their workers to other 3rd party game developers.

Of course Shiver will do other work as well, make own games, or do a 3rd party game port totally on their own, but your example fits perfectly (from a noobs perspective like mine)

 

[duvjones]

As a german i totally can understand your example with Porsche

Fair enough but their is another reason that I use them as the example. For a lot of folks, Porsche is an automotive manufacturer. The reality is that they are not, they are an automotive consultant agency. Their business (even in motorsport) is to consult on the building of the automobile. It's literally in the company name since it's founding.... The thing is, if you are going to "consult on the building of the automobile" it turns out that you gotta build a few automobiles. They build some good ones.

Nintendo has a very similar miss understanding, where a lot of folks approach the company as if it a technology company or in electronics manufacturing.... tech is not Nintendo business, toys are. Their games? Toys. Their platform? The vehicle to play toys on, of which is itself a toy. Why provide technical support for the platform? To have third-parties build more toys on it.

Of course Shiver will do other work as well, make own games, or do a 3rd party game port totally on their own, but your example fits perfectly (from a noobs perspective like mine)

The thing is for that to work, Shiver can't really do anything else. So they will likely be absorbed and pulled into Nintendo many projects but outside of that, their availability on the open market likely ends here.
It's not like say, Game Freak... whom build and built the Pokemon empire, and can freely do other things. On other platforms. If Shiver is going to be doing support, then they are part of the in-house now.

 

[SkyerIst]

Nice get. Hogwarts port is great, so it's a smart move.

 

[Robjoh]

I would assume that the goal of Nintendo is having this group to be able to support in bringing key 3rd party games to Switch 2.

Example Nintendo want cyberpunk or something and can then throw in their own resources to make it happen. To be able to build software to bring in people.

 

[Joseki]

This is going to be a tangent so bare with me.
As of late, been really getting into motorsport. World Endurance Championship and International Motor Sports Association, mainly. A lot of manufactures have jumped into a new set of regulations (the Hypercar class and Grand Touring Prototype class) have have been battling for wins in the last two years. One of those manufacturers is Porsche, and unlike the rest of the grid (for now), they are the only ones that field cars that are privately owned, operated and run. They are the privateers. They are customers of the 963, the Porsche LMDh prototype.
Now why is that important? Because as a part of the purchase of the car, Porsche has at least one engineer on site, for every single race in each of the privateers pits, on top of other supports.

Why is this important? Because I get the feeling that Nintendo wants to do something similar here. You call them up, agree to have a game on the platform and Nintendo will bring in at least someone with porting expertise if you need it to help bring the game to market. That kind of thing is invaluable and it has been something that developers have bemoaned about before.

It's the first time I've seen someone use the full IMSA name lol.

 

[Koni]

NINTENDO IN THE 'ACQUISITION WARS':
Next Level Games - 2021 - The previous owners of the company were looking to sell their shares and as such began searching for buyers, eventually settling on the company they had exclusively worked with for seven years to great success - Nintendo. The acquisition brings one of their longtime development partners fully in-house following the breakout hit that was Luigi's Mansion 3.

SRD Co., Ltd. - 2022 - Another acquisition that brings one of Nintendo's longtime development partners fully in-house, though this prolific partnership dates back to 1983. SRD has provided major contributions to the Mario franchise (dating back to the original Super Mario Bros.), the Zelda franchise (dating back to the original Legend of Zelda), the Animal Crossing franchise and even some more experimental titles.

Dynamo Pictures - 2022 - This acquisition sees the CG and motion capture studio rebranded as Nintendo Pictures, with their role seemingly shifting into being a support studio specializing in animation, art, design, and cinematic work for video games developed and published by Nintendo. Dynamo Pictures, in addition to providing assistance for many an anime and video game, previously worked on a few Pikmin shorts, all of which can still be viewed on YouTube.

Shiver Entertainment - 2024 - The studio gained notoriety for it's surprisingly decent ports of recent AAA Warner Bros. games (Mortal Kombat 11 and Hogwarts Legacy), all the while being caught up in the Embracer Group disaster. This acquisition gives Nintendo a studio that specializes in porting major third-party games to the Switch, in addition to potentially providing support for in-house Nintendo projects.

Contrary to it's counterparts in Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo has been far more conservative when it comes to acquiring studios. Next Level and SRD can easily be read as defensive acquisitions so as to keep valubale talent around. Dynamo and Shiver, while more offensive in nature, provide Nintendo with more support studios to bolster the company's workforce. The throughline I see in all of this is Nintendo preemptively bulking up in order to provide the Switch successor with a steady and consistent stream of games, as they did with the Switch itself. Furukawa himself stated that game development will inevitably take longer and become more complex, and the company won't be able to rely as much on their Wii U catalogue, so perhaps leaning a bit more into third party support can help make up the difference. An in-house studio full of experienced developers ready to assist you in the porting process to their platform is an attractive prospect.

 

[Super_T]

Good for Shiver and good for Nintendo.
Considering the ports of Hogwarts Legacy and MK1, I wouldn't rule out that they have the Switch2 dev kits in hand for some time for one big third party game at launch and ready to help the others devs.

 

[Aostia82]

Shiver out from bloody Embracer management and situation
Nintendo getting a team expert in porting "actual gen games" to their actual hardware

sounds good for both Shiver and Switch 2

 

[Iraiza]

Not familiar with their work, but could this actually be about Nintendo following in Microsoft and Sony's steps and porting some of their games to PC
IMO it would be a mistake since exclusives are the main selling point of consoles, especially so for Nintendo.

 

[Aostia82]

Not familiar with their work, but could this actually be about Nintendo following in Microsoft and Sony's steps and porting some of their games to PC
IMO it would be a mistake since exclusives are the main selling point of consoles, especially so for Nintendo.

they have been pretty consistent in porting "demanding third party games" to Switch (aking Saber, Panic Button)
they probably have ongoing contractual obligation in closing developments for "other consoles", but they will probably continue supporting third parties in bringing games to Switch 2, than anything

 

[Danny]

I wonder if Nintendo's strategy will be to expand this studio to make it into a large porting studio in the future. Capable of working on porting several AAA third party games at the same time for Switch 2.

But it pretty much confirms that Nintendo wants to get AAA gamers to buy into the Switch 2 ecosystem on a larger scale than they did with Switch 1.

 

[Danny]

NINTENDO IN THE 'ACQUISITION WARS':
Next Level Games - 2021 - The previous owners of the company were looking to sell their shares and as such began searching for buyers, eventually settling on the company they had exclusively worked with for seven years to great success - Nintendo. The acquisition brings one of their longtime development partners fully in-house following the breakout hit that was Luigi's Mansion 3.

SRD Co., Ltd. - 2022 - Another acquisition that brings one of Nintendo's longtime development partners fully in-house, though this prolific partnership dates back to 1983. SRD has provided major contributions to the Mario franchise (dating back to the original Super Mario Bros.), the Zelda franchise (dating back to the original Legend of Zelda), the Animal Crossing franchise and even some more experimental titles.

Dynamo Pictures - 2022 - This acquisition sees the CG and motion capture studio rebranded as Nintendo Pictures, with their role seemingly shifting into being a support studio specializing in animation, art, design, and cinematic work for video games developed and published by Nintendo. Dynamo Pictures, in addition to providing assistance for many an anime and video game, previously worked on a few Pikmin shorts, all of which can still be viewed on YouTube.

Shiver Entertainment - 2024 - The studio gained notoriety for it's surprisingly decent ports of recent AAA Warner Bros. games (Mortal Kombat 11 and Hogwarts Legacy), all the while being caught up in the Embracer Group disaster. This acquisition gives Nintendo a studio that specializes in porting major third-party games to the Switch, in addition to potentially providing support for in-house Nintendo projects.

Contrary to it's counterparts in Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo has been far more conservative when it comes to acquiring studios. Next Level and SRD can easily be read as defensive acquisitions so as to keep valubale talent around. Dynamo and Shiver, while more offensive in nature, provide Nintendo with more support studios to bolster the company's workforce. The throughline I see in all of this is Nintendo preemptively bulking up in order to provide the Switch successor with a steady and consistent stream of games, as they did with the Switch itself. Furukawa himself stated that game development will inevitably take longer and become more complex, and the company won't be able to rely as much on their Wii U catalogue, so perhaps leaning a bit more into third party support can help make up the difference. An in-house studio full of experienced developers ready to assist you in the porting process to their platform is an attractive prospect.

I think Furukawa has shown that he is far more open to acquisitions than Iwata was. But the logic behind the acquisitions will be very different from what Sony, Microsoft and other major players are doing.

Nintendo will use acqusitions to buy smaller development studios like Shiver, SRD, Next Level games. They will also use acqusitions to expand into new ventures like Nintendo sales, Nintendo pictures etc. So basically the acqusition strategy will be targeted and always at a low cost. They won't move into billion dollar transactions like Sony and Microsoft any time soon on the other hand.

But i can see Furukawa continuing his strategy of doing low scale acqusitions fairly reguarly the coming years. This also adds up with what Furukawa stated in the recent Q/A with investors that Nintendo will move to secure the development resourses they need the coming years, mostly from internal expansion but also sometimes through acqusitions.

Nintendo could also move to eventually consolidate all long term partners under the Nintendo umbrella when the older presidents of those companies are going to retire like with SRD. That means that HAL, Intelligent systems etc could in the future eventually all be folded into Nintendo, which would not increase development resourses but would just be a move to merge those partner companies into Nintendo proper to smooth the development process further.

 

[hussmk]

Nintendo continues to make smart investments into their infrastructure. They don't need to acquire big devs or publishers, just make sure their own teams can continue to put out games in a timely and efficient manner.

 

[Luke88]

Imho it makes a lot of financial sense to buy Shiver, Nintendo already gets a 30% cut of game sales as a platform holder, let's say you are WB and want to get Shiver to work on Hogwarts Legacy 2 since they are already familiar with the first game and did a great job: now you're not dealing with a small company with 20/25 employees, now you're dealing with Nintendo themselves who will do the port job themselves and ask for a higher cut.

If Shiver got 30% of the revenue of the games they ported (they probably just did contract work for a set ammount of money but I don't think 30% is egregious) that would lead to Nintendo getting just over 50% of the money for any given copy of a game ported by Shiver. It's a lot of money for a very small company and if they expand they can do even more.

I still think it's a bit weird they didn't gun for some of the other notable porting experts, imho Feral Interactive would've been a fantastic get to do the same and their workforce is meaningfully larger, but I assume Nintendo's fiscally conservative aproach made them lean towards a smaller team.

Also apparently they were working on their own IP aswell, so they could be releasing some small game ala Snipper Clips to bolster the lineup and if worst comes to worst they're one more team specialized on Nintendo hardware working in North America, so they could do support work for Retro/Next Level and NST with no language barrier.

 

[Godzilla]

I still think it's a bit weird they didn't gun for some of the other notable porting experts, imho Feral Interactive would've been a fantastic get to do the same and their workforce is meaningfully larger, but I assume Nintendo's fiscally conservative aproach made them lean towards a smaller team.

Isn't Feral a fully private company (no parent company like Embracer, i mean)? Would have been significantly more expensive, not to mention that Embracer was probably in a hurry to sell to get out of their problems.

Same with say Panic Button or Saber, are they better companies? probably, but i expect Shiver (even if with a projection to make both companies similar) to be much cheaper to buy.

 

[tentacle-tropes]

I mean it really comes down to the fact that Nintendo can’t gun for studios who aren’t up for sale.

 

[Pikachupwnage]

I mean it really comes down to the fact that Nintendo can’t gun for studios who aren’t up for sale.

True. I mean I guess they can roll up anyways and make an offer but that is vastly more expensive.

 

[ILikeFeet]

It's the first time I've seen someone use the full IMSA name lol.

honestly surreal to see

---

I doubt that, their might be some inflate but double the staff is pushing it. I don't see that happening.

for a 20 person staff, I don't think doubling is that extreme. they did Hogwarts and MK1 simultaneously with their staff. fitting in one more game or having more people on a major IP (or both) would do well for stability. and being a Nintendo studio, they can always be called up as extra hands for any of the three NA studios or even NCL

 

[tentacle-tropes]

True. I mean I guess they can roll up anyways and make an offer but that is vastly more expensive.

Pretty much. This acquisition only really works since Embracer is going fire sale mode.

 

[Aostia82]

I mean it really comes down to the fact that Nintendo won’t gun for studios who aren’t up for sale.

fixed, IMHO
looking at all the profits they made during the Switch era, I think is more a matter of strategical decision on how/where/how much to invest than anything

 

[tentacle-tropes]

fixed, IMHO
looking at all the profits they made during the Switch era, I think is more a matter of strategical decision on how/where/how much to invest than anything

Fair, though I think “can’t” fits in this situation since Nintendo was never looking at the aforementioned studios direction

 

[duvjones]

It's the first time I've seen someone use the full IMSA name lol.

Yeah, you have to excuse that... I can't assume that every user here is familiar with sportcars racing, so I do things like that for the sake of clarity to the unfamiliar. Endro racing is having quite the moment right now, would love more to notice and watch.

for a 20 person staff, I don't think doubling is that extreme. they did Hogwarts and MK1 simultaneously with their staff. fitting in one more game or having more people on a major IP (or both) would do well for stability. and being a Nintendo studio, they can always be called up as extra hands for any of the three NA studios or even NCL

You make a good point, I was assuming that they are large than 20 when I said that.... only to find out otherwise. Still, my point stands for one reason, this is not going to balloon into a 150 personal studio. At least not immediately, I say give it ten years and maybe.

But i can see Furukawa continuing his strategy of doing low scale acqusitions fairly reguarly the coming years. This also adds up with what Furukawa stated in the recent Q/A with investors that Nintendo will move to secure the development resourses they need the coming years, mostly from internal expansion but also sometimes through acqusitions.

Then you might not see alot of acquisitions in the mid-term, because one does have to be careful of growing too large, too fast.... Like Mircosoft, Embracer. Furukawa is clearly targeting areas where Nintendo needs improvement, because I think that the idea is that without the support it doesn't matter how many units are in the wild, dev's will basically be on their own with a near vertical mountain side.

 

[Godzilla]

You always need to remember that Nintendo biggest strength are their IPs, they don't need many more of those. If anything, they need more developers to support developing said IPs.

 

[Koni]

Isn't Feral a fully private company (no parent company like Embracer, i mean)? Would have been significantly more expensive, not to mention that Embracer was probably in a hurry to sell to get out of their problems.

Same with say Panic Button or Saber, are they better companies? probably, but i expect Shiver (even if with a projection to make both companies similar) to be much cheaper to buy.

Saber Interactive is more than just a porting studio, they're a sizable company in itself. Heck, they're the ones supposedly working on a Knights of the Old Republic remake. Plus Embracer already sold Saber along with a good portion of it's subsidiaries to Beacon Interactive. Shiver Entertainment was one of the subsidiaries Embracer kept, before Nintendo picked them up. (Also very likely Shiver was dirt cheap because having looked at the other acquisitions... This company had $10 in capital stock?? I gotta be missing something here.)

Panic Button is an independent comapny that as far as I know isn't really in any financial danger, so Nintendo is content to remain partners with them. While they do have an extensive portfolio of impressive Switch ports, they've also ported a few games to other consoles to keep a diverse portfolio. Their most recent port was Bendy and the Dark Revival last year, which hit every relevant console but the Switch. In fact, rather curiously, they havent ported a game to the Switch since Apex Legends back in 2021. So, what's been going on there? Well, Adam Creighton, the studio's former general manager, mentioned that the studio works closely with Nintendo and Nvidia when it comes to porting games to the Switch. He also stated that the studio had been working with Nintendo Switch tech as early as 2012. While Adam Creighton has since left the company 5 years ago, he's managed to put the studio on the map as a reliable way to get into the Nintendo ecosystem. All this to say that IMO it's very plausible that the team has Switch 2 devkits (very likely since 2021 if not earlier) and are working with various studios to bring AAA games to the upcoming platform.

My guess is Nintendo saw the benefit in having a dedicated team helping third-party publishers port games to the Switch 2, but they would rather keep close relationships with partners and still acquire when necessary. Panic Button is fine enough on it's own to remain partners, while Shiver Entertainment was an Embracer subsidiary, so yeah.

 

[awng782]

A bit crazy that Shiver haven't updated their website since 2019 as they say Mortal Kombat 11 Switch is their most recent work.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Saber Interactive is more than just a porting studio, they're a sizable company in itself. Heck, they're the ones supposedly working on a Knights of the Old Republic remake. Plus Embracer already sold Saber along with a good portion of it's subsidiaries to Beacon Interactive. Shiver Entertainment was one of the subsidiaries Embracer kept, before Nintendo picked them up. (Also very likely Shiver was dirt cheap because having looked at the other acquisitions... This company had $10 in capital stock?? I gotta be missing something here.)

Panic Button is an independent comapny that as far as I know isn't really in any financial danger, so Nintendo is content to remain partners with them. While they do have an extensive portfolio of impressive Switch ports, they've also ported a few games to other consoles to keep a diverse portfolio. Their most recent port was Bendy and the Dark Revival last year, which hit every relevant console but the Switch. In fact, rather curiously, they havent ported a game to the Switch since Apex Legends back in 2021. So, what's been going on there? Well, Adam Creighton, the studio's former general manager, mentioned that the studio works closely with Nintendo and Nvidia when it comes to porting games to the Switch. He also stated that the studio had been working with Nintendo Switch tech as early as 2012. While Adam Creighton has since left the company 5 years ago, he's managed to put the studio on the map as a reliable way to get into the Nintendo ecosystem. All this to say that IMO it's very plausible that the team has Switch 2 devkits (very likely since 2021 if not earlier) and are working with various studios to bring AAA games to the upcoming platform.

My guess is Nintendo saw the benefit in having a dedicated team helping third-party publishers port games to the Switch 2, but they would rather keep close relationships with partners and still acquire when necessary. Panic Button is fine enough on it's own to remain partners, while Shiver Entertainment was an Embracer subsidiary, so yeah.

since they're work for hire, publishers just haven't been as interested in ports. probably waiting it out until Drake launches

 

[Danny]

Interesting facts about Shiver CEO:

Shiver Entertainment's CEO, John Schappert, is an industry veteran who's worked for some of the biggest firms in the business. Having worked at Visual Concepts in the early '90s, the software programmer co-founded Tiburon Entertainment in 1994 ('tiburón' is Spanish for shark, and 'shiver' is the collective noun for the teeth-y fish — if the fins in the water of the logo didn't clue you in on the connection) and worked closely with EA on games like the Madden series.

EA acquired Tiburon in 1998, and in 2002 Schappert migrated to EA, eventually making his way to becoming Executive Vice President for a brief period before a move to oversee Xbox Live at Microsoft Game Studios. He returned to EA as COO for nearly two years before a stint at Zynga in the same role. Since 2012, he's held some Chairman positions and has been CEO of Shiver since 2013.

Nintendo's Latest Studio - Who Is Shiver Entertainment?

A brief look at Nintendo's newest acquisition

www.nintendolife.com

So the CEO of Shiver has worked in both Microsoft game studios related to Xbox and at EA. So he probably has contacts at both places still.

 

[Godzilla]

All I'm thinking is... About some devs of Shiver who one day woke up and got an email saying "Hey, Nintendo just bought us"

From a probably throw away studio from Embracer to a Nintendo owned Studio is probably the best upgrade you could ask for.

 

[Richter Belmont]

Nintendo is not buying a studio to just let them do their own thing. Nintendo clearly has plans for porting 3rd party games to switch 2 and was impressed by what Shiver did with mortal kombat 11 and hogwarts. Shiver will be fulltime porting games to the switch 2 and don’t expect them to make their own franchises.

 

[Smelly]

I think Nintendo acquired them because of Embracers current woes. I think Shiver is one of the very few independent developers who downport games like hogwarts and mortal kombat to the Switch and having them being bought out or closed by another party would be a pretty big loss for Nintendo.

 

[ILikeFeet]

We would like to thank all the great people at Shiver for their contribution and wish them all the best with their new home, Nintendo.

 

[MMXZero]

Not familiar with their work, but could this actually be about Nintendo following in Microsoft and Sony's steps and porting some of their games to PC
IMO it would be a mistake since exclusives are the main selling point of consoles, especially so for Nintendo.

No. Zero chance this happens. Even the PR says this since Nintendo places emphasis on commissioned 3rd party projects.

 

[Remolino]

Maybe Nintendo can send a few people to the third party developers to teach them how to port games properly once they've moulded Shiver for their own good.

 

[Joseki]

Not familiar with their work, but could this actually be about Nintendo following in Microsoft and Sony's steps and porting some of their games to PC
IMO it would be a mistake since exclusives are the main selling point of consoles, especially so for Nintendo.

I think Nintendo would do it internally if they ever pivoted to PC releases.

 

[Iraiza]

I think Nintendo would do it internally if they ever pivoted to PC releases.

Well, Shiver is now technically 1st party, so yeah, it would be "internal" But seriously, most of their Wii U to Switch ports aren't internal, why would it be different for potential PC ports.
And yeah, I personally think Nintendo would sooner try the mobile market more aggressively than PC, so it doesn't really matter.

 

[IrishNerdLife]

Yeah I really don't think it makes sense to acquire a studio that are largely known for their ports to Switch only to have them port stuff away from Switch and onto PC. Not to mention that Nintendo have not even hinted at doing anything with the PC market and seem the least likely to go down that road given their continued focus on their own dedicated platform.

 

[Robjoh]

Why would Nintendo go PC now if they did not do it during the WiiU era? Nintendos profits are very good at the moment. Nintendo is not in a position were they need to expand into the pc sphere.

 

[BoktaiFan]

Why would Nintendo go PC now if they did not do it during the WiiU era?

Well honestly it wasn't as big even 10 years ago and to be fair they did expand to mobile during that time.

Now I don't think they will go to PC anytime soon but they did need to expand to new platforms during that era

 

[Joseki]

Nintendo's expansions so far (mobile, theme park, movies) have been focused on increasing the reach of the IPs by adding point of contact with customers who aren't gamers already.
I would say a PC expansion is at the moment not a priority for this.

 

[ILikeFeet]

People using mobile as evidence of a PC expansion tend to miss that those mobile games aren't anything like their console games. If Nintendo were to expand into PC, it'd be about the same. And at that, it'd probably be some licensed online game like a Hyrule MMO or something

 

[Godzilla]

People using mobile as evidence of a PC expansion tend to miss that those mobile games aren't anything like their console games. If Nintendo were to expand into PC, it'd be about the same. And at that, it'd probably be some licensed online game like a Hyrule MMO or something

My god, a Zelda MMO sounds so great and obvious

I'll be a smithing goron for SURE.

 

[Nokia]

Well honestly it wasn't as big even 10 years ago and to be fair they did expand to mobile during that time.

Now I don't think they will go to PC anytime soon but they did need to expand to new platforms during that era

The main goal of mobile titles for Nintendo now is to reach areas with their IP that they normally couldn't with consoles alone. There's no place on Earth that plays games on PC but not mobile as far as I'm aware, since phones are a utility.

 

[Celine]

Well honestly it wasn't as big even 10 years ago and to be fair they did expand to mobile during that time.

Now I don't think they will go to PC anytime soon but they did need to expand to new platforms during that era

I don't think it's fair.
The expansion into Smartphone game apps did not come from porting games from their console platforms instead it happened by publishing mobile games that fit into specific that kind of ecosystem (thus most of them are based on MTX, one hand play style etc.) which is very different from consoles.
Mario Kart Tour, just like Mario Kart Arcade GP DX in the arcades, do not replace at all the experience that Mario Kart 8 DX provides and Nintendo was always very careful to never cross their targets in the past decades because they are, unlike PlayStation and Xbox, a first-party driven platform holder.
Nintendo's expansion, including the mobile initiative, was set up in such way to not negatively impact their platform business which is their core business (instead as others have already noted the initiatives increases the touch points thus potentially icnreasing the sales on the console front).

 

[BoktaiFan]

Nintendo's expansion, including the mobile initiative, was set up in such way to not negatively impact their platform business which is their core business (instead as others have already noted the initiatives increases the touch points thus potentially icnreasing the sales on the console front).

I dont disagree with what you are saying here.

I might have been bad at relaying my point but it was more to the other posters suggestion of "Well why not go to PC during the Wii U when they are struggling" and the answer is that if you look at nintendos mobile efforts I think it's blear that they haven't really tried very hard in the space. And the my impression at the time was they were mostly doing ut to appease investors who were concerned during the wiiu/3ds era.

I agree that they have deliberately made an effort to have mobile be its own thing and part of that is because I think they never really wanted to go into mobile to begin with honestly

 

[Celine]

Nintendo has a long history of caring very much about profitability (and profit margins) but they have never ever sacrificed their long term success for short term gains.
Why didn't Nintendo port their console games to [XXX] platforms when they were at [YYY] low point?
Because Nintendo is fully aware of what make them so successful and what are their competitive advantages and any initiative that hurts the hardware/software integration business or the goodwill among families built over decades is regarded as an existential threat.

EDIT: of course the company being shaped up as a mostly autarchical entity (in-house software strong enough to spur penetration of a platform without the need of outside software, unique hardware/software integration, a huge heap of liquidity meaning that they never have to beg for money to banks) helps taking that stance (to not take in cosideration short term action that hurt the company future).

 

[MMXZero]

The only Nintendo game that makes sense on PC is Fire Emblem Heroes. However, that should only happen if the money Feh makes on a monthly basis considerably drops on it's current platforms.

Don't expect to see any of Nintendo's flagship games on PC unless it's something that needs a console/PC release like an MMO.

 

[MegaBulborb]

Nintendo makes practical acquisitions and this one is no different. To have a port house in-house to help third parties is a great idea. They’ll probably be relying on Shiver a lot with Switch 2.

 

[Luke88]

Nintendo makes practical acquisitions and this one is no different. To have a port house in-house to help third parties is a great idea. They’ll probably be relying on Shiver a lot with Switch 2.

Yeah, honestly I wouldn't be surprised by Shiver having a similar growth to Monolith during the current generation, it just creates a different kind of Revenue to do port jobs for big AAA titles that take a fraction of the development time of a brand new game, I hope they become a porting powerhouse and then branch off doing their own thing and/or supporting NA Nintendo studios on the side. Maybe we'll be asking Shiver to do the next DKC in 4 years or so.

 

[Refyref]

I think people are assuming some great plans way too easily. Most likely, the reality was that Shiver felt or knew they were in danger due to the current situation at Embracer, so the CEO turned to his acquaintance Doug Bowser for help. Nintendo probably simply calculated that the cost of upkeep (and buyout price, although going by listed capital, this appears to have been low, and might have just been Embracer getting rid of some debt) would be lower than the amount of money they would lose if the high-profile ports they work on would disappear. They're essentially the technical force enabling WB Games' major releases on the platform, which has been a good source of money for Nintendo in recent years.

 

[Terrell]

I think Furukawa has shown that he is far more open to acquisitions than Iwata was. But the logic behind the acquisitions will be very different from what Sony, Microsoft and other major players are doing.

Nintendo will use acqusitions to buy smaller development studios like Shiver, SRD, Next Level games. They will also use acqusitions to expand into new ventures like Nintendo sales, Nintendo pictures etc. So basically the acqusition strategy will be targeted and always at a low cost. They won't move into billion dollar transactions like Sony and Microsoft any time soon on the other hand.

But i can see Furukawa continuing his strategy of doing low scale acqusitions fairly reguarly the coming years. This also adds up with what Furukawa stated in the recent Q/A with investors that Nintendo will move to secure the development resourses they need the coming years, mostly from internal expansion but also sometimes through acqusitions.

Nintendo could also move to eventually consolidate all long term partners under the Nintendo umbrella when the older presidents of those companies are going to retire like with SRD. That means that HAL, Intelligent systems etc could in the future eventually all be folded into Nintendo, which would not increase development resourses but would just be a move to merge those partner companies into Nintendo proper to smooth the development process further.

Nintendo would be smart to save their pennies for the day they finally have to buy out Game Freak and Creatures to pin down full control of (and full profit from) the Pokemon IP. That's gonna cost them a decent amount of money. Until then, low-scale acquisitions are a safer bet, for sure.