Nintendo says "meh" to acquisitions, prefers to grow organically

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendos-president-says-it-wont-join-the-games-industry-acquisition-arms-race/

With the industry going through a period of consolidation, Furukawa touched on the topic of acquisitions on Thursday following the publication of Nintendo’s latest financial results.

“Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t possess Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company,” he said (via Bloomberg).

Furukawa’s comments echo those he made in November, when he said the company was primarily focused on organic growth in order “to continue Nintendo’s creative culture”, but that he was “not dismissing” the possibility of acquiring other game companies.

I mean, anyone really surprised by this? Not a whole lot of companies that would fit into the Nintendo mold.

Maybe PlatinumGames but thats about it

Well nothing wrong with that. Not terribly surprising that they would feel that way.

The only company that grows organically unlike the other two that buys their talent.😎

@mysticaldonut: I hope not lol. I miss when they were with Sega and had free reign to be as crazy as they wanted to be. I feel like Nintendo would try to pull them back especially for their audience.

Nintendo can and has made acquisitions. I think what they mean is they're not following the trend because of what others are doing.

They can do it better themselves, and they know it.

Not surprising, I never expected Nintendo to go on a spree like the other two. But I definitely expect them to be buying some studios and perhaps a bit more than usual given the open shit-season we're having.

Unlike sony, who panics, has emergency meetings, cried to MS about the AB acquisition and begged for COD to remain multiplat, nintendo simply doesn't care. People buy their games regardless. Even when they only had 13 million wii u sold, people still went out and paid full price for their nintendo games.

Actually, nintendo would probably start to panic a bit if MS or someone else bought Sega, Capcom, and square. Heck, even MS is one of the biggest publishers on the switch, with more than 3 million units of minecraft sold. As long as these companies keep releasing their games on the switch, nintendo doesn't care about the other acquisitions. Which is why they're probably also a bit nervous over the current situation and watching things play out carefully. If one of their main publishers gets bought out, they will definitely negotiate something.

Expand the studios you have right now and create new one is much cheaper than buying new studios

If im a gaming studio im teaming with nintendo switch is perfect id stop all games for the other consoles or pc

Sounds a little racist.

Cause Nintendo is the best

Herman Hulst from Sony said the same thing in 2020 after Bethesda acquisition.

Nintendo already has the top selling next gen console sold purely on the appeal of their own in-house exclusives like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash, Pokemon, etc. Honestly the reason M$ and Sony are trying so hard to buy other studios is because they just don't have the creative talent to do much with what they already have. Microsoft and Sony both sit atop a literal **** ton of big name IPs they've done nothing with. They don't want to buy studios to acquire their games so much as they want to buy studios to eliminate them as competition to their own poorly made garbage.

Nintendo gonna always Nintendo.

Xbox does what Nintendont. :P

They're only saying this because they can't afford to this do and stopped competing with Sony/MS since the Wii.

Imagine Nintendo instead of Sony bought Bungie and forced them to make Splatoon 4 lol

@blessedbyhorus: You don't think Nintendo has enough money lol, that's cute.

In other words, they are probably gonna acquire either Monolith Soft later on this year.

No need for them to grow when they can resell their old games for $60

Do they grow organically?

Their development capacity seems pretty shot at the moment. i mean they probably don't need to be buying big devs but expansion definitely needs to be looked at. they put out Metroid Dread last year...then what? has covid absolutely whacked their ability to make games?

though the switch has so much momentum just with its current catalogue that maybe they don't need to make any more games for it :P.

Good on them for not falling into this acquisition fad but maybe release more than a couple first-party games every year please?

Nintendo says 'meh' to a lot of things.

Not compared to Sony or Microsoft.

The only reason they're saying this is because the Switch is super successful. If their next system launches and its another GC, or worse, a WiiU, they wouldn't be "meh'ing" around.

This.

I mean, they make dumptrucks full of money without needing to buy studios, sooooo...

This. Unless a company comes along that does fit the Nintendo mold, such as Next Level Games most recently, then they are much better focusing on spending $$ growing their in-house studios. Sounds good to me!

Day 4593 of waiting for Nintendo to get purchased by Microsoft or Apple so we can play BOTW1/2 and other Ninty games on hardware from the 21st century.

Yes, they most probably would. When Nintendo makes a failing system, they make another one faster than they would've otherwise and tries again. They probably have enough dough to do that a hundred times more before they need to change.

Nintendo doesn't really buy up studios like that. The only studios that I'm aware of that they bought was Next Level Games and Monolith Soft. Take in mind, Next Level Games outright said at one point that they were exclusively making Nintendo games, even before Nintendo bought them. Nintendo likely just bought them for security purposes or something, much like Sony with Insomniac.

Microsoft tried to buy Nintendo during their GameCube era, and Nintendo said no.

I heard you can play these games on Microsoft Windows.😮

They weren't buying studios like that. Big difference.

@Pedro: Yeah I heard of CEMU lol. I was hoping it would work on my M1 Macbook but I have heard nothing but problems from bigger nerds than me. Still would be nice for official support.

I mean, even during the GameCube era and the GameCube era, they weren't really buying studios like that. Why would they aggressively pursue them in the future?

Because as soon as actual competition hit their mobile market, they'll be far from doing as well as they're doing now.

That was actually MS's first attempt to get into console gaming if I'm correct; the deal flopped in 1999. Looks like they are still trying to grow the same way. As you said, Nintendo doesn't do that, and they never really needed to outside of the few purchases of studios that made basically just Nintendo games.