Nintendo looking outside Nintendo’s walls
Unlikely.
Good that Nintendo lost the lawsuit. They should have to compete. But honestly everyone in here calling for Nintendo to port their games to PC is being ridiculous. Nintendo as a company would be stupid as hell to ever do that. As soon as you can buy their stuff on steam, there is immediately no reason to ever purchase their hardware.
Microsoft was the perfect example of this. Xbox embraced putting their games on PC and it was one of the worst mistakes they ever made. It’s one of the biggest reasons Xbox is on life support right now. Nintendo doing that would basically be suicide. As nice as it would be for them to do it, it will never ever happen as long as they still make hardware.
A handheld and highly integrated device where games released for are basically guaranteed to run still has some appeal over the wide sea of PC s. Especially since the share of handheld PCs like the Steam Deck is still comparably small.
I’d also argue that one can get more customers by supporting PC due to those who wouldn’t buy a console anyway. It sounds reasonable though that the incentive for buying a console is gone if you already have a sufficient PC where you can play the game on.
But I wonder whether this is really the case. Do we have actual numbers from market studies or alike on this?
Microsoft (and Sony) have done a terrible job of understanding the console market.
They sell consoles so they can loss-leader you into making it up on licensed games.
You buy a console so you can get a canned consistent experience for less than a PC. In the past, it was also for bespoke hardware that could do something a random PC couldn’t easily and exclusive titles.
In 2026, these advantages are gone. Since Xbone/PS4, you’re just looking at a standard AMD desktop in a funny box. It comes in too many flavours with real performance differences. Only a few titles are still exclusive. You can spend $500 and still not have the Best Console Experience, so why not spend $700 for a PC?
Of course Xbox and PS are flailing in that market.
Nintendo hardware avoids those pitfalls. There’s no “Switch 2 Pro” scenario where some games are meaningfully jankier. The hardware is profitable, and it’s still comfortably less than a basic dGPU computer. So there’s still a niche for it below the full gaming PC buyer.
They’ve also been more willing to exploit “we control the hardware and software together” opportunities for only-here experiences. Since the Kinect died, has there been a major gameplay paradigm that required an Xbox or PS to deliver?
Nintendo could port games to the PC but they won’t exploit the detachable controllers or portable aspects of a Switch, so many of the ports would be lesser.
Nintendo doing that would basically be suicide.
This is what want. Nintendo not deserve to live after how they treat community.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it was often stated that Nintendo had enough cash reserves to operate at a loss for 50 years and still be fine.
And that was before the Switch came out. I’m sure they’ll still be doing their thing in another 50 years.
People who like handhelds will buy handhelds. People who like consoles and people who like PCs will buy PC. It is stupid to lock software to one specific type of hardware.
Instead they should force you to destructively collect a bunch of rare earth minerals and plastics and throw them all in the dump after a few years. It just makes sense!
I usually detest exclusive releases, as it feels anticonsumer to make people use a console/UI that they don’t like in order to have a chance of buying/playing a game they might like, but I’ve recently thought about a good copiumcoded excuse for it: Exclusives incentivise me to not keep all my games with one supplier, so when one corporation inevitably crosses a moral line that I cannot accept, I don’t have to sacrifice all my purchased
gameslicences.That and I honestly believe that owning games developed initially for x platform, on that platform, usually results in the best experience. Usually.
It’s a dismal thing for me to say to people:
Game exclusives are, by a given measure, anti-consumer; in the same way that charging consumers for games is. It is honestly a very effective way of building up a gaming community world.
We just okay it when we like the contender. No one faulted Valve for not bringing Half-Life elsewhere.
They ported Half-Life to PS2. And the sequel was on everything.
Yes. Nintendo’s lawsuit was what made me decide to buy Palworld. Fuck Nintendo’s lawyers.
I sold my Switch and switched to emulation when they went after Yuzu and Ryujinx. Nintendo will never get another penny from me and I get to play all their games for free now. Stupid dumbfucks. Can’t wait for the inevitable Switch 2 emulator.
There is fork of ryujinx on ryujinx git server with switch 2 game support.
I own Subnautica 2 just to fight contract fuckery, now I think I should buy FactorioSlaveryCuteSim just to retaliate to what Nintendo did to Garry’s Mod.
Streisand effect go brrrrrr
Maybe we’ll gets some mainline Pokemon games that don’t suck absolute ass since they’ll have to compete.
Pokemon fans are like fifa fans. They buy ecery game no matter how shit it is. There is absolutely no reason for them to even try to make a playable game.
Will never happen until people stop buying the games. And no it’s not the fault of adult Nintendo fans. The vast majority of buyers are just parents buying games for their kids who don’t read reviews and just buy the game because their kid nagged for it. Palworld doesn’t even really compete in that market.
I work with kids. Almost none of them are interested in the Pokemon games and only few in the cards. I’m pretty sure the audience is Millenials and older Gen Z’s. Not many under 25 I’m willing to bet.
Pokemon is in the merch and nostalgia business, not the gaming business.
Maybe, but I don’t really see them as competitors. They’re both monster raising, yeah, but that’s honestly where the similarities stop. That said, I haven’t played Legends or ZA (whatever they’re called) which both seem closer to what Palworld is (still very different though)
Yeah the lawsuit was dumb. Nintendo doesn’t own the concept of creature capture. You can’t own concepts as far as I know
You can’t copyright a concept, but you can patent one. The lawsuit was over patents, not copyrights. They even tried to retroactively apply for more patents to strengthen their case before the lawsuit was over, but they were refused. At least in Japan.
Nintendo should’ve innovated more than sticking controllers on an extra-large phone and squatting on their old IP like a dragon’s hoard.
The switch was/is a giant hit though.
Surely they’re referring to the Wii-U. The Switch is not innovative. It’s a Wii-U derivative.
Surely 🙄
The Switch is innovative? So much so that, upon seeing it’s success, literally everyone copied them in one form or another?
The what?
The second best-selling console of all time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles
Yakuza and innovation don’t mix. Yakuza and rent-seeking however…
I’m so confused… There are so many valid reasons to hate on Nintendo, but you guys come up with two that aren’t valid? Nintendo is the only one of the big three that genuinely innovates when it comes to console design. Rent seeking? They’re the only one of the big three that doesn’t try to lock you into a subscription for your games. Every game that they make for their console is still sold as a physical cartridge with the full game on it. Even their online services are the cheapest of the three.
They don’t innovate when it comes to games, sure, but that’s not what you folks were saying. Their games never go on sale and are overpriced, sure, but that’s not rent seeking. Like I said, there’s so much to dislike about Nintendo and how they run things, but the two examples here that seem to clearly resonate with people are just wrong, and I’m not sure why people are upvoting them. Maybe I’m missing something
Just goes to show, game exclusivity on a shitty overpriced portable console is a bad business practice.
People would love to play Nintendo games on PC. Nintendo is screwing themselves with their arrogance and greed.
Nintendo is doing and will continue to do gangbusters. They’re the Apple of video games. They aren’t screwing themselves, just you.
I bought a shit ton of games from Nintendo until their legal department went rabid.
Untouchable companies do fall, when they manage to alienate diehard fans, such as myself.
Their demographics are mostly kids. If your boycott, and mine as well, does something then I’ll be shocked. Happy, but flabbergasted.
My boycott pretty naturally applied to my kids.
We were day one buyers for multiple copies of the last Zelda game, and the last couple Pokemon before Nintendo legal went foul.
Now no one in my family has a Switch 2, and my kids are begging me to help them spend their allowance on Palworld.
People keep claiming this, yet I’ve never seen numbers to back this up. I’m pretty sure the core Pokemon fans are Millenials and older Gen Z’s, not kids.
I mean, I played Pokemon with my kids. So maybe both?
Now we play Cassette Beasts - and soon Palworld - together.
Have you ever heard of Mario?
If that’s the case, I’m judging people pretty hard. I can’t even tolerate Pokémon dialogue
Doing well, even exceptionally well, doesn’t mean that it’s the best possible scenario. Nintendo is leaving billions of dollars on the table due to their cultural obstinance.
They occupy a pretty unique space both economically and socially. It would be an mba move to have them try to diversify too hard. Getting them up to date on certain coding practices feels closer to helpful, from my pov
Isn’t Pokemon like… The biggest IP ever? Way bigger than Star wars or marvel or pretty much anything else? Not sure they’re actually hurting. At all.
guessing the point was they wanted palworld to stop existing and not only do they not get that but its one of the most popular games on steam. they failed utterly. this was totally self inflicted because yeah pokemon is like the biggest ip ever and nothing palworld could have done would have changed that in the least. just like none of the fan games or rom hacks that have been killed over the years could have. but nintendo just has to sue everybody anyway because copyright law go brrr. its just nice to see them lose for once.
People would love to play Nintendo games on PC.
And I already do, lol, for every Nintendo console/handheld up to the original Switch.
And I’m sure Switch 2 emulation won’t be too far behind now.
Yes. I was a huge purchaser of both Steam games and Nintendo exclusives on Switch (as long as they got great reviews).
Then Nintendo’s legal team went crazy, attacking emulator developers and suing competing game studios over bullshit “patents” on game mechanics.
So it’s time to starve that beast. No more Nintendo games, for me.
Thats me. Pokopia looks so fun, but I can barely afford a PC, which I can use for other things, no way in hell that I am buying a switch.
I recommend dragon quest builders 2. I haven’t played pokopia but I heard it’s from the same studio and very similar just different ip and DQB2 is easily one of my favs of all time
Nintendo’s target audience is the mainstream casual gamer. That market has never heard of Palworld. Nintendo is doing fine they don’t care for the pc gamer crowd, since in Japan casual gamers don’t own a gaming pc. And with current hardware pricing and the weak yen the pc gamer market will barely grow in Japan.
Just goes to show, game exclusivity on a shitty overpriced portable console is a bad business practice.
Does it? How? This is a meme about Steam which has nothing to do with Nintendo. How would a PC game even compete with Pokemon at all when that franchise is only sold on Nintendo hardware but more importantly Pokemon is mostly about merch and trading cards anyway. How many trading cards has Palworld sold?
I have dozens of hours in Palworld and don’t see much of a resemblance to Pokemon anyway.
This whole thing is silly.
Palword isn’t a Pokemon competitor. It’s an Ark/Valheim-like on PC; it has nothing to do with the Switch, it’s nothing like Pokopia or most Pokemon games. Nintendo doesn’t sell PC games!
This would be akin to Skyrim being an Xbox exclusive, and BGS suing Stardew Valley for “dynamic NPCs” on the Switch version.
…Why? It’s not a competitor at all; what’s the business motivation?
Palworld marketing certainly leaned into the controversy, but honestly Nintendo is stupid for starting this, even from a pure business perspective.
I think it’s silly to think that this has nothing to do with pokemon. Palworld basically came out of nowhere and made the pokemon game a lot of people have been asking for. I haven’t played a Pokémon game in years because they felt held back from modern game design.
I’ll admit it has similarities to Ark, but it’s a lot more PvE and approachable, not to mention the creature design and capture mechanics.
Yeah in hindsight I worded that a bit extremely.
It is basically Valheim with creatures though, its similar to many survival crafters (albeit well done).
And I’m speaking more from a “strict” business perspective here. Palworld is obviously courting Pokemon fans, but from Nintendo’s perspective, Palworld is in a different market; I doubt they’re actually losing any sales of Pokemon games to Palworld.
Many of the designs are blatant ripoffs of specific pokemon. Here are a few examples
Nintendo went after patent angle in court because it’s easier than proving the ripoffs are a copyright violation. But make no mistake, the ripoffs are the primary reason for the legal action. They really got under Nintendo’s skin.
It’s not like Pokemon’s designs are unique either.
They didn’t go that route because they also did the same shit. And that definitely wouldn’t be a viable defense in court.
These dont look similar at all, beyond the fact they are fantisized depictions of the same things. Like, its obvious both zubat and its DQ “equivalent” are depictions of bats, but you wouldnt mistake one for the other; the designs highlight completely different features and are often in pretty different colors. Thats not the case for the palworld designs, at least not quite a few of them
A lot of Pokemon are generic tropes, but some really are blatant ripoffs. I think it’s pretty scummy of Palworld, actually.
But.
If Nintendo don’t think they can prove a copyright violation, they shouldn’t try to get them with some tangential thing, especially those crazy software patents of all things.
I just googled and there are over 1000 pokemon. At some point it’s easier to rip off a design than not. They themselves seem to struggle to make new pokemon that don’t look like absolute shit.
The game is just fun. Didn’t think I’d like it as much as I do
If they released PC ports of Nintendo games I would play a lot of them.
Imagine the sales they’d get if they ported older Game Boy/DS/3DS games to Android/ios phones and tablets.
Right? Emulators are pretty popular. Piracy is a service problem.
I know, they can get $0 from me or release good games I can play and get money from me. Seems like they would want money.
Btw, Zelda on PC when?
Btw, Zelda on PC when?
Any time you want, if you float in the right
seas…uh…circles. Or so I’ve heard.Just pirate it. Fuck Nintendo.
Not for nothing, but I’m sincerely surprised CS2 still has so many players.
I stopped playing twenty years ago, because the kids were kicking my ass.
I’m out of the loop, could someone explain?
Palworld is basically live action pokemon with guns and crafting/survival mechanics, and just launched 1.0 a couple of days ago. Nintendo sued Palworld’s dev’s over IP infringement during early access for the capture mechanism used in the game (throwing spheres at pals). Here’s a quick summary of the lawsuit and where it stood about a month ago. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/palworld-lawsuit-nears-end-with-nintendo-reportedly-poised-to-gain-almost-nothing/
The intent of this post is to show that Nintendo’s policy of not releasing 1st party games on other consoles/PC has hurt them in the long run, as shown by the player count of Palworld right now.
Wasn’t IP infringement, but patent. That was one of the big things pointed out when this all started, if there had been any IP theft they would have led with that.
My brother in law, what is a patent if not intellectual property?
They sued over the game mechanic, not pikachu.
Right. Nintendo claimed that game mechanic is their intellectual property. That’s what a patent is.
Don’t patents expire after 20 years?
And isn’t Pokemon’s ball-capturing game mechanic well over 20 years old? I seem to remember it existing prior to 2006.
…what’s going on?
Nintendo is probably used to seeing a few million people online playing Mario or Link games. Hopefully this helps Palworld look less threatening and escape future lawsuits.
