According to video game industry veteran Bing Gordon, who spent 10 years as Chief Creative Officer at EA, Nintendo is on its way to become a software-only company. Gordon compares Nintendo to SEGA in late 1990s, with the failure of the Dreamcast. However, he says that Nintendo is much better managed than SEGA was at the time, and that the company has better talent. But according to Gordon, who sits on the boards of several gaming companies, Nintendo could eventually become a software-only company that just makes games for other systems. Speaking to GamesIndustry, he said,
“I think Nintendo’s already on track to become primarily a software company. We saw that with Sega back in the day; Sega made some missteps and became primarily a software company. Nintendo hasn’t really made missteps, Nintendo probably has better creative talent and better leadership now than Sega did.”
Despite claiming that Nintendo will be come a software-only company, Gordon doesn’t provide any real reasoning for this. He mentions that Nintendo has a robust business model and the “best creative talent”. He also praises Shigeru Miyamoto as the “best in the business”. On the mobile front, he thinks that competition from Apple will eventually make Nintendo consider to release their games as apps on Apple’s devices. Something that Nintendo is unlikely to do in the near future. Finally, Godron said of Miyamoto:
“I think if you’re Nintendo, as long as Miyamoto’s coming to work, you can sustain a proprietary platform. He’s that good.”
Honestly, Gordon just appears as part of the group of folks who urge Nintendo to stop making hardware every time they announce a new console. The same happened with the Wii in 2006, it happened with the 3DS, and it’s happening with the Wii U. This isn’t the first time the Wii U has faced criticism of this sort — a few months ago analyst Michael Pacther said the Wii U could become the next Dreamcast.
