There are currently three major console manufacturers on the market. Microsoft bets on the PC the same as on Xbox, with the same games and cross-play. Sony , for its part, has started releasing PlayStation games on PC, debuting with Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding and Days Gone , as well as many others that will come later. However, Nintendo continues to resist. Why?
Exclusives have for decades been one of the best ways to attract players to the entire ecosystem that surrounds a console. However, emulators and the PC have gradually blurred that strategy, and in the end what users want is to play all the games without complicating their lives, and if they can do it with their friends, the better.
Sony has opened up, and we all win
Sony’s strategy is currently very successful: launch the exclusive games on its console first, and when they have made the most of them, allow PC users to play them and get even more revenue from the titles, and even attract new users to their console ecosystem, where some may choose to have a PlayStation in their living room to complement their PC, and vice versa. Sony itself admits to being happy with this strategy, since they are making a lot of money with it.
The PC offers an advantage that consoles did not have until now: “infinite” backward compatibility. If you now install a game from decades ago on your PC, this one works. If you now want to play the original Red Dead Redemption , you have to have a PlayStation 3, an Xbox 360, use PS Now (with poor graphic quality), or resort to emulators, which still have some performance flaws.
If that game had been released years later on PC, there would be no problem playing it. Backward compatibility and emulators make it possible to preserve the history of video games, and Nintendo itself knows this well by selling access to its old games to play them on Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo is the living history of video games, and its titles include some of the best games ever . It is difficult to find a bad game from the company, and in hardware they have also had numerous successes, despite recent failures such as the Wii U. Wii, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Switch have been resounding successes, but with the problem of always being very limited in terms of power for what the hardware of the time offers when they tend to coexist with much more powerful consoles.
It is rare to see a game that does not come out on PC currently
Despite this lack of power, many players have also opted for their consoles, as they have offered unique gaming experiences or exclusive titles that could not be found on other platforms. With Nintendo Switch, however, there are many gaming experiences that can now be replicated more easily on other consoles or on PCs with a motion sensor controller.
Nintendo has always gone to their ball, which has allowed them to develop innovations in their games and consoles. Having exclusive titles has allowed them to always have a great appeal for users to buy their consoles, and if they released their games on PC, the sales of the consoles would drop considerably.
In 2017, the company stated that it was aware that many users play on PC today, but that they “believed in the integration of software and hardware as the best way to offer gaming experiences.” Although The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can be played in 4K at 60 FPS on PC and looks spectacular, and on Switch in portable mode it has crashes at 20 FPS in 720p.
Back then, not all games came out on PC, and today it is increasingly rare that there are no companies releasing them there; especially when there are protections like Denuvo that can become a guarantee that the game will not be cracked in months and even years, where most sales are concentrated in the first days of the games going on sale. According to a GDC survey, half of users play on PC, and it is the platform of choice for most developers.
Nintendo does not want risks, and it is to understand
Nintendo is right to protect its consoles, but opening its games to other platforms might not even hurt them. Sony is releasing its games on PC , and Microsoft is releasing all of its games on PC simultaneously, and both companies are breaking sales records at the launch of consoles even though stocks are low.
Thus, Switch does not compete with PC , since the console has other uses very different from the PC , being more comfortable to transport anywhere, and being the ideal console for the youngest since there are many Switch games for children (and not so children). PS5 and Xbox Series X do compete with PC, and even so they continue to sweep. The same thing would happen to Switch, but the current Nintendo model continues to work for them, and it seems better than ever. And it is difficult to justify changing something that is going very well.