When investment oriented people say Nintendo should move to mobile they are essentially saying Nintendo should move into PC gaming.
The same problems that exist in PC gaming exist whether you use a desktop or a smartphone.
Fragmented OS
Fragmented hardware
Hardware inadequately designed for living room or portable gaming.
Less controls on piracy.
No way to gain royalties for being on a Nintendo platform.
Project Renaissance
If Nintendo was going to move into PC gaming this is what I would be interested in seeing them do.
Nintendo Micro-OS
Micro OS are different from regular OS in 2 distinct ways.
Micro OS have inferior software application performance.
Micro OS have superior security features.
Due the 1st reason, research on micro-os's have withered since the performance hit is simply too big but that research was drastically reduced around 2002 and hardware is a lot more powerful than it was back then.
I'm very interested in micro-os for the 2nd reason because it would make a PC almost impossible to infect with malware because it restricts application access from the core OS functionality so much. These restrictions are the reasons why applications take large hits on performance.
Nintendo offering a micro-os would give them a competitive advantage over Microsoft, Apple and Google.
It could open them up to having a stronger relationship with AMD and Intel because now there would be a new reason for consumers to buy their future flash and CPU products. In turn this would open up relationships on the 3rd party manufacturers who rely so much on Intel and AMD making new products.
Nintendo Hardware Seal of Approval
Nintendo could look at the top 4 manufacturers/rebranders of each pc component and pick 2-3 products that would get their seal of approval.
For hardware without that seal they'll still work like PC games do now.
Nintendo will offer superior support for PC configurations using these components because they can optimize their software to these configurations.
This means no system crashes for running their software.
Less frame drops.
Higher frame rates.
Less system resources used up by RAM, CPU and GPU.
Nintendo Crafthouse and Nintendo Guild
The crafthouse is essentially a community repository for mod projects. All Nintendo games will offer mod tools and community contributions and collaborations will be done at the crafthouse.
Hobbyists of excellence will be marked by Nintendo staffers as people that can join The Guild. It is their decision to join if they have been marked. Guild members would be sponsored to make 1 or 2 official games to be published by Nintendo. Nintendo will not only provide partial funding but will fine tune their skills. Essentially an apprenticeship program.
Discoverability
Nintendo would employ 4 strategies to make it easier to discover new potential games.
Lexicon Enforcement
Nintendo would create a dictionary of key terms to describe a game. They would strictly enforce these definitions so when you do a search term you know what you are looking for will be found if you use the right combination of key words. Violators can be reported and addressed.
Animation search
We already know through Google's content ID claim system their exist search engines sophisticated enough to search for video content with video content instead of key words.
This would probably be expensive to implement but well worth it when we are moving into an age of sharing animated gifs.
Proactive marketing
With the help of big data and higher royalties fees, for those who elect to use this service, Nintendo can help sell your game across the web by finding people with a relationship to playing the type of games you offer. They will be to buy ad space for you on websites you wouldn't think of advertising on or couldn't afford to do as well as Nintendo could as one big buyer.
Friends association
With the help of big data and social networks Nintendo can aggregate the interests a circle of friends and introduce them to games they would enjoy sharing their experiences with.
Online community
Nintendo already have a patent on a system to have players help each other play games remotely. They just need to refine it and implement it.
[edit]
Virtual Shell
Nintendo has to compromise somewhat on having their software on other OS even if they give theirs away. They should design a virtualization platform so people can play their Nintendo games on another operating system because they don't care for the unique values their OS provides and it is lacking in multimedia and productivity software they would expect to use.
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Caveat
If Nintendo was going to jump into PC gaming I would expect them to require some form of hardware DRM chip to be installed to run their games. They should offer this free of charge including shipping. If they refuse to do that then they should tie it together with hardware that is useful like storage so we can carry our games library wherever we want or a TPM module to cover up an security holes a micro-console can't enforce.
The same problems that exist in PC gaming exist whether you use a desktop or a smartphone.
Fragmented OS
Fragmented hardware
Hardware inadequately designed for living room or portable gaming.
Less controls on piracy.
No way to gain royalties for being on a Nintendo platform.
Project Renaissance
If Nintendo was going to move into PC gaming this is what I would be interested in seeing them do.
Nintendo Micro-OS
Micro OS are different from regular OS in 2 distinct ways.
Micro OS have inferior software application performance.
Micro OS have superior security features.
Due the 1st reason, research on micro-os's have withered since the performance hit is simply too big but that research was drastically reduced around 2002 and hardware is a lot more powerful than it was back then.
I'm very interested in micro-os for the 2nd reason because it would make a PC almost impossible to infect with malware because it restricts application access from the core OS functionality so much. These restrictions are the reasons why applications take large hits on performance.
Nintendo offering a micro-os would give them a competitive advantage over Microsoft, Apple and Google.
It could open them up to having a stronger relationship with AMD and Intel because now there would be a new reason for consumers to buy their future flash and CPU products. In turn this would open up relationships on the 3rd party manufacturers who rely so much on Intel and AMD making new products.
Nintendo Hardware Seal of Approval
Nintendo could look at the top 4 manufacturers/rebranders of each pc component and pick 2-3 products that would get their seal of approval.
For hardware without that seal they'll still work like PC games do now.
Nintendo will offer superior support for PC configurations using these components because they can optimize their software to these configurations.
This means no system crashes for running their software.
Less frame drops.
Higher frame rates.
Less system resources used up by RAM, CPU and GPU.
Nintendo Crafthouse and Nintendo Guild
The crafthouse is essentially a community repository for mod projects. All Nintendo games will offer mod tools and community contributions and collaborations will be done at the crafthouse.
Hobbyists of excellence will be marked by Nintendo staffers as people that can join The Guild. It is their decision to join if they have been marked. Guild members would be sponsored to make 1 or 2 official games to be published by Nintendo. Nintendo will not only provide partial funding but will fine tune their skills. Essentially an apprenticeship program.
Discoverability
Nintendo would employ 4 strategies to make it easier to discover new potential games.
Lexicon Enforcement
Nintendo would create a dictionary of key terms to describe a game. They would strictly enforce these definitions so when you do a search term you know what you are looking for will be found if you use the right combination of key words. Violators can be reported and addressed.
Animation search
We already know through Google's content ID claim system their exist search engines sophisticated enough to search for video content with video content instead of key words.
This would probably be expensive to implement but well worth it when we are moving into an age of sharing animated gifs.
Proactive marketing
With the help of big data and higher royalties fees, for those who elect to use this service, Nintendo can help sell your game across the web by finding people with a relationship to playing the type of games you offer. They will be to buy ad space for you on websites you wouldn't think of advertising on or couldn't afford to do as well as Nintendo could as one big buyer.
Friends association
With the help of big data and social networks Nintendo can aggregate the interests a circle of friends and introduce them to games they would enjoy sharing their experiences with.
Online community
Nintendo already have a patent on a system to have players help each other play games remotely. They just need to refine it and implement it.
[edit]
Virtual Shell
Nintendo has to compromise somewhat on having their software on other OS even if they give theirs away. They should design a virtualization platform so people can play their Nintendo games on another operating system because they don't care for the unique values their OS provides and it is lacking in multimedia and productivity software they would expect to use.
[/edit]
Caveat
If Nintendo was going to jump into PC gaming I would expect them to require some form of hardware DRM chip to be installed to run their games. They should offer this free of charge including shipping. If they refuse to do that then they should tie it together with hardware that is useful like storage so we can carry our games library wherever we want or a TPM module to cover up an security holes a micro-console can't enforce.
