Never stopped, they just chose a different path. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s all video games and hardware to play them. Nintendo read the room and saw they didn’t have the means to sell hardware at a loss, develop games with massive budgets and risk it all. They had to do things their way, look at this industry. A few big flops from other publishers and they are at risk of bankruptcy. Nintendo has to make money from games, yes their IP is strong, but the games drive the IP’s popularity. Their own console ensures they make the absolute most from their games.
Their hardware is cheap, the budgets are low, the risk is lower, the profits can be absolutely nuts. 70 million copies of Mario Kart 8. At $50 a pop that is over $3 billion from a game made over 10 years ago. It probably covered half the budgets of all the Switch games Nintendo published in the past 5 years. And they published a lot.
Tears of the Kingdom revenue was over $1.4 billion dollars with 20 million copies sold. 2 games made $5 billion dollars. Nintendo has like.. what 5-10 games that sold over 20 million copies?
Games compete with games,
But entertainment as a whole competes for your time and money.
