What should Nintendo do?

With Wii U sales slow and Nintendo suffering successive quarterly losses, critics say the firm’s in real trouble. Chris Kohler, however, argues that the given wisdom—that it should port its games to other platforms, like Sega did—is a bad idea.

Before Nintendo would ever put any content onto the App Store, it would first have to be ready to compete in that environment and sell its games on a platform where race-to-the-bottom pricing and aggressive freemium money-making mechanics are the norm. It must be willing to learn how to design its products in a way that would make them competitive on that platform. This is not so easily done. And that’s a fundamental problem with the conventional wisdom: It is based on the premise that a strong enough brand can make the App Store a glorified ATM: Old games go in, piles of money come out.

Nintendo’s conservatism has led it to make epic mistakes in the past without permanent damage, but it has an exceptionally strong history of getting everything right in the end.