PewDiePie Against Nintendo's Cash Share Plan

[Gwen]

Don't think anyone said quite that in here. I totally understand the work that goes into doing LP's, but at the end of the day, you're revealing an entire game to potentially millions of people and you're making money out of it.

[Kosheh]

I don't watch PewDiePie, the only video on his channel I've actively watched is a songification by Schmoyoho. The only real reason him speaking out is significant is because he's a significant Youtuber.

But anyway. While Nintendo do have a right to do this, I think it's pretty stupid of them. I would think that the free advertising they get from this would be more than enough compensation for the money Youtubers make - which, as TotalBiscuit said in the video Helmo posted, is already usually around 30-20% of the actual revenue generated. It's really just a dumb and greedy thing that I personally think might even decrease their sales.

What exactly is greedy about Nintendo wanting to get some profit from people using their content to make money? Nintendo's still okay with them making money, they just stand to make some themselves.

From a corporate view, yes. In a perfect world, yes. In a world where every YouTuber has a part-tiime job to pay the bills, yes.

The problem is that a good number of monetizing YouTubers actually use the revenue they make to actually like...live, and put a roof over their head and food in their mouth (and sometimes, for multiple people - which, in PDP's case, is his hot-ass Italian girlfriend)
Nintendo, with their usual antiquated, draconian practices and the literal embodiment of the Pokemon Slowpoke, realize that so many people enjoy a lot of people playing Nintendo's games on video streaming sites. The other part of the problem, which people might not think about is the YouTuber who realizes all they need is a stream overlay and a folder full of ROMs. That folder is a folder full of lost sales, lost royalties, and lost revenue. Lost numbers for Nintendo.
Sure, there's word-of-mouth, but in 2015 when all you need to play Earthbound is an emulator - a game with absurdly high regard in both gaming communities and the secondhand market that insists on selling it up to four times its original shelf price - that's a potential Virtual Console purchase, lost.
I'm just talking about one person here. When we're talking about an entire community whose first exposure to Earthbound was long after it left the market due to the rise of emulation just years later, the numbers really add up. Furthermore, when you're watching LPs of Jimmy Streamer mentioned above with his folder full of ROMs, that's potential lost sales, multiplied, for every person who's viewed that video. Lots and lots of numbers, which at the end of the day is a lot of dollars that could have flown into Nintendo's pockets.
Anyone remember Nintendo's game help hotline? You know, the one they somehow still have that people don't really use anymore because of the existence of YouTube playthroughs - oops! We could have paid our helpline staffers we've still got employed with that!

All in all, I think I've kinda wrote a bunch of jumbled words in a post, but Nintendo looking to seek ad revenue in exchange to potential exposure makes sense from a business perspective - even if it's like 10 years too late. When it's cutting into your own profits and ultimately your living expenses and quality of life, then yeah, you're probably going to be against the policy.
As crybaby as "Oh no, with Nintendo's Youtube monetization program I'm going to have to get a part-time job to play the bills" might sound to the average person, there's a lot of people who feel this sentiment, especially when you've got a generation of millenials who can't get a job in a brick-and-mortar building and instead are looking for other opportunities to make money with little to no experience required. :/

After typing that out, I just realized

Why doesn't Nintendo just try to get into the monetization game itself - and post Super Guide videos from its games to a monetized YouTube channel? There are actually gamers out there who don't want to tarnish their ~gamer cred~ with spending ingame credits on Super Guide vids. It's more revenue and royalties for everyone per view. Hell, Nintendo could even toss money Google's way to promote those results in search queries...oh wait, tossing money = losing money. oops nvm lol

Hell dude, why didn't ANY game company do this? Why don't INDIE DEVS do this?!

[Koopaul]

Which kind of shows what a fucked up world we live in when someone can't get a normal job and has to do LPs for a living.

I never understood the appeal of LPs. Whenever I watch a playthrough I prefer silence. I hate commentary when I'm trying to see game footage.

Sometimes I think "This is their career? Is this real life?"

But that's a whole other topic.

[TomGuycott]

"Has to do"? Could you define that please? Because I'm pretty sure most of those guys would rather do LPs than... Anything else.

I mean, the ones I've watched they usually say "I had this job once, I hated it, I'd never go back".

[GaryCXJk]

First of all, there are surely better jobs than LPing. I mean, aside from all the hard work actually editing the videos, you'd still have to deal with shitbags trying to drag you in the dirt or something. And yes, I know, trolls, but you'd have be really hard to be able to stand against them. Not many can manage.

And, there's also the fact that people nowadays think that, hey, LPs, easy peasy money, so they put all of their own money on something that might not even be worth it at all. It's like trying to sink all your money into making games. I mean, sure, I do hope to one day earn money by making games, but I also do realize the market is oversaturated right now. It's the very same reason why I will probably never make it as an author. Doesn't stop me from still writing novels, but I'm also content with my current job, which isn't anything exciting like game development or anything, but it pays the bills, and I enjoy working there.

But anyway, here's something. Let's Plays have only some effect on Nintendo, and it's not a lot. You see, Let's Plays are great ways to expose a game... if it's not already exposed through heavy advertisements, you know, like what Nintendo does. They have an entire marketing department doing their marketing for them, planning out every step into bringing forth a new product. Do you think those Nintendo Directs just come out of the blue? They were a marketing strategy that actually payed off very well for them. Instead of holding one big press conference to excite your gamers for upcoming releases, why not do it all year? Sure, it's a lesser budget, but it's worked better than the one E3 presentation they had.

You can see this Partnership Program in the same way, it's a sort of experiment, let's just call it a BETA, to see how well this would go, how well it would work into exposing the world to Nintendo. Yes, part of it is received by Nintendo, and part goes to Paypal fees, part goes to Google, part goes to taxes, but the rest is all yours. It sounds like a shitty deal, and yeah, it probably is, but, it's still in BETA. Things can change. I'm not saying they will change, it's more likely they won't, but they can change. If it actually turns out bad for Nintendo, they could basically pull the plug on it or something. It wouldn't affect them either way, because LPs are not the thing that really impacts them as a company. It's free advertisement, yes, but like most things that are free, there either is something to it, or the quality isn't as great, it doesn't deliver as much. Most LPs don't have the finesse, the polish, that advertisements have. Even the trailers of Super Smash Bros. are polished up a lot, and the in-game footage showed in those trailers and commercials actually do show actual in-game footage as it appears in-game.

Now, reviews are a bigger gray area, but I don't think Nintendo is stupid enough to touch those. There'd be a huge shitstorm when that would happen, still not big enough to really doom Nintendo, but enough to make Nintendo bow or something. Reviews are actually something that's part of fair use. Like someone said, reviews only highlight the things that need to be shown. It doesn't spoil the ending, unless it's a really fucking stupid review, it doesn't spoil essentials that people shouldn't be seeing. It's really something Nintendo really shouldn't touch, as it affects the integrity of gaming criticism.

But alas, I'm ranting, and I haven't slept well for a while, so, with that, I'll leave you with one simple thought.

Why did you think Nintendo is starting this partnership? Is it to recoup the losses? And why is Nintendo so bent on bringing us innovation? Who even says they're innovating for our pleasure? No, the real reason Nintendo needs the funds is because they're building Gundams.