That’s likely what is preventing any new subscription based mmo. Why bother with a reliable and fair price when lootbox bullshit makes you 10x the money.
Nintendo is heavily reliant on physical media and traditional retailers, they aren’t getting anywhere near 100% of most sales. Brick and mortar takes around a 50% cut, Amazon takes a cut as well. Being on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam isn’t a significant difference in what they would make.
They would still sell a lot of consoles, the super fans are going to buy Nintendo consoles. The people that actually own multiple consoles in the same generation aren’t actually that big of a group, especially compared to non-Nintendo owners that would consider buying a few games if they were available.
There’s a few titles that have relied on gimmicks that would be difficult or impossible to do on other systems. It would be a temporary learning curve to get games able to support multiple platforms, but everyone else has already done it and Nintendo consoles have been the least powerful systems so it should be easier.
How many people buy Nintendo for exclusives isn’t super relevant. The important questions are how many more games would they sell if they were multi-platform, and how many fewer consoles they would sell if their games were available elsewhere. They would very likely sell substantially more games, but also likely see a significant reduction in console sales. This would still likely be a win as the games are far higher margin than the consoles.
Procedural generation is just an earlier form of AI that’s been demystified and commercialized as a positive thing. The current generative tools aren’t at that level of adoption yet.
Each game has their own little quirks and focuses. From what I remember sc3000 is best to start in a corner. You only get half the pollution from buildings on the edge, which is pretty big in the early game. You also get easier access to trade partners which is a good source of income later. Public transportation is also important, and very expensive, so you need to aggressively maintain a strong budget surplus to keep expanding.
There’s also some magic numbers to know as you get more familiar with the game. Airports, farms, ports, and subways all have sizes you need to keep in mind when planning.
It probably will. Given the modest spec bump and the high even for Nintendo hostility to switch emulation, it’s probably trivial to support switch 2 as well.
The problem is a second launcher or library is a pain in the ass for a user. I already avoid GoG unless it’s massively cheaper, and there’s the no drm benefits there. I’m not even interested in free games on epic.