Nintendo's Stance on User Submitted Content

Let's plays. A phenomenon that has millions of users uploading content of themselves playing a video game with commentary. A large majority of these let's plays display the game in a largely positive light. These let's plays generate a large viewer base, with millions of people watching these videos online.

I don't know about you but this sounds like free advertising. However according to Nintendo any video uploaded on to the internet by anyone but themselves is considered an infringement of copyright and is quickly taken down.

I find this weird. Many video game companies benefit largely from these videos because once an internet celebrity plays a game and uploads a let's play of it a lot of people who almost worship the celeb they go out and buy that game and upload video replies.

This brings me to wonder why exactly would they cut out their free advertising.

One reason that springs to mind is the general vocabulary of these let's plays. A lot of these videos contain frequent swearing. 

This could quite easily damage their image of being a family friendly company with family friendly products. This would be a good idea to maintain their image if it wasn't for one important reason.

Source: Nintendo Life

As you can see, its sales have been rather abysmal.

During Nintendo's Wii campaign they largely abandoned the 'core' video game audience. The very group that built them up to this day. Whilst the Wii made them a (very) large sum of money, the people that bought the Wii did so because they considered it a toy. The core video game market does not consider video games a toy, they consider it something much more.

Damaging their family friendly image suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea now. If they want the core market back now they need to allow user submitted content at the very least, or they will continue to damage their Wii U sales.

-Tristan