The company would face a transition period similar to SEGA's

Jan 17, 2013 10:19 GMT  ·  By

Nintendo might be heading for its second year of losses in a row, mostly linked to worse than expected performance of the new Wii U, but one analyst believes that the Japanese company will never abandon hardware development.

Jesse Divnich, who watches the market for EEDAR, tells GamesIndustry that, “If the Wii U turns into a market failure, I’d suspect that a software-only approach becomes a serious consideration.”

He also believes that, “The transition alone would spiritually kill the company for many years.”

SEGA is another company that has abandoned the hardware market after a bad home console launch.

The Dreamcast was in many ways a revelation, but it failed to sell well and the company abandoned it three years after it had been released.

The company is a solid publisher at the moment, but is no longer as important to the gaming industry as Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft.