Nintendo Plans YouTube Affiliate Program, Might Not Be Totally Helpless

It’s no secret that Nintendo is in a little bit of trouble. It’s flagship home console, the Wii U, is selling poorly. The company has been reporting quarter-after-quarter losses. And nothing that Nintendo has put out so far — including great games like Super Mario 3D World and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze — has helped the situation.

You’d think that, under those circumstances, Nintendo would do everything it could to foster goodwill with its customers and help promote the Wii U and its games. But until today, that wasn’t the case.

You see, Nintendo has been taking a lot of flack for the way its treated YouTube videos of its games being played; more specifically, the company has been blocking video creators from receiving ad revenue, and has instead been claiming that revenue for itself. Now, these aren’t video creators using Nintendo’s intellectual property in any original way; for example, they aren’t stealing Mario and creating an online cartoon series with him. They’re simply playing Nintendo games on Nintendo systems and sharing their experiences, which is about the best kind of free advertising you can ask for. And Nintendo has been slapping these fans in their faces.

It seems that the company finally realized how counterproductive this approach was to its cause: Nintendo’s Japanese Twitter account announced that the company would be creating a YouTube affiliate program for those who want to share videos of Nintendo games. The company still wants a cut of the ad revenue (because it’s not enough to sell games), but it’s now willing to share that ad revenue with the video creators, which is a step in the right direction.

Gaming videos are all the rage these days, as evidenced by the inclusion of Twitch on both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. Twitch users can stream their gameplay right from those consoles and make ad revenue based on the number of views their streams are getting. It doesn’t seem that either Microsoft or Sony are in a hurry to complain about their intellectual properties being streamed online, or to collect a slice of the ad revenue, as both probably understand that services like Twitch and YouTube have more upside than downside.

Which just leaves Nintendo. And when you look at first, second and third in the next-gen console race, and you consider the situation described above, the placing makes a lot of sense.

[Source: The Next Web]