New York Times Make Curious Statement About Nintendo and Call of Duty Agreement

For many brands in the public space, perception is reality. Companies will try and lean into their perception if they feel it will grant them booms later on or turn away from them if it’s hurting the brand. For example, for video game companies, the perception they want is to be known as companies that make great products. It doesn’t matter if it’s hardware, software, accessories, etc. They want people to look at them and know that they can trust them to make good products. But for Nintendo, one of their former perceptions was brought up in the wake of the 10-year agreement they made with Microsoft.

To keep it short, Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard to have all its IPs under its banner. Sony has been saying they would keep all those IPs to themselves and “shift the market” in their favor if the deal went through. As a result, Microsoft went to Nintendo and Steam and made a 10-year deal with each to give them Call of Duty, the most significant IP of the deal in many people’s minds. The Big N has a spotted history with that franchise as it’s never gotten all the titles they’ve released. The deal would change that and would be a big boon for them.

However, as pointed out on Twitter, the New York Times seems to have a different viewpoint on this for some reason. They feel that the deal hurts their “family-friendly brand”:

As the Twitter poster noted, it’s very odd for the New York Times to talk about The Big N like we’re back in the 1990s. While the company is still known for its mostly family-friendly roster, it’s hardly the only thing they’re known for recently.

Case in point, the Bayonetta franchise. The very M-Rated series has been exclusively on Nintendo systems since the second mainline title, and the third title came out in October. Furthermore, since the Switch launch, there have been many M-rated titles on the system that span many genres and developers.

If anything, Nintendo has been working harder than ever to get titles that they feel will “open their scope” and bring even more people to their systems. They don’t want to leave anyone out. Perhaps the New York Times doesn’t realize that this change has happened. Or perhaps it was a slip of the tongue. Either way, no matter what their “brand” is in the newspapers’ eyes, they’ve scored a huge victory with this agreement.

Source: Twitter