Back in December - it seems so long ago - I wrote a piece about Apple’s decision to shut down all of their stores across California. This wasn’t a decision Apple took lightly. Apple is the biggest company on the planet, and California is their best market across all 50 states in the US. Let me add a little dramatic perspective here: California has 53 Apple Stores. Japan, the world’s second largest democratic economy, only has 10.

It was the right thing to do. Shutting down those Apple Stores saved lives. #Respect

in the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic, a little child will wake up to the loving gaze of their mother or father, instead of waking up to a nightmare of their family destroyed by a virus.

So I couldn’t help but wonder in disbelief at the decision by Universal Studios Japan’s to officially open their new Nintendo theme park this week, in the middle of the pandemic when almost no one in Japan has yet to receive the vaccination.

It sounds nuts, but it’s actually much worse.

Nintendo today is a tech company. Nintendo world even includes use of augmented reality (AR) in one of its rides. So why didn’t Nintendo look at the pandemic as an opportunity to really live out its stated mission, “to put smiles on the faces of everyone we touch. We do so by creating new surprises for people across the world to enjoy together.”

Does Nintendo have the resources to launch a virtual theme park that people the world over could enjoy? Yes. Could they have done this? Absolutely. Did they? No.

This is yet another example of a Japanese company missing out on an opportunity handed to them on a golden platter. Disneyland is shut down. Universal Studios is shut down. Pretty much every theme park in the world is shut down.

But Nintendo has a following with millions of households worldwide. And those households bought expensive Nintendo hardware for their kids. Nintendo already has an installed base of customers with their hardware in their own homes.

AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) are not new. In fact, even as I am writing this article right now, the tech world is talking about how Nintendo’s latest hit Pikumin (aka Pikmin) will be the next Pokemon Go augmented reality hit.

Let’s do a thought experiment.

Tonight in the bath, I asked my two sons if they wanted to go to the new Nintendo World theme park in Osaka. Their response?

“Papa, it’s the pandemic. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be at a theme park right now.” Out of the mouths of babes.

Then I asked my son a different question: “Do you know how much a game costs for your Nintendo Switch?” He didn’t. I didn’t expect him to. The kids are still young and we (the parents) occasionally buy them games for their birthdays, Christmas, etc. “About ¥10,000,” I said. My older son has an idea about how much that is. So I pressed on: “What if there were goggles you could buy that connected to WiFi that enabled you to find Mario world creatures around the house, that you could talk to or, I suppose, use a virtual big hammer on, or whatever…. basically the characters from all your various Mario games would come to life in our house.”

Complete and utter silence as the two boys thought about that.

Almost simultaneously, they said “PAPA, WOULD YOU GET IT FOR US?!?!?!?”

According to Statista, Nintendo sold more switches than Xbox as of 2019, with 48.83 MILLION switches sold. Nintendo didn’t just have an opportunity to create and sell Nintendo branded AR/VR goggles to almost 50 million existing customers, they could have created a virtual theme park and sold access to it everywhere. Think about this: Instead of dumping $500+ million dollars into debt to create a high-maintenance theme park on an island that the majority of people worldwide may never visit, they could have built a theme park that was accessible to lovers of the Nintendo brand everywhere, worldwide, and immediately accessible. Pandemic or not.

“The area’s opening is a reply to investors frustrated by Nintendo’s reluctance to more aggressively commercialize its fan base. The Kyoto-based firm’s Switch games console has proved a pandemic winner while a foray into mobile gaming has stalled.”

"They are in a decades-long strategy of going from being a video game company to an entertainment company" by expanding into mobile games, movies, theme parks and merchandise, said David Gibson, analyst at Tokyo-based Astris Advisory (CNN Travel, March 18, 2021)

Instead of figuring out how to touch more people during the pandemic and put smiles on their faces when people need it most, they decided to invest in an old business model, one that has been shuttered across the world during Covid-19. The old business model that requires that people come to you, when travel is all but off the table for nearly everyone. They decided to invest in the obsolete wait-in-line theme park rides that parents hate, and hate paying for parking to just visit, hate waiting in line for and hate worrying about

Nintendo could have started Transforming the world into a theme park during the pandemic. Instead, they missed the single biggest business opportunity presented to them in over 100 years.

Nintendo had the opportunity to demonstrate to parents and fans worldwide that they could reinvent and change everything about the traditional theme park that a lot of people hate. They had the opportunity to turn the theme park into an actual channel, one that the children and their parents can come back to over and over again, just like they revisit Disney+ because of the Mandalorian, but much more fun and interactive instead.

Did they? No, instead, they tried over and over and over to open their theme park doors for a traditional theme park ride with AR as a feature, instead of the purpose. This, even during the pandemic.

The Problem With the Profit Imperative

Back to my article about Apple closing all of their California stores. In it I explained what a big deal it is to close all those stores, and to do so just a few days away from Christmas. It was the right thing to do.

Today, by comparison, thousands of people across Japan are hopping on trains to come to Osaka because of Super Nintendo World, at a time when less than half of 1% of the population has been vaccinated. Will masks make the difference, and “screaming in one’s heart” on a roller coaster, instead of screaming out loud? Maybe. Will some people bring Covid-19 along for the ride? Yes.

Running around the house with my kids chasing A/R mushrooms with an A/R hammer sounds so much better. And safer.