Nintendo sets Apple within their sights
Nintendo's profits drop but it's not Sony causing the pain it's Apple
I've been saying that the DS was in trouble for a while when I grew tired of buying $20 games for my son only to have them lost later. The only thing preventing me from just getting him a touch and a gaggle of games is the durability of the glass screen.
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The last time Nintendo took a big hit in profit, it resulted in the development of perhaps the most successful video game console of all time in the Wii. What?s Nintendo?s response going to be this time around? Yes, the big N has seen its profits drop from $3.03 billion to $2.48 billion?still a fair a bit of money perhaps to you and me, but cause for panic in the house that Mario built. While a traditional rival, Sony (with the PlayStation), was responsible for the previous rough patch, this time it?s Apple. Will Nintendo allow the iPhone to push it around?
Not likely. Nintendo?s president, Satoru Iwata, the man who essentially willed the company to success in the past several years?he was more or less responsible for the Wii?has told his sergeants to treat Apple as the company?s most significant threat from here on out. That honor used to belong to Sony, but Sony is so last generation, especially when focusing on mobile gaming. If Nintendo?s future mobile platforms are to be any kind of success, the company will have to figure out how to take on the ease of use afforded by the App Store.
You?re sitting on a park bench, whip out your iPhone, launch the App Store, and buy Angry Birds for 99 cents. Zero to gaming in no time at all. How?s Nintendo going to compete with that? (The DSi Shop requires Wi-Fi, whereas the App Store will load anywhere you have a cellphone signal.)
There?s a lot going on here. Nintendo insiders may be worried about the iPhone-App Store nexus, but surely they realize that there?s a world of difference between playing a long role-playing game like Chrono Trigger on the DS and playing, I don?t know, Bejeweled 2 while waiting for the subway to arrive. Just as the Wii ?changed gaming? by expanding its audience, so, too, has the iPhone.
Part of the problem is that the word ?gaming? is entirely too vague to accurately describe both playing Chrono Trigger for 40 hours and Bejeweled 2 for two minutes at a clip. Do those two activities belong in the same genre, ?gaming?? To me, they?re two different things.
The Wii was released in late 2006, and only now are Microsoft and Sony incorporating the concepts introduced by it, namely motion controllers and simpler games.
Maybe Nintendo should just release a phone?
The last time Nintendo took a big hit in profit, it resulted in the development of perhaps the most successful video game console of all time in the Wii. What?s Nintendo?s response going to be this time around? Yes, the big N has seen its profits drop from $3.03 billion to $2.48 billion?still a fair a bit of money perhaps to you and me, but cause for panic in the house that Mario built. While a traditional rival, Sony (with the PlayStation), was responsible for the previous rough patch, this time it?s Apple. Will Nintendo allow the iPhone to push it around?
Not likely. Nintendo?s president, Satoru Iwata, the man who essentially willed the company to success in the past several years?he was more or less responsible for the Wii?has told his sergeants to treat Apple as the company?s most significant threat from here on out. That honor used to belong to Sony, but Sony is so last generation, especially when focusing on mobile gaming. If Nintendo?s future mobile platforms are to be any kind of success, the company will have to figure out how to take on the ease of use afforded by the App Store.
You?re sitting on a park bench, whip out your iPhone, launch the App Store, and buy Angry Birds for 99 cents. Zero to gaming in no time at all. How?s Nintendo going to compete with that? (The DSi Shop requires Wi-Fi, whereas the App Store will load anywhere you have a cellphone signal.)
There?s a lot going on here. Nintendo insiders may be worried about the iPhone-App Store nexus, but surely they realize that there?s a world of difference between playing a long role-playing game like Chrono Trigger on the DS and playing, I don?t know, Bejeweled 2 while waiting for the subway to arrive. Just as the Wii ?changed gaming? by expanding its audience, so, too, has the iPhone.
Part of the problem is that the word ?gaming? is entirely too vague to accurately describe both playing Chrono Trigger for 40 hours and Bejeweled 2 for two minutes at a clip. Do those two activities belong in the same genre, ?gaming?? To me, they?re two different things.
The Wii was released in late 2006, and only now are Microsoft and Sony incorporating the concepts introduced by it, namely motion controllers and simpler games.
Maybe Nintendo should just release a phone?
I've been saying that the DS was in trouble for a while when I grew tired of buying $20 games for my son only to have them lost later. The only thing preventing me from just getting him a touch and a gaggle of games is the durability of the glass screen.
Comments
I've been saying that the DS was in trouble for a while when I grew tired of buying $20 games for my son only to have them lost later. The only thing preventing me from just getting him a touch and a gaggle of games is the durability of the glass screen.
Nintendo can take on the iPod Touch but not the iPhone. Even then, they are competing against the music aspect too as well as sync capability with a computer and camera functions.
Like Sega, they may eventually become a software-only company and Mario etc will just run on a PS4/XBox 480/iPhone 5G.
They'll still make a huge amount of money and the games will look better than they ever have. Hardware was never Nintendo's strong point.
The rumors about an upcoming DS point to hardware that matches current mobile phones but it doesn't solve the issue that people already have their phone with them and adding another device is not a good idea.
I think that the nextgen Apple TV is going to be a pretty damn good alternative for game playing.
Say I buy a $15 racing game for my iPad. If I can sync that same game to the nextgen Apple TV and play it on a big screen i'm in hog heaven
I think Nintendo sees the looming threat of cheap games playing on a variety of Apple hardware and they're rightly concerned.
Their profits come from expensive games that are already being undercut by App Store games and the quality is improving (OpenGL ES 2.x and soon Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL support)