| spemanig said: There's an app on iOS right now called Gree that does just that though. It allows you to purchase games specifically through their portal. I should know. I hav the app. Once it becomes common knowledge that you can buy all your Nintendo games through the app, that problem evaborates. People will just associate Nintendo gaming through the app, the same way they associate Nintendo gaming to their hardware now. As Word with Friends proves, people are more than willing to create an account for something that is culturally relevant. If the game is important enough to people's social lives, regular people have no problem spending a minute to create a username and password. Once they own the app, downloading a Nintendo game would be as simple as boot up the app > Search, buy the game, download it. It creates uniformity. Frankly, PSN and Live did it terribly. It didn't set the world on fire because the efforts weren't good and their IP aren't even remotely strong enough to do something like this. No one cares, on a macro scale, about the Vita and it's connection to the PS3/4. No one cares about using their PS app everyday. I owned the Live app. I had a Windows Phone and created a Live account for it. The service sucked. If Nintendo pulls this off, that, in and of itself, is the "revolution." (Your words, not mine.) I want to be clear though, this thread isn't predicting if this will be successful, or revolutionary, or not. This is just meant to say "this is what Nintendo is thinking." This is what Nintendo was likely planning when they made these moves. This is where their embitions likely lie, based off evidence we already know and some educated guessing. |
Gree is a social network. It only gives you a bunch of links to the App Store itself. They can't sell games there, because Apple isn't allowing it. No way, never. Re-check your app. Apple wants their 30% and you have to give it. They won't let someone sell 10M downloads of a US$ 10 game and just lose US$ 30M.
PSN and Live did it terribly? You are basically saying that Nintendo should do the same things Sony and MS did 3 to 8 years ago and claiming it will be a revolution. Right now, Nintendo isn't even providing the same level of funcionality that PSN provided in 2009. They are far, far behind in infrastructure and most things you posted are just features I have on my PS consoles since some years. Cross-buy? 2012. Cloud save? Don't have idea, bought a PS3 in 2011 and it already had it. They are still catching up with party chat here.
I would like to see you clarifying why PSN and Live sucks when doing things that Nintendo simply don't have. They can't even make an account system that isn't tied to a piece of hardware in 2015. I also did had a WP. The service was alright, it had achievements (something the Wii U don't have), purchases not tied to hardware, avatars, etc. The big problem here isn't just bringing it to mobile, but making the Nintendo Network be remotely close in functionality to PSN and Live. The problem is that the other are always bringing new features. So while you are adding basics like party chat, the other have gane streaming, sharing, social features and remote cloud gameplay.
Even the slides you posted, just show a unified accounting system shared by multiple devices. That's PSN and Live. The only new thing there is the QoL part that uses extra sensors in people's houses. You're just massively exagerating what is mostly catch-up and what just confirms that Nintendo wants to have another home console and handheld, while NX is probably the new handheld device.
I don't think we can see that as anything different than Nintendo getting ready to the fall of the handheld market and to get the sales potential of mobile devices. They don't need to put everything on a walled garden inside an app: just make the games with the IPs, people will buy and play. Some of them will like it and may buy the home console to play the bigger versions. That's it, simple and effective.
The Nintendo app, if they launch it, will be more like the PS app. See your messages, see your friends, etc. Easy and convenient.
