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Louie on 28 February 2009
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mai said:
Louie said:
mai said:
Louie said:
I'm looking forward to Nintendo's response. Apparently they didn't expect such a massive wave of PSP support. The handheld market could become interesting again.

What kind of response? Does this change anything for Ninty?

 

It does, definitely. No matter what some people say Nintendo and Sony are at least competing for 3rd Party support. And Nintendo had to face the effect of decreasing 3rd Party support in 2008 on both Wii and DS, at least in Japan. Nintendo want to appeal to a different market but if developers feel like Sony is the better way to go they'll develop for Sony platforms obviously. Nintendo hasn't announced a big DS line-up so far as they are focusing on the Wii currently.

With DS worldwide software numbers 3-4 times bigger than PSP last year I can't see any reason for concern. I guess you informed better than me, that even in Japan DS software far ahead of PSP software numbers. Highly unlikely that even a bunch of blockbusters could change anything drastically.

The best we can hope, that we'll get some good games this or next year on PSP.

 

 

While the DS sells more software most of the software sales are Nintendo games (at least in Japan). For instance: In 2009 3.4 million Nintendo DS games have been sold so far in Japan and 1.9 million Wii games. According to our numbers Nintendo has sold 2.75 million games in 2009. Let's do the math:

3.4m + 1.9m = 5.3 million games sold on Nintendo system in 2009 so far (Japan only).

Now 5.3m - 2.75m (1st Party games) = 2.55m units.

That means 2.55m 3rd Party games have been sold on Nintendo systems in 2009.

 

Now let's do the same for the Sony systems:

1.35m PSP games in 2009 and 1.0m PS3 games in 2009 (again, Japan only).

That's 2.35m games on Sony systems in 2009. Sony so far accounted for 0.45m games in 2009, so we have 1.90m 3rd Party games on Sony systems this year.

 

So even though the DS has seen better third Party sales this year the difference isn't that big and the DS has a) a big install base and b) a huge amount of big third party games like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, etc.

While the DS has always seen good 3rd Party sales, even in Japan, they never found the success they had on Sony platforms and the PSP has shown in 2008 that it can sell 3rd Party games, a lot easier than the Wii at least. As a result Nintendo has seen decreasing 3rd Party support on the DS last year. That was bad for them as they had to focus on the Wii instead of the DS. The DS would've needed the 3rd Party games to see higher sales last year.

So even though Nintendo doesn't heavily rely on 3rd Party games they still need a decent amount of them on their systems.

If Sony really starts pushing the PSP this year with a PSP 4000, new colors and games the system will see higher sales in the west and 3rd Parties might go for it.

Nintendo has to respond in this case. Of course they're after a different market to some extend but if they really follow the blue ocean strategy in a way people expect them to that would be the same as giving up because they need their developers for the Wii currently and don't have a lot of big DS games left. This is why they pushed GTA: Chinatown Wars and Guitar Hero on Tour so heavily.

Even though Nintendo doesn't really "need" a lot of third party support on their consoles it is always good to have it. You also have to take the next generation into account: A PSP 2 with huge 3rd Party support from the begining would be a much bigger competition for Nintendo.