| nordlead said: Yes, the mobile phone market is a threat, but it can never kill Nintendo. Nintendo still has the 5-15 year old market locked up because the parents won't buy fancy phones with 2 year contracts for them. Either way, the home consoles survive despite there being cheaper PC games, and no market has died because of internet games. Sure the DS/PSP will lose some to the mobile market, but overall there is plenty of room for Nintendo to expand at the same time the mobile market does. @better value proposition it depends on your needs. I can buy a phone with a $50/month contract just for phone use and a DS for games, and it will cost me a lot less over 2 years than buying a iPhone with a $100/month contract and games for the iPhone. If you need your phone to surf the internet too, then yea, the value might be there, but personally I'd rather not sink so much money into my glorified pocket watch. |
Don't forget these:
Its called an iPod touch. Apple has sold about ~40 million of these in the past 2-3 years. They have all the functionality of the iPhone in terms of gaming. A parent may be more apt to buy one of these, and get the other features (music playing, web browsing) than a phone due to contracts. There are no contracts with these devices, and they still have the $0.99-$9.99 games which I've seen that some parents are turning to as the price of DS games are just too high.
The cost of a new iPod Touch is less than a Nintendo DSiXL at stores.
That may be how Apple wins over those 5-15 year olds. After all, how many kids have you seen in the past 5 years with MP3 players? What happens when they move on up to an Android-based iPod knock-off player with games? I'd venture to say there is a bigger market for MP3 players that a low-end Android device could handle than there are for dedicated handheld gaming devices in the US.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
