Macworld E3 article - Ninty/MS/Sony are "OUT OF TOUCH", "Complacent Swine"

[famousringo]

noname2200 said:

famousringo said:

Personally, I try to be up-front about that fact. But I don't agree that Apple isn't a threat to Nintendo because the DS hasn't yet been impacted by iOS. Threat implies a potential hazard in the near future, not an actual impact on the present.

My suspicion is that Apple is beating Nintendo to the new users, which is why I'm wondering if Nintendo is working hard to retain DS and PSP users rather than try to reach new users with the 3DS. Really, holding on to DS users and seizing PSP users will be no small achievement (200 million devices!), even if iOS ends up driving most of the growth in handheld gaming for the next few years.

There is a plausible threat posed by Apple, but I don't think Apple's going to realize it. 

The problem with the i___ brand is that it's games are crap.  And I don't mean that in the "Not Good Enough For the Hardcore" sense, I mean that in the "when was the last time anyone was excited to play an i____ game?"  They are, by design, intended to be small diversions for those periods when you're waiting in line or when you have literally nothing else to do.  Their only job is to beat Doing Nothing.

That does not pose a threat to Nintendo, whose business is composed of making games which people actually want to play, and not just because there is Nothing Better To Do.  If Apple doesn't bother to upstream its games (and remember, Apple has no game studios), it will never pose a danger to Nintendo.

The problem that Nintendo has is that a disruptor tends to start at the lowestend of the market, which is exactly where Apple is right now.  If Apple gets a mind to start challenging Nintendo's market, Nintendo will become the incumbent in a battle of disruption, which is not a particularly cheerful spot to be in.  At the moment, however, I haven't seen any signs that Apple cares enough about gaming to bother: it's core market remains elsewhere, it's already found a satisfactory incorporation of gaming into its core, and it hasn't bothered to try and get more compelling software on its system over the past several years.  Nintendo SHOULD still be worried (and I believe DSiWare shows that it is aware of the danger), but the Apple die-hards are definitely way ahead of themselves right now.

You're right, Apple doesn't care about games. But Apple does care about developers, because — contrary to what some might think — the software they make is a huge selling point for Apple's devices. And on any given day, 60-80% of the top 50 grossing apps on the App Store are games. Developers care about games, so Apple includes game-specific APIs and services (Game Center), upgrades hardware with gaming in mind (new gyroscope), and promotes gaming in ads and presentations.

But it is true that Nintendo's biggest weapon against Apple is that games are just a means to an end for Apple, rather than an end in itself. For now, at least, Apple is perfectly happy to allow developers to steer the course of their platform as a gaming device, so they aren't going to be able to focus on particular goals in the gaming market like Nintendo does.