Nintendo may exit handhelds in 10 years due to disruption

[Soleron]

noname2200 said:

Soleron said:

I don't believe mobile phone games will move upmarket. The mobile devlopers don't know how to make a game that appeals to the handheld buyer, nor are they willing to fund games that take over a year to develop. They can't yet get mass appeal like Nintendo's first party games can.

But that's how disruption works: they start out with a crappy product that only sells because there's no alternative, and then improve the quality of their product until it rivals/surpasses the incumbent.  Here, cell phone games ARE by and large utter crap (if they were on the Wii or DS, the enthusiast press would by and large turn their nose up at them), but that's okay because everyone has a cell phone but few people want to lug around a second, bulky device to play games.  Ergo, the crap game sells!

But as time goes on, and more and more crap games come out, someone somewhere is going to try to compete for the market's dollars by coming out with a cell phone game that isn't utter crap.  It may only be "okay," but we all know it doesn't take much to rise to the top of the crap pile that is cell phone gaming.  And if that person succeeds, he will inspire others to step their game up accordingly: many developers will be left behind, but others will rise to the challenge, and now there will be other cell phone games that are "okay."  And thus the cycle will continue to feed on itself.

This process is pretty much inevitable, and Nintendo knows it (hence DSiWare and, most importantly, Street Pass).  There are, of course, a myriad of ways to combat the disruptor.  Let's see if Nintendo finds one of them.

I don't believe there will be a single developer capable of creating the 'average' game you are talking about. There are already some fun games for phones (and PC Flash games) but they haven't shown the ability to:

- Get the selling price above $10-15
- Be the reason people buy the hardware
- Get enough recognition for people to follow their releases and buy games in a franchise
- Actually reduce sales of the next market tier up. Currently they are displacing Flash games and newspaper puzzles

Nintendo has another weapon as well, one that has existed for ages. Why did PC not kill consoles? It was ubiquitous and powerful enough to play console games. It's because developers could target specific hardware with a guaranteed control scheme (i.e. buttons) and specs. Phones are too diverse to overcome that, except the iPhone which is one reason it has done so well. But the interface (touch screen) is poorly suited to games more upmarket than its current ones.