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Squilliam on 31 January 2011
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RolStoppable said:
Rainbird said:

Yeah, marketshare was basically the measure I was using. And even if Nintendo make a killing from the 3DS, I doubt they'll be happy to lose marketshare, and especially to strategies revolving around smartphones, since it may mean that Nintendo's own strategy is becoming obsolete.

And I agree about the games, but I think there will be sort of a duality to it. Despite the rampant piracy, the PSP still manages to have some high selling games, so I don't think the big games are going anywhere, there's just going to be a more clear distinction of what makes a $50 game and a $5 game. Some games that fit in the big price range earlier probably won't anymore because they're too reminiscent of the small games. But you'll still have the big sellers that do well.

I don't think Nintendo would be worried too much, if gaming on other devices grows while their own business remains healthy as well. A good and recent example would be Nintendo losing about 30 % of the handheld gaming marketshare from the GBA generation to the DS generation, but absolutely everyone (including Nintendo) would say that the DS was still a bigger success than the GBA.

Basically, growth of other sectors is only worrisome, if it comes at the expense of Nintendo.

If you consider them as a player in the overall handheld game market, if the market size was say 100 and they controlled 80 points of that market with the GBA they had a dominant share of a reasonable size market. If that market grows to 300 points and they only control 180 they've seen massive growth but the rest of the market has seen even greater growth. Arguably that growth counts against share they could have had in a larger market even though their absolute profit/unit sales numbers are still increasing. Since most of the sales of the PSP and DS are now legacy sales we won't know how the new competition from handhelds has effected their entire userbase until it comes time for them to ask them to migrate to a new platform.



Tease.