| mrstickball said: Again, I'm speaking about SM64 from the point of view of the actual market when the game came out, not revisionist history to fit in with Sunshine and SMG 1 &2 and the 2D revival. If you were around the Nintendo market in the mid 90s at and prior to when SM64 came out, you'd know that SM64 was pitched as the sequel, not a spinoff or anything else. If anything, I think its that Nintendo was forced to revise its model by offering NSMB, then the rest is history in terms of sales. That isn't to argue that NSMB isn't the true sequel to the 2D titles (it is), but at the time, it was pitched as the successor. It can be proven, given that Nintendo didn't offer the 2D versions for quite some time, as the 3D titles were seen as the actual IP. My question to you is: What constitutes a "real" handheld experience? Is it just physical buttons or a controller? If so, why did Nintendo do away with a regular controller with the Wii? I would argue that the experience can conform to whatever the hardware has to offer. We shape our experiences around what is offered - controller, joystick, keyboard/mouse, Wiimote, Kinect sensor, Move, ect. So then, what is the experience? Title budget? I think we're going to see some significant AAA software in the next 1-2 years from smartphones, which will really show what is possible in the market place. As for the demographics of the handheld and the smartphone, I believe that the smartphone market is too new and emerging to clearly define them as being totally separate. Smartphones are the blue ocean of consumer electronic devices. Last year, they made up about 20% of all mobile handset sales worldwide. This year, it may be 30-40%. Eventually, they will have the entire market place, and it will be split up between 3-4 major OS players. Given the sales data of iOS, when it happens, those markets will be larger than the 3DS market by notable margins. We can say what we want, but if Smartphones made $1 billion USD on just 20% of the market in 2010, then we know there is at least $5 billion worth of gaming software to be had for smartphones. If that is the case (and that is probably a low-end scenario, because the amount of phones sold to consumers is still increasing in emerging markets), then why wouldn't we see developers go after the $5 billion market with the major titles instead of the $3-4 billion handheld market? Maybe Capcom won't put the next Street Fighter on smartphones exclusively, but you can be very well sure your going to be buying the same Street Fighter on your phone for $19.99 as you would on your 3DS at $39.99. At that point, consumers are going to see a major value in the phone, and buy them as gaming devices. |
Lol... first off yes, I was around prior to Super Mario 64... I'm 36 and I've been gaming since I was 5. I don't think the point Rol was making was whether or not SM64 was officially billed as a sequel so much as the fact that Nintendo chose to ignore the 2D property on these consoles; hence their short-sightedness in what releasing a side-scrolling Mario would have done for them.
You know very well what I meant by "real" game experiences. The fact is that the vast majority of games on smart phones are nowhere near what you can find on the DS, PSP or home consoles (yes, Wii included). A lack of tactile buttons is a part of it (just as X360 wouldn't drop their controller and go strictly Kinect-only), but it's not to say that many couldn't exist on phones; of course they could. But that's my point: The smart phone market is largely a different demographic. Yes, phones are everywhere and everyone has access to them. So why are Nintendo's games still selling record breaking numbers on a handheld game device with a massively smaller installed base?
Finally, I agree that pricing on phones in comparison to a retail copy on a handheld has its advantages. But then I completely disagree with your statement about people buying them strictly as game devices. Again, there will always be people who want a dedicated game experience on the go, with an actual controller-like input device, something a compact smart phone can't compete with without added accessories. And at that point, you might as well carry around two devices. Not to mention that kids are far more likely to receive a game system than an expensive smart phone (keep in mind how much they would cost without the phone plan).
