Ninty shuns iphone - investors unhappy.

[Ail]

ioi said:

kowenicki said:

Wow, I think you are miles off there...

My wife is a very casual gamer, she had a DS that she bought and occasionaly played... now she has an iphone.  Shes happy with the iphone and using my ipad2, she would never biuy a dedicated handheld ever again.  There will be millions just like this.

Also, I agree with what you yourself say "3-4 years from now almost everyone will have a tablet by their side".  That, along with smartphones, will be enough for the vast majority of people when it comes to handheld gaming. 

YOUR iPad 2. Does she like playing the games enough to fork out £500 to buy one for herself at this stage?

In the short term, how many people spending £140 on a 3DS are going to consider a £400-500 iPad as an alternative?

Also, I think the consideration of a tablet as a handheld gaming machine is misguided. Of course the iPad is portable but I think it is more in competition with a PS4 than a PSV. I think most people using a tablet at the moment do so at home, not so much on the move. When the direct linkup to TV comes in the next year or two, tablets will be seen as a controller for the TV or a way of having your own version of what is showing on the TV - pretty much exactly what Nintendo are targetting with WiiU.

I think the issue here is considering tablets as being in competition with portable gaming machines rather than all gaming machines.

Yep I don't see tablets as competing with portables either.

Smartphones on the other hand.........

The issue for portable is do you continue trying to build your own portable machines of which at best you will send 100 million if it is very successfull or do you tap the increasingly growing smartphone market which is already much bigger than the portable market and probably will be a 500 million phones market in a few years...

The only issue there is that noone has yet demonstrated how successfull one can be selling apps for lets say 20-30$ instead of the current 1$ price point....

If you can successfully sell a rich gaming app for lets say 20$ , then inevitably the portable market will die as it just can not compete with the size of the smart phone market....

I mean selling 20 million Nintendogs at 50$ or selling 100 millions at 20$ ? The choice isn't hard......