How can Nintendo go on the offensive against Apple?

[Joelcool7]

Rainbird said:

Joelcool7 said:

But the general consensus is , Sony is no longer the enemy Nintendo has to worry about.

I think this is a dangerous mentality. Nintendo seemingly ignored the PSP when they built the 3DS (the PSP was constantly bashed for not having a second analogue stick), and are now paying the price. The Vita is getting a lot of attention from developers, and Nintendo should not be satisfied simply by having Monster Hunter 4. Lots of people play MH on their PSPs, and MH3rd is coming to the Vita.

Nintendo should not ignore Sony in this.

Joelcool7 said:

So the question is without Nintendo exiting the gaming exclusive market how do they protect themselves from Apple let alone go on the offensive?

They need a very unique device. I personally don't think the 3DS is the right answer, because it's too much like the DSi, the Vita and many of the smartphones we have available.

The iPhone can play a lot of games the 3DS can, even if it won't be quite as good a fit for it as it would for the 3DS. Combined with Nintendo's lack of acknowledgement of  99 cent games as a "valid" form of games, the 3DS really isn't in a great shape to hold the iPhone at bay.

Nintendo would need hardware that is radically different from current portable devices if they want to trump the iPhone. The question is of course if they even need that. They can still be succesful based on selling their own IPs, even if the success won't be at the level of the DS. 

Well while Sony should definitely not be ignored because they still have the potential to steal market share. As a threat to Nintendo's handheld existence they are no longer the biggest threat. In fact Sony even recently acknowledged that a failure of 3DS would hurt Sony's Vita and the handheld industries ability to survive. I share that sentiment as well as the idea that a Vita failure would severely damage Nintendo's handheld capabilities as well. The two competitors need each other to survive its in their best interest that each other remain around.

As for MH3 coming to Vita, your a writer here so I'm guessing you must have some knowledge the general public does not. Because I have not heard anything official from Capcom or Sony to indicate MH3 is coming to Vita in any shape or form. The only indication I have heard of is that a retailer leaked an inventory list which slates MonsterHunter3 for Vita. As far as I know the Monster Hunter Portable 3rd came out for PSP and came to PS3, but I have yet to see any official confirmation that it or MH3 is coming to Vita. So a source of that info would be enlightenning. Unless you are refering to the fact that Vita can download MHP:3rd through backwards compatability.

I agree currently 3DS is in no position to hold off Apple. As for those saying Nintendo doesn't need to go on the offensive or worry about Apple because there will always be a market for Nintendo's software. Well look at GameCube look how great that did with just Nintendo's software, yes it was profitable but Nintendo was loosing share contantly with every new console. Nintendo's software was not able to keep Nintendo's home consoles from being in a steady decline in sales ever since the NES. If Nintendo's handheld division began to steadily decline in user base every generation, Nintendo would be boned.

Nintendo cannot afford to decline drastically. Lets look at Nintendo's first party software support at best Nintendo has about 30+ million loyal consumers judging by the fact that despite having the highest selling hardware on the market Nintendo titles themselves don't sell any better then 26-million.

So say Nintendo looses all of those gamers buying games other then Nintendo's first party titles. Nintendo will be down to at best 40-million in hardware sales. Well that loss will mean less games for Nintendo's handhelds and if Nintendo's home division isn't making a killing it will mean all gains will be spread between handheld and home platforms.

With Nintendo incapable of releasing as many first party titles the hardware sales will continue to decline each generation. Apple will slowly eat up market share and so will Android. Now Nintendo has 13.5 billion in the bank so they could sustain steady losses for a very long time. But would they?

Of course my numbers are based on speculation based around VGChartz data. But Nintendo loosing profit steadily from smart phones is definitely not going to be good. If Nintendo is incapable of fighting back then all they can do is wait until Smart Phones kill them, which is inevitable if they cannot do anything to increase sales of hardware.

Nintendo needs to be able to fight back, the question is how can a dedicated video game handheld do anything to a smart phone. Also the idea that people have always needed phones and Nintendo has always survived so they are no threat now. Well phones back in 2004 when DS launched were incapable of playing games that DS had. In fact smart phones have only become capable of playing Nintendo's software within the past two to three years. As phones become more and more powerful and can play better and better games Nintendo will no doubt loose market share.

The industry is changing and smart phones like it or not are a huge threat to Nintendo's handheld dominance or even their long term survival!