How can Nintendo go on the offensive against Apple?

[Phoeniks.Wright]

Rainbird said:

Phoeniks.Wright said:

This whole thing works under the assumption that smartphones and handheld game consoles compete with each other directly. They don't. Smartphones are handheld computers. handheld game consoles are portable videogame consoles. Now, PC's don't compete directly with game consoles.  This was shown with the NES and the Wii more recently. So if we extend that to the handheld space, it's very clear that smartphones and handhelds don't compete with each other, so apple selling that much more phones and tablets has no effect on the DS, 3DS, PSP or Vita. 3DS selling like crap was/will be? entirely Nintendo's own fault.

I don't hope you think that the two markets are equivalent and can be compared directly, because that's as bad an assumption as saying the two do compete directly.

Games like Brain Training were huge successes on the DS, but smartphones and tablets might actually be more well suited for such games than the 3DS. Direct competition or not, there is ample opportunity for smartphones to steal marketshare from dedicated handhelds.

@underlined: Actually, I pretty much can. It's easy, why do you buy a PC? Most people do it for stuff like internet access and whatnot. Why do you buy a smartphone? To make calls but also for the PC-like functionalities, which regular phones don't have. In both cases, gaming is a secondary function. Now, why do you buy a games console? Most people will buy it for games. Here gaming is the primary function. The only difference then between the two is wether they're portable or not, but that's it. So maybe there is a tiny amount of competition between the two, but it's so small it's insignificant, they exist in largely seperate markets.

@bolded: Using brain training as an example, true it isn't suited for the 3DS, but neither is it for smartphones and tablets. Do you really see older people buying smartphones or tablets? It is much easier to just go into a store, buy a DS with the game, and go back home and fire it up, unlike buying an expensive phone, browsing through the thousands of apps, and downloading it.

And really, if we're going to lump smartphones and handhelds in the same market share pie charts, why don't we add regular phones as well? Those could play games, and I'm pretty sure you'd see declining marketshare for handhelds since quite some time, clearly showing how the DS was doing terribly ever since it came out. /sarcasm