Squilliam said:
Shhh! It's only disruption when Nintendo does it. |
The problem I have with this line of thinking is that there is absolutely no evidence that mobile phones have impacted Nintendo at all; after all the DS sold over 150 million units dwarfing the sales of all previous handheld systems, saw its biggest years well after the iPhone launched, and the 3DS has become the fastest selling dedicated videogame system ever.
Certainly, the iPhone has impacted the market but I think it has done something substantially different than what most analysts are claiming. What has done is converted many non-gamers and very lite-gamers into people who regularly play videogames, and made videogames a greater portion of the typical gamers life. In the process it has increased the market for more indepth gameplay experiences and increased the interest in more dedicated gaming machines. If the market shifts and people are more willing to spend $10 to $20 on iPhone games I would start to think that Nintendo is in trouble; until then, the damage done by smartphones has been greatly overstated.
