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UncleScrooge on 27 February 2012
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Squilliam said:
HappySqurriel said:
Squilliam said:
Dark_Lord_2008 said:
IPad and Iphone and other android phones have taken away valuable casual game market share. The new competition offer games for a fraction of the price of the consoles and portable game devices. Companies need to adapt to the market or introduce a game changer of their own.

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.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/77424/Is-it-Game-Over-for-Nintendo-DS-and-Sony-PSP

156M iOS devices sold in a single year will certainly have an impact on the gaming market. They will come from the low end and likely take their brain training/Nintendogs market out from under them. A large proportion of the Nintendo handheld game market is addressable with iOS devices, hence the problem of simplicity and gameplay overriding complexity.

Yes. If Nintendo let them do that they will. So far Nintendo hasn't even tried to cater to the people you talk about. They simply ignored them. Nintendo losing the mass market is not caused by smartphones it is caused by Nintendo not catering to the mass market anymore. What mass market games have they put out so far for 3DS? Nintendogs? Yeah at launch when there were no games, the system was completely overpriced and Nintendo focused on the 3D aspect of the console. Ironically Nintendogs is selling quite well right now. But there are no other games in that vein yet. Also the original DS was priced at $129 at this point in its life while the 3DS is $169 and the videogaming market is highly price sensitive.

Also low end customers are defined by Christensen as "customers who want the least features and are willing to pay the lowest price". Most smartphones are way more expensive than gaming handhelds (especially the contracts) and totally overshoot people who play games like Brain Training. Do you really think people in their 50s and 60s (the core market for Brain Training games) or parents buying gifts for their children will buy iPhones over a 3DS? The core market for smartphones are obviously people in their 20's to 30's who want to surf the web all day who can afford expensive products. Ironically... that's the Vita's audience.

Edit: And I'm really sorry you get quoted like mad right now. I just think it's worth pointing these things out.