UncleScrooge said:
Squilliam said:
UncleScrooge said:
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.
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Nintendo had the same problem as before with PS1 vs N64, I.E. whilst the value of their game development is much higher than any one single company and few approach their ability to rack out hit after hit, the number of developers out there outweigh them through sheer numbers. There are litterally thousands of projects for iOS ongoing and through luck or skill some will rise to the top.
Value has a lot of different dimensions, LOL if you've been on this site long enough you'd have seen all the threads saying the PS3 is better value than the Xbox 360 because of X, Y, Z. You have to consider with iOS many different factors such as:
- Price of games, $0-10 vs $20-35, the average person spends more on games than their games machine.
- Usefulness of other features, I.E. browser, movies, music.
- Price of hardware $subsidised, $169 iTouch or $499 iPad.
- Educational value for families, I.E get an iPad 2 because Johny won't have to lug 14lbs of textbooks anymore and can study easier.
- Is a game like Soduku worth $1 or $20? It isn't as if you get a better soduku if you pay 20* the price either...
In the end it is complicated and simple at the same time. There are many overlapping dimensions between the products, the enemy of the good in this case is good enough. It is far easier to justify owning a handheld gaming machine when you don't already own something with significant overlapping functionality whether it is a tablet, iTouch or smartphone you own. There is already data suggesting that parents are indeed buying their children iPhones, iTouches and iPads for various reasons and lets not miss one major feature which is that all games bought for one child are immediately and always available to the other so long as they both have iOS devices.
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I agree with everything you've said. I also agree this would have an effect on Nintendo's sales but again my main point was the bolded part in my post. As for the bolded part in your post: Why are you acting like the eShop didn't exist? Of course games on the eShop are still more expensive but not by law. Again if Nintendo actually cared about these customers they would push the eShop more agressively (like make it open to really small developers just as on iOS). And as for other features (internet and learning): Yeah, that's why consoles died in the 80's when computer adoption rates went up.
Here is my main point again: Nintendo doesn't try to appeal to the mass market anymore. They keep talking about core gamers, released their handheld at a high price and didn't put out mass market software. 5 years ago Nintendo's main mission was to grow the market and they succeeded with their handheld sales doubling and their console sales multiplying by a factor of 5. They grew at a speed that rivals Apple's current growth but they were not able to maintain it because they stopped focusing on growth.
Basically put a Nintendo releasing a "2DS" at $149 with a focus on mass market games like Brain Age, Super Mario, social games and e-learning would see way higher sales. Would smartphones eat into those sales? Certainly. Would Nintendo be in trouble right now? Probably not because there was still some potential for growth. I guess sales would've stayed roughly the same (add growth potential, substract smartphones).
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That argument simply doesn't make sense. You're acting as if a customer is Nintendo's for life and so long as they cater to them they will never find a competitors offering more compelling. So you'd have also argued that had Sony released a $299 PS3 which had the same values as the old PS2 that Nintendo would have never had much success because Sony would have therefore catered exactly to their old market as they had many times before? An incumbent is only ever self defeating? So all that talk of disruption and blue ocean was simply trying to make a good story out of Nintendo's success?
You also seem to be arguing that it is just iPhone vs DS, not iOS which has a range of devices just as Nintendo has a range of DS variants.
