Kaboom: Nvidia Is Making Its Own Gaming System

[Squilliam]

Spazzy_D said:

Squilliam said:

Well it beats me sorry as to the other player.

I think smartphones/tablets are also threats to Nintendo's home console market. They responded to the threat of smartphones essentially by eating Sony's market and moving towards the core gamer with their latest handheld because a lot of the DS owners will probably be starting to play games on things like the iPad given the same kind of simple gameplay is easy to implement on them whereas the more complicated 3D games are much safer for now. I think the Wuu's tablet is an attempt to embrace the same kinds of games as the tablets in order to stave off some of the encrouchment.

The nVidia/Valve thing is an interesting development especially given how nVidia has been developing cloud gaming infrastructure. On the one hand you've got something for the hardcore gamer, I.E. the guy who spends $500+ on games / heaps on hardware whom you could say are the best customers so whilst they may be few their value is immense. On the other hand you've got the option of very low entry cost into gaming and streaming from their services and direct competition for customers from a Valve console so you've got competition for both ends of the market.

Interesting anecdote related to the 3DS now catering to a "core" audience, I mentioned in another thread that I had 16 street pass "hits" on my 3DS at Universal Studios last weekend.  The thing about it is, I believe 14 of them were teens or adults (based on the looks of the Mii and there welcome text being something I would expect from someone older), with only 2 "obviously" being children.  Now, this might just be because kids are less likely to set up the Street Pass functionality, but I did also see a lot of small children with Android Tablets (and with original DS consoles.)

Well the sales of the 3DS support this as well.

http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/42/nintendo-3ds/

http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/1/nintendo-ds/

The 3DS seems to sell more 'core' in many ways it seems to have picked up a few of the PSP games like Monster Hunter and a few of the casual games don't seem to be selling like the DS. I guess your anecdote also supports the kind of sales these games are getting. The concept of 'free' or 'cheap' games is extremely casual friendly and piracy was one of the reasons why the Playstation did so well due to this effect so I suppose cheap games from iTunes counts along the same lines.