What do you want from the next Nintendo Handheld?

[DanneSandin]

RolStoppable said:

DanneSandin said:

While I agree that the 3D in the 3DS can be seen, and has been seen, as a fad and somethi. unwanted, Im not sure that alone can explain the decline for the entire handheld market. The Vita was poorly handled as well, but we now have two systems that is selling far worse than their predecessors, and Im having a hard time believing it all comes down to overpricing and the use of 3D.

If handheld became increasingly niche, less 3rd parties will develop for it leading it to become even more niche. It will become a vicious cycle. That may still happen if 3rd parties feel like theres a much bigger audience on smartphones (which there is).

I wouldnt call the eShop an innovation. Sure, its new for Nintendo, but Apples had Appstore for quite a while, and android has its thing and xbox a d ps as well. Where is the innovation? Sure, games on the eShop might rival some of the mobile games price points, but there are hundreds of free games for mobile, AND you dont have to get a separate piece of hardware to play them. THATS what ha dhelds is going up against.

and I cant argue over your last point. Youre probably right, and its something nintendo should do the next time around. Although, I do wonder, if the market is in fact skrinking, that means less hh games are being sold all the while when dev costs are rising... Im not too sure Nintendo actually can afford to drop the pricing to $20-30

Nintendo's software strategy obviously played a part in the decline as well. There is less variety in the visible 3DS library and there was no intent to expand the audience by providing new IPs. Based on that alone, growth over the DS was only possible, if third parties did the trick by attracting audiences that the DS couldn't get a hold of. The Vita had no audience to sell to in America, because the PSP software market had already collapsed before the rise of smartphones. That should have made it clear to Sony that the kind of games they brought to the market were niche material while the hardware sales of the PSP were slowly eroding once phones did all the multimedia functions better.

Where smartphones actually hurted the handhelds in the gaming department is the desire of third parties to make the easy money. Games weren't shifted to mobile because they weren't selling on handhelds anymore, but simply because they were believed to be much more successful on mobile. Software sales for individual third party titles are as strong as ever on handhelds, but a good chunk of games just went missing. Not because people want to game on smartphones, but because the games simply weren't made for handhelds anymore. Ironically, the companies who rushed to mobile are worse off than those who stuck with handhelds, so I am not too worried about a further decrease in handheld game development.

The innovation is in how the eShop is set up. In the most recent investors briefing Iwata talked about a possible reward program where users get discounts based on the money they spent, i.e. someone who spent hundreds of dollars can expect bigger discounts on individual games than someone who just recently started. This would still leave the hurdle of getting people to buy the hardware in the first place, but the chances to keep people in the pool of active users would increase with such a loyalty program. Nintendo has to create games that people feel are worth paying for in order to sell their hardware. This has already been the case before there were free games on smartphones; while it may be more difficult to convince people now, it's far from impossible, especially with the questionable quality control and microtransaction shenanigans on iOS and Android. If free goes bad or lacks desirable content, paying becomes an attractive alternative.

As for development costs, that's why Nintendo shouldn't go much further than 3DS-level when it comes to processing power. The market has clearly signaled that high production values are not in demand, so why go there, if you don't have to? Established dev tools reduce development time and/or manpower, so reducing the prices of software isn't an impossibility. The reduction in profit margin per unit may also be offset by the volume of sales.

While an interesting read, why you write so loooong?! These "smart"phones are surprisingly stupid when quoting on vgc...

so, in short, you dont believe the portable market are in any immidiate danger? Most can and will be recrified next gen if done correctly? I would actually love to hear how you would handle nintendos next handheld.

I do agree that the "loyalty" program for the eShop is a great idea, and something nintendo should implement sooner rather than later. But that alone wont attract much more gamers/players. Its a great idea for those who already own a handheld, but I dont see it attracting a lot of first timers.

Playing on smartphones is so much easier, not because the games are better in any way, but because you already own a phone and mobile games are simply distractions for when you have 5 minutes over. I love SM3DL, but its not just a matter of pick up and play; theres a hell of a lot of button pushing before you actually boot up the gameplay, and youre more invested in it than you would be in like candy crush or ninja fruit.