Soundwave said:
And here's one thing that might be a shocker ... a lot of kids simply prefer tablets. The screen is larger, touching/reaching for things is the most intuitive thing for most kids so a touch only interface makes perfect sense to them. A tablet not only plays games but can only have video (cartoons) too easily loaded onto it. And quite frankly kids want to use what mommy/daddy is using, they see mommy using it, they want to use it too. They don't want the 3DS or Vita. I always see a huge row of kids around the iPad/Apple section in many stores, whereas the 3DS/Vita demo units have no one around them. At an airport I see dozens of kids happily playing away on their parents iPhone/iPad/Android tablet, and maybe one family of kids who have a 3DS. When I go to family outings, I'm always a little suprised that kids as young as 3 are already able to play on their mom/dad's phone or something. This is happening people, hardcore gamers just have stuck their head in the sand and tried to deny it, but now the truth is becoming irrevoicable. Angry Birds only came out in December of 2009 btw and iOS app store only opened in the summer of 2009. Maybe its coincidence but the traditional handheld market has declined every year since 2009, hitting a new low this year despite Nintendo throwing several huge titles at the market (including the biggest gun, Pokemon X/Y) and offering a new, cheaper model in the 2DS. Nintendo's made mistakes sure, but fact is its pretty damn hard to compete with a platform that offers hundreds, even thousands of FREE games. And the "b, bu, but buttons!" arguement doesn't fly anymore, Nintendo opened Pandora's box with the whole touch/motion button free interfaces, the fact is iOS/Android simply took that idea to its natural extreme and offers a price for games that no one can argue with. Nintendo has thrown plenty of high quality games at the 3DS (Mario, Kirby, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Brain Training, Nintendogs, Luigi's Mansion, Fire Emblem, Mario Kart ... and honestly the 3DS versions of these games in many cases are better than the DS equivalents). |
The whole premise of your argument is false.
People buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo games and Nintendo games are not available on IOS/Android.
In past Nintendo had deal with machines like the one above which were cheap came with a lot of games for "free"
Did those machines prevent Nintendo consoles of selling well? No
Why? Nintendo software.
What is happening now is the same that happened with the GameCube and N64, Nintendo makes wrong hardware and software, consequently people stop buying their systems.
If New Super Mario 2 was launch tile and had the right production values the game would be much more successful and would move much more hardware. However Nintendo decided to create Mario 3D Land.
Notice that games like the new Pokémon and Animal Crossing not only sold well, but helped to move hardware as well. Why? Because Nintendo put a lot of effort into them unlike Nintendogs and NSM2.
If we look at the 3DS, compared to the DS, it is much more expensive to develop for it. This means that Nintendo cannot keep releasing games for it like they did with the DS (third parties cannot too). Less software means less hardware sold, especially because Nintendo did not increase the number of employees to be able to keep producing games as fast as they were in past. So even if a couple of games like Pokémon and AC can move hardware Nintendo cannot keep the momentum of the console due the lack of games.
The moment Nintendo realizes that they need to go back to the NES/Wii/GB/DS philosophy their will see their sales increasing again. They also need to realize that they need to increase the size and the number of their teams ASAP (hope that new building they made was for this reason).
When you use the samples of the stores. I can contradict you because every single cousins I have love their Wii's and DS's and think that tablets/smartphones games are crap. They love Mario, Kirby, Just Dance, Smash Bross, Mario Kart, etc. What those games have in common? They are not available on the iOS/Android. The funny thing this that both samples (yours and mine) are pointless, if you had studied statistics you would know that and not would use it on a discussion. You can "prove" wherever you want by using "samples" you see on your daily life.
Oddly, when you talk about the prince of 3DS and the price of its games you are essentially agreeing with me when I complained that both are above what they were supposed to be.
Angry Birds was released during the best DS moment of the year for the console, and, despite becoming a instant social phenomenon, it had no impact at all on the DS sales. Before AB many other games were released for smartphones, none of them prevented the DS of selling well.
There is a reason I talk about interface. It is because I've studied a lot about how to make games when I was at the college. Furthermore, my girlfriend (which is a designer) agrees with me about the 3DS hardware been full of pointless features (She has 2 DS's and 3DS). Notice that while you talk about buttons and screens, I talk about interface. This shows the difference in the level of abstraction I'm talking about. So when I say that the 3DS has usability issues it is because I know exactly what I am talk about, after all I've spent years of my life studding and coding games.
If I were a parent the last thing I would give to my sons would be a tablet. Tablets are expensive, games are horrible and their screens are easy to break. I would rather buy a Wii or DSi with a 2D Mario game which is much more cheap and almost industructible.
