| spemanig said:
If Sony release an Uncharted game on the app store, with the explicite purpose of funneling people to buy PS4, that game would fail. Uncharted, as a brand, isn't relavant enough. Maybe to gamers it is, but not to the mainstream. Mario can do that. Pikachu can do that. Hell, I bet even Mii's can do that now. What I'm talking about skips all the catching up Nintendo clearly has to do. None of that is relevant to this topic. Nintendo "not having achievements" has literally nothing to do with this. Nintendo being behind isn't new. I'm not even saying that making a Nintendo app is new. But the coaxing people into a network through what introduces itself as a simple mobile fad, is new. At least for the big three. It's not something Sony has done successfully, and it's not something that Microsoft has done successfully. Until this DeNA partnership, it wasn't something I thought Nintendo could do successfully. But DeNA is what makes the difference. Whatever you say about Gree, it's a platform made with the sole purpose of uniformly connecting players through their games. That's what DeNA is known for. That's their strongest asset. Nintendo doesn't want DeNA's mobile game expertise as much as they want their Mobage expertise. There's no denying that. Whatever the format, the NN app will be the main hub. My point isn't that Nintendo is trying to circumvent Apple's 30% cut. My point is that Nintendo wants to maintain control of the identity of these games. These aren't "games on the app store;" these are Nintendo games. With this app, the games maintain that identity, even on a foreign marketplace like the app store or Google play. This is not a move like when Sega made Sonic Rush. In the eyes of the consumer, that's "just a Sonic game on the app store." I have GTA San Andreas on my phone, and I feel absolutely no connection to Rockstar through it. Nintendo doesn't want that. That's why this platform matters. Perhaps buying Nintendo games will be more like downloading the Facebook Chat app. Whatever form it takes, there will be a very real, tangable, immediate, and relevant connection between your game and your account. When most people downloaded the Facebook IM app, it was done through the Facebook app. It doesn't matter if you were technically brought to the app store. The connection has been made already, and you will be hardily challenged to find someone with the latter app that doesn't also have the former. And you also wouldn't be hard pressed to find people who regularly launch their IM app directly from their main Facebook app. Gree proves that, in some shape, this app can exist merrily on iOS. Mobage can exist on the app store. A Nintendo marketplace, whether you want to call it that or not, can exist on the app store. There are no issues with Apple. Like Nintendo said, the primary focus is not to make money, it's to build an install base. |
You suffer the same issue of most Nintendo fans and it's something Nintendo itself suffers: the belief that their IPs are some magical things that can do anything. All of them aren't saving the Wii U. All of them won't avoid the fall of portables.
Making people create a NNID won't make them buy Wii U or 3DS. Just like people create a new account for WWF, they can do it for any console.
You are implying that an app with some games will create a magical connection between people and Nintendo. If games like GTA San Andreas didn't do it on mobile, nobody will. It's a companion device. Want people to buy your gaming device? You don't have to buy a mobile gaming company and make apps for that. Just create something people want and advertise it. That's what Sony did with the PS4. The mobile app is a companion an extra feature. The strenght of their aproach is at the core of the machine: the gaming aspect.
Creating an app with links to other game on the App Store isn't "creating a platform". You aren't understanding the concept of platform. Just creating an unified ID isn't creating a platform. This already exists, everywhere.
Their strategy is more straightforward: expand the handheld userbase to the mobile base. They will make money with mobile games, they won't attract games to their platform. Of course, some will make the jump, but that's a bonus. An unified login and cross-purchases is just the minimum requirement for this to work. That's possibility 1. Possibility 2 is that they will just make spinoff of their IPs on mobile to get some advertising, like Sony did. This of course, would fail in the same way. They can't go half way. Or they release a mobile full Pokemon or 2D Mario game or they will end with some random re-skin of a endless runner that won't change a thing.
