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potato_hamster on 29 January 2016
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Conina said:
potato_hamster said:

Exactly, so as I was saying. Nintendo has said it would be easier to port games, making it easier for devlopers to put games on both platforms. That's all they've said. Try getting an iPad exclusive game to run on your iPhone. It isn't happening. It has to be ported. Sure it's easier to port the game to iPhone than android, but still there's extra work that has to be done, and at the end of the day, buying the iPad version and the iPhone version can and often is two seperate purchases.

No, iPhone games don't have to be ported to iPad and iPad games don't have to be ported to iPhone. There are also no ports necessary between the different iPhone-models or iPad-models. They all use the same code and the only extra work for the game designers are GUI-adjustments to the different screen sizes.

There are some iPad-exclusive games, but these are strategic decisions. The developer/publisher decides, which iPad, iPhone and iPod touch models are compatible and which are not. For example, if Daedalic decides that the hotspots of their point&click adventures (Deponia, Edna & Harvey, The Whispered World,...) get too small on an 4'' - 5'' display. Sure, they could release it for iPhone anyway, but if the controls get too fiddly, many buyers are pissed and will vote these games down.

There are still a few games in the AppStore with an iPhone and an iPad versions, but these are mostly relics of 2010/2011. Most iOS-apps of the last years are universal apps.

The same goes for Android games, most of them run on Android phones and tablets, only a few are tablet-only versions.

The same goes for PC games on notebooks: some demanding PC games won't work on notebooks, but the rest that does needs no port from desktop to notebook.

Nintendo could do the same thing: flag a few demanding games for NX-home-console only and flag a few games for NX-handheld only... but keep the majority of games compatible to both form factors.

You're patently wrong. There are plenty of iPad only games out there. Plenty. FTL is a prime example. Not only does it not run on iPhone but it doesn't run on an iPad 1. It came out late 2014. Sure, there are iPhone-only apps that can play in "compatibility mode" on the iPad, but it literally just takes the same video out and stretches it, and it looks like crap, kinda like hooking a PSP up to your TV, something I'm sure Nintendo has no interest in. Aside from that, not all games made for the iPhone work across all models, or all iPad games work across all iPad models. I just gave one example. There's plenty more.

Again, my main point is that when Nintendo says "we want making our games to be more like making an iOS game" they're not saying "we want to make it so developers make one game that works across multiple devices". People are reading between the lines here, and claiming Nintendo is saying things they clearly and obviously are not.