I've Come Around On The Nintendo Smartphone Idea -- Do It Nintendo.

[Soundwave]

Captain_Yuri said:

Soundwave said:

I've kinda thought about that too ... I think it could still look like a sleek/regular smartphone without having to have like 50 buttons. 

The real thing that limits smartphone games from being really playable is the lack of a direction input, touchscreens are ok for touch buttons, but touch joysticks/dpads almost always suck. 

1) So ok, lets take that home button that every phone has and let it pop up or be a joystick/trackball. There's one big problem down. 

2) But now you need some buttons, well you could have L/R style buttons on one side of the unit. Functionally even this (joystick + two physical buttons + touch commands) is now enough to play a great number of games. You could have a perfectly playable Mario or Zelda or Mario Kart game now. You could still maybe add a discreet B/A buttons next to the phone speaker on the other side of the joystick too. 

3) For people who want more control options you could sell a controller that attaches onto the phone. Or they could do the whole slider phone thing that the Xperia Play did I guess. 

Honestly, what you are describing isn't a phone or a game experience that I would ever want. Most games, including the ones on android/iOS use quite a few on screen buttons if they are "serious mobile games." Replacing the home button with a joystick/trackball will make the phone start to look weird and ugly. L+R could work but again, A+B button will make the phone look ugly. We legit need 2 joysticks, 4 physical buttons + L+R in 2017 at a minimum if anyone is gonna take this thing seriously as a gaming device.

Hence why they should make it a preimum looking smartphone with front facing speakers and all that jazz but include a case with it that interfaces with the phone when connected that acts like a controller. This way, it will be able to support and play all games that are both made for it and the ones from the Play store while making it feel like a phone when the case is off. You want to play a game? Bam put on the case. You want to use it as a phone and not make it look like an awkward phone? Take the case off!

Here's an iPhone patent with a pop up joystick ... does it really make the phone look that different?

L/R buttons would be discreet, that's not a problem. 

Things like dual analog and all that .... could be offered via a seperate controller. Most people don't need that. Most Nintendo IP would be perfectly playable with a physical d-pad + 2 physical buttons + on-screen buttons. You could make a playable Mario game (2D or 3D), playable 3D Zelda even, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, F-Zero ... I mean pretty much any and everything if you really wanted to. It would be massively more usable than just touchscreen alone. 

Most people are not interested in playing something like Call of Duty on the road anyway.