Declining sales in Japan

[vivster]

Slimebeast said:

vivster said:

If quality on mobile is shit, why is the dedicated console market losing customers?

Great games will always be there, no matter the platform. The bad quality of mobile games is vastly exaggerated. Just because the stores don't have very much quality control and let every shite through doesn't mean there aren't good games among them. In fact there are quite a few great games on mobile.

Where do you think the people with money and talent will go after the console market is over? Do you think they will just stop making games?

The biggest problem of the mobile market is actually how big it is. It seems counter intuitive but with such a big market comes a lot of competition. It's not justifiable to put a lot of money in a mobile game unless you know it will succeed. And at the moment the only guarantee for that is to already have a big name like Nintendo.

The mobile market is not inherently worse, it's just a different platform that adjusted to the customer's needs. Currently there are not many great AAA experiences on mobile because people go to console for those. But as soon as consoles begin to die the demand on mobile for these experiences will increase and some people will gladly step in that gap and try to satisfy the demand.

So yeah, the reason why people perceive the mobile market as bad is because they are not there demanding quality games. Mobile is bad because people don't want it to be good, all the while clinging to outdated closed platforms like consoles.

On mobile you don't have good controls, so yes it's inherently shit for the majority of games.

But part of the traditional market don't mind bad controls, so for these people the convenience of mobile will be more important and it's these people that have migrated from dedicated consoles to mobile games. That's part of why mobile is increasing and consoles market has decreaset in recent years. But the majority of console gamers won't go over to mobile games.

And then of course you have all these casuals that had never touched a video game before, who were introduced to Candy Crush and Clash of the Clans and so on. These people are probably 90% of the mobile market now.

All in all, in my eyes the enormous growth of mobile doesn't mean that there is quality.

I never said there was quality because of the size of the market. But I do believe as the market grows and the dedicated market shrinks we will see more high quality mobile games as the demand for them increases. And the fact that there are today high quality games on mobile is not debatable. The problem is they're being disregarded because of the misconception that they don't exist.

Controls are not an issue either. It's simply a different platform that needs different control methods. Much like you can't really 1:1 port completely mouse and keyboard driven games on console. For the vast majority of dedicated handheld games you don't even need controller like peripherals because they can be easily used with touch controls. I mean what are the most popular handheld games? Turn based RPGs. Something you can easily do with touch. The more action oriented games are a bit tougher to do but not impossible. It's also not out of the question to simply use controller periphals that clip onto your phone or tablet. I mean people don't mind lugging around an extra device, so why not just the controller part?

Making good mobile games is not as much of an issue as the console conservatives like to think. The problem is that not enough of the audience is there yet because they rather stick to dedicated consoles because that's where most of their games are.

It's a catch 22. But I certainly will not stand by people who proclaim mobile as a platform to be inherently inferior to dedicated handhelds when it's not.