The Switch is not another Wii U!

[bdbdbd]

bonzobanana said:

bdbdbd said:

But the problem in the mobile games market is bad games. Because of the free games it's hard to compete against, the microtransaction model is taken to an extreme where the model is breaking the games. Besides, any freemium game there is, is going to quickly cost you way more than any of the industry AAA games bought day 1.

It is the PS4/X1 model that's actually on the line of tablets and smarthones. 

I think the Nintendo model was damaged first by mobile devices because of the more casual and lower performance level of Nintendo games but I guess its possible PS4/X1/PC games are vulnerable to mobile devices too in the long run as their games gradually erode the existence of smaller games on the major formats. I still believe there will be a market for ambitious games on powerful hardware but don't know how big a market that is. I can see it supporting multiple formats for sometime though. To create AI and photorealistic graphics still needs huge upgrades in performance so plenty of technology upgrades to come.

You know, you're describing the situation pretty much how it is, but your take on casual games isn't quite right, but let's get on to that after a minute.

The market for the ambitious games on powerful hardware is going to PC. This is what Sony said why they made PS4 Pro. This is also what happened with the microcomputers and multimedia players in the 90's, that lost their high end games to PC and low end games to consoles. Sony is closing studios, that would make absolutely no sense because that way PS4 could have more exclusives and have an edge over PC - unless Sony intends to make it's ecosystem more profitable (for third parties).

Because the mid-tier goes out first, all you have to do is to look what happened to Wii U and Vita: high end games were on PC/PS4/X1, and low end games were on mobile and 3DS. Wii U and Vita had potential, but they were trying to compete on the same values with the AAA industry games on more powerful systems.

As the casual games are just cash-ins on all the systems, it really doesn't matter which device you're playing them on - and I bet mobile platforms will continue being popular in this segment - I expect these games going to mobile, making the PS4 situation even worse (maybe not 4, but if 5 is on the same trajectory, it may be dead on arrival, like the Amiga CD32), while it's not helping at all the tablets and smartphones share the same multimedia functionalities with the multimedia games consoles.

Switch is positioned in the downmarket and it's obviously sidestepping from the multimedia race, but because of the architecture, it should be fairly easy to port popular mobile games on Switch.

Mnementh said:

bdbdbd said:

Average gamer might be in their thirties if you don't count in kids. However, with all the devices out there, everyone who plays any screen tap game every now and then, can be considered as gamer. The oldschool gamer isn't the core market. Yes, I may sometimes try out a game on my (work) tablet, but to actually play the shitty games for extensive time... Oh, no.

Try Ingress.

Nah. I rather walk with my kids when they play Pokemon Go.