http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/03/23/report-iphone-games-poaching-revenue-sony-nintendo

Here is an article that makes the exact point that this thread is based around. The future of mobile gaming is not Nintendo and Sony, but Apple and maybe Android (if they can solve the hardware incompatibility issues long term so one game can run on all current android phones).

It shows how Apple gaming revenue marketshare has gone from 5% in 2008 to 19% in 2009, or about a 4 fold increase. at the same time the PSP went from 20% to 11% 08-09 (so Apple now has the same marketshare as the PSP at it's peak) with the DS falling from 75% to 70%.

This is revenue, which makes it especially significant since iphone and ipod games range from free to under 10 bucks while DS games cost as much as 40 dollars (or 40x most of the most successful iphone games which are often 99 cents). In terms of games sold it is almost certain that the number of ipod/iphone titles sold dwarf the number of DS titles sold.

Given that Apple sold over 8 million iphones and 10 million ipods (most of which were ipod touches) in just the last quarter (a non holiday quarter at that) that makes it quite likely that Nintendo dropping below 50% of the marketshare in portable gaming revenue is months not years off.

Also, Millenium, you really have no idea what you're talking about quite frankly. There are amazing games on the iphone and ipad. They have the ENTIRE Dragons lair game ported to the platform and it looks amazing, they have the entire chinatown wars DS game but for 9 dollars instead of 29. They have the entire civilization revolutions game for the ipad which has every last feature present in the PS3 and 360 version and then a few extra ones.

Need for Speed, mirrors edge, NOVA and many more games have better graphics then anything on the DS platform, and I would content in some cases better gameplay too.

This trend away from dedicated platforms will only accelerate as more and more people get smartphones. I mean if the choice is a horrid blackjack game on your crappy Sanyo phone or the DS, people will bring the DS with them. If the choice is chinatown wars on the DS or chinatown wars on the iphone why in the world would people pay 3x more for the DS version, lug around an extra device which is vastly bigger and much heavier then the iphone (despite being markedly less powerful)?

I used to bring my DS and/or PSP with me on car trips, now I haven't turned either on in over a year (the DS in at least 2).

Within 5 years Nintendo will either be a major software maker for other peoples devices or a niche player in the mobile market if they stubbornly cling to their hardware control model. 3D, which remains a stupid gimmick, will not save them from the future.

They made less profit in the entirety of 2009 (and its going down) then Apple made in just january to march of this year (a profit thats up nearly 100% year over year). The trend of the competition getting bigger and more successful and Nintendo getting smaller will only accelerate unless Nintendo accepts the device convergence and digital download paradigm in mobile.

Lol at your inability to correctly interpet the data on that link, if you had checked the numbers in terms of absolutes and not relatives, Nintendo's profit increased from one year to the other, if the percentage fell down it's because Apple has created a new portion of the gaming market, not because it stole from Nintendo

@ buzzard relative DOES matter. Momentum DOES matter since it shows the future rather then just the past.

Nintendo's profit was actually lower in 09 then 08 if you look at the data. Additionally the sales of the DS and Wii have clearly leveled off and are going down year over year. The same is true of software, especially for the DS.

The primary reason for this is almost certainly mobile phones as you can see in the immense growth of Apple in the mobile gaming space. Apple has more then 4 billion app downloads at a rate of about a billion every few months and accelerating. the DS has had less then 600 million sales of games total, the average user of an ipod or iphone downloads more apps in one or two months then the average DS buyer has bought over their entire ownership of the console.

Additionally Apple makes NO games and thus the thousands of games that have sold thousands to millions of copies are all from developers, many of them small indy developers. The Apple App store is in many ways the opposite of the Nintendo platforms in that it is a system of thousands of small developers making games (and money) instead of more or less just the Nintendo monolith having real success moving software. Nintendo has sold nearly 300 million out of the 600 million total games sold which leaves very little space for everyone else.

Also the point is that Nintendo is either stagnating or actually decreasing in sales depending on which numbers you look at while Apple has been experiencing double and even triple digit platform growth worldwide. There are already a large number of platform exclusive games that are iphone only and never make it to the PSP or DS, that will only increase as the base grows.

By the end of the year, at current growth rates, the ipod touch and iphone platforms will outnumber DS sales across all models combined. It wouldn't be surprising if by the end of 2011 total iphone+ipod touch+ipad sales weren't higher then all sales for both the DS and PSP combined over their 6 or 7 year lifetime.

The day of the dedicated handheld console system is over, the day of the mobile phone and mini computer (ipod touch) as the primary gaming platform is well underway whether big N realizes it or not.

well with this little handy Multi-platform Game engine, I think it's not going to be long before other's make  very robust type of Game Engine's also like this one for HandHeld's! and it's very reasonable in it's price!

Unity Technologies Unveils Third Generation of Its Powerful Development Platform

Unity 3.0 Adds Groundbreaking New Features and Support for Android, iPad and PlayStation® 3, Becoming the Engine with the Broadest Support on the Market

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - March 8, 2010

Unity for Android is the first non-Apple handset to be added to the Unity family allowing developers to reach new audiences on mobile devices. With these combined platforms, Unity developers will be in a position to reach the growing 75 million iPhone / iPod Touch devices as well as the 60,000 Android devices now shipping daily.

"The challenge and opportunity for developers today is ubiquity," said Richard Hilleman, Chief Creative Director at Electronic Arts during his keynote at Unite 2009. "People playing games today want their entertainment on demand and portable, so reaching them on multiple devices and offering experiences that fit their lifestyle is key."

For version 3.0, Unity Technologies has kept Unity, its entry level product, free for commercial use. Its premier product, Unity Pro, will retain its current price of $1500 per developer seat. Current Unity Pro owners will be able to upgrade to version 3.x for $750.

A final release date is planned for this Summer. Developers can gain first access to beta builds of version 3.0 prior to the final release by pre-ordering Unity Pro 3.0 from the Unity Website at www.unity3d.com. Pre-order customers will also get their Unity Pro 3.x licenses at a substantial discount: $1200 per seat for new licensees and $500 per seat for 2.x upgrades.

http://unity3d.com/company/news/unity-unveils-3rd-generation-platform-press.html

 @joeorc  too bad middleware is banned in the new iphone rules so those kinds of non apple dev kits that make it super easy to port to android are worthless.

  I would say thats a good move by Apple since it keeps people more locked to their platform and preserves the app advantage.  Plus most things made with middleware suck compared to natively developed apps.

no need to port since unity work's on android anyway.

an as for unity being locked out

maybe not in this case read this:

April 14 2010Unity and the iPhone OS 4.0, update

by David Helgason on Rants & Raves

Dear Unity developers,

I wanted to take a moment today to follow up on my blog post last Friday regarding the recent controversial changes in the the iPhone OS 4.0 beta ToS. The news about this change from Apple has drawn a lot of attention and stirred up very strong emotions in many developer communities, including ours. There’s also been a great deal of commentary about how these changes will be interpreted and applied by Apple and still more discussion about Apple’s intent with these changes. Unity learned of these changes with the rest of you just last Thursday and today, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about these changes being final and what we may need to do to comply.

We’re meeting with Apple next week to discuss the matter, and our engineers have been discussing possible technical solutions as well. Of course, we’ll provide you with immediate updates as soon as we have any new information.

Just in case the ToS changes do end up being a problem, we’re already working hard to find and implement solutions to maintain uninterrupted compliance with Apple’s ToS.

Though any uncertainly about Unity’s future on this platform is unpleasant, our feeling is that we’ll be okay. We remain firmly committed to providing you with the very best game engine for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Thank you all so much for your patience and support. It means everything to us.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/04/14/unity-and-the-iphone-os-4-0-update/

Notice what they say at the end there. They remain committed to providing you with the best game engine for the iphone, ipad and ipod touch.

The solution will be to rewrite the unity engine so it uses objective C and Cocoa for programing which will let it keep on making great ipod/iphone games. This will of course break the whole compatibility with Android thing (as Apple intended) thus making this a middleware that only works for apple devices.

This will leave porting to Android an extra expense and not a particularly easy process which means only a few games will make the jump and Apple will maintain a huge advantage in the mobile gaming sphere. This is only compounded by the way Apple only has a handful of devices to develop for while android phones are legion (and VASTLY different in capability) meaning the not only do you have to port to Android, but you have to port to multiple android platforms each of which may only have a few hundred thousand users at most.

When the iphone has 8 million sales in the last quarter thats just the one phone type (with different amounts of memory) while when android sells a few million its a few hundred thousand of a dozen phones on average (with some like droid more successful then others). It's just a coding nightmare.

ok so the psp sales, but i just don't see it being a success its just missing to mutch, but i don't see iphone, android, or any cellphone becoming a treat to either. some will say sony maybe but not nintendo. but over all i wouldn't buy a game on a cell phone.

not very likely, because there is also middleware compatability for Android phone's outside of the Iphone. go to the site the engine does not need to port from the Iphone to the Android!. you do know that Android has sold 5.4 million last quarter. and is expected to overtake the Iphone this year in quartly sales.If anything Android is not just going into phones TV's and Netbook's are also Prime for Android.

example:

n0mad: who's develop's with the unity engine

This post could be a bit uninteresting for current Unity users, but I just realized something that could even strenghten the multiplatform objective :

- Making a game for the appstore without Unity turns it iPhone OS only, and therefore sticks the game to this platform. So for studios that are investing years into gamemaking, this is a no-no, as iPhone OS won't be the trend forever. Plus if the game actually fails to reach its audience, it can be put to trashcan.

- Making a game with Unity now let anybody create a long term project, without caring about any hardware becoming obsolete. Yep, upgrading a game for another platform won't need to rewrite all the code and all the assets. Plus if the audience is not reached on the appstore, with upcoming platforms, it will cost only one button to try again, costless, on another OS.

Now back on the long term project thing, let me bring an example :

I started a game in January 09. Right there, it was clearly designed for iPhone 3G : 2D backgrounds, not so many animations, limited content ... hard to limit a rush of game ideas, but necessary.

Then came the 3GS, which made me want to enhance the whole thing. 3G retro-compatibility would be made by switching things off.

Now in an advanced development state, I'm realizing that the project wouldn't need more than 20% of additional work to be presentable on big consoles Indie store. Why should I not take advantage of this export feature after all ?
And more : I'm not concerned now, but for really advanced projects, it is even possible to re-use the casual version, and turn it to a prototype for a game studio to convert it into some fully branded console title. And that's huge.

If I had developped in Xcode, all these extended platform & business ideas would never had been possible. I just would be stuck to iPhone hardware and appstore, with a possibility for my game never to be seen by anyone thanks to overcrowding.


In short, Unity somehow saved me from a very possible 50000$ bankruptcy (time spent, softwares, hardware, etc), and even gave me the possibility to turn this project into whatever format I want, from a simple casual game to a full prototype for an edited console title.

This engine flexibility should be supposed to attract a lot of game studios by now, considering how risky is the game business.

(I don't see any reference to this extended project lifetime in Features part of the site, so I thought it would be worth to point at.)



Finally, why in the hell Unity would be saving the world of casual games ?
Because when I look at some devs that are cloning 300 times the same app (basically just changing the colors), I feel that if they aimed at several platforms, they wouldn't need to spam with 300 apps. 3 would be sufficient to do the same benefits, I'm sure.

And as I saw myself, if an engine give the ability to export to a better hardware, the need to reach it quickly shows itself, which means better graphic designs from the start, even for casual games.
Proof is that when you look at the Showcase forums here, it's crowded with awesome graphics, far better matching with actual console quality than most appstore games (and even Flash web games).

In the end, with its AAA features and multiple platforms, Unity is "drawing the bottom to the top".


So please Unity staff, don't stop spreading the platforms

though that would indeed be a big problem if said company had not already done that anyway:

Using Objective-C means that you will be stuck in Apple-land until you decide that you are wiling to rewrite your code, line-by-line in Java for Android, in C# for Windows7 and in C++ for Symbian/Blackberry.

unless they have already done just that!

an besides you could alway's even with the new agreement in place:

 Write the core of your app in C/C++ then wrap that with ObjC and Cocoa touch

now if you do it properly

you than would  have well structured code that can migrate to multiple platforms and doesn't lock you into a particular environment like Flash anyway.

The way you put all that is confusing, but on the sales point I don't think anyone would really miss Android compatibility that much considering while Android sold maybe 6 million phones across dozens of phones with different capabilities, frameworks and "flavors" of Android the iphone sold over 9 million in that quarter of ONE type of phone along with about 10 million ipod touches which are virtually identical to the iphone minus the phone calls making an over 3 to one advantage for iphone based phones vs all android devices (and that doesn't even count the ipad).

Porting from the iphone is an afterthought, it's something devs will do if its not too much of a pain. Apple is making it a pain, so less devs will bother doing it. They will almost certainly just not bother with Android before they'll ignore the iphone, which is by far the dominant platform among smartphone apps.

Also games made in other languages then given a wrapper tend to have big performance hits. That's a crap solution and I applaud Apple for their stand against it. I could care less if you can get the app on your platform, I just want the highest quality native version on my platform, the iphone.