archbrix said:
You can keep listing all of the swiss army knife features of smartphones over and over but playing Nintendo’s games still won’t be one of them. As I said before, the features you continue to point to are functions provided by tools that can be used on smartphones at a lesser quality. If say, you could have the benefit of Nintendo's software on smartphones at a slighlty lesser quality, then your argument would be more plausible, but that’s not the case here. You're forgetting that we’re talking about Nintendo here, not some random company that happened to strike it lucky one time with a gaming handheld.
You’ve now retreated to saying that smartphone games will only effect Nintendo’s handhelds (something I’ve never disagreed with), as opposed to what your thread title exclaims: Nintendo will exit the handheld business altogether, which is the thing that I just don’t buy. Have smartphones effected home PCs or Laptop sales? Perhaps. Have they rendered them obsolete? Certainly not; people have uses for all three, just as there will always be people who have a use for a dedicated game handheld. You seem to think that people must ultimately choose between Apple's business model or Nintendo's, when again, there's room for both.
Which brings me to your second argument. Yes, Nintendo certainly does love their control, as evidenced by their past fallout with Sony. But if it came to an adapt or die situation, why would Nintendo be incapable of taking whatever means necessary to (at the very least) sustain their business? They certainly have the financial backing to do so, and remember, gaming is their one and only business. If it really did come right down to it, why would they just throw in the towel and choose not to evolve with the times? They did it with their home console storage media and they'll do it again.
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Just because Nintendo is the big fish in the Nintendo pond doesn't mean that another pond without Nintendo is an ecological wasteland so to speak as a metaphor. I already addressed the issue of Nintendo games vs non Nintendo games, they certainly have all the big publishers whipped however the last time a bunch of minows gained access to the industry they themselves were whipped. That last time was when Sony released the PS1 and developers took full advantage of the new distribution methods, lower cost and ease of entry in order to release a wide range of compelling software on a non Nintendo device. The number of strong developers independant of major publishers has reversed the trend towards incorporation, this is agility which has tripped Nintendo up once before and can easily do so again.
When I say that smartphones could effect Nintendo, what I am saying is that smart phones can effect Nintendo's core business. Their core business is the mainstream. So going back to the cameras, Nintendo makes point and shoot cameras and sells them to a wide audience, smart phones are starting to become good enough replacements for many mainstream users to play games on, hence the threat. This threat being further compounded by the different distribution method, $0-15 on iTunes vs $30-50 on cartridge for many of the same games. So not only are smart phones becoming a good alternative regardless, they are also becoming a cheaper alternative with a different distribution method. This is why I said disruptive, because it changes the rules of the handheld game.
I never said that Nintendo couldn't sustain their business however I was saying that they 'may exit handhelds in 10 years due to disruption (from smartphones in particular but no excluding tablets and smartpods)'. Thats not this handheld generation just coming, it isn't the next handheld generation it is the one following that, hence 10 years. I never said that they wouldn't adjust, even exiting the handheld business is an adjustment of sorts. The online weakness is just a sideline really to point out that whilst they are facing increased competition from online networks they aren't building their own. Unless an online network forms which is open and cross platform compatible this will be a weakness. Just as a fan of Nintendo games may be locked out from non Nintendo platforms, a participant in one non Nintendo online network can just as easily be locked out from Nintendo's network or devices.
HappySqurriel said:
It wasn’t until earlier today that I realized that arguments like this tend to never consider the problems that exist in the portable computing market today that are (likely) going to get worse in the future.
First off, while hundreds of millions of these devices have been sold these sales are split across a variety of different operating systems (Apple ios, Android, Blackberry, Windows 7), many different hardware architectures, which are also split based on a variety of form-factors (Phone, iPod, Tablet, BlackBerry), and they also have vastly different processing capabilities due to several generations of hardware being released. This means that in order to target this massive potential user base you have to release a system to hundreds of different platforms. This is not going to get significantly better in the future because (unlike a videogame system) the manufacturers turn a profit on hardware, little profit off of software, and want to convince people to replace their current system every year or two.
Secondly, there is the problem that these devices are not purchased based on their gaming functionality and when you take away the people who don’t play a significant amount of games on these devices the smart phone “Gamer” user-base is significantly smaller than the total user-base. When you combine this with the complete lack of sales for games that cost (much) more than $5, there isn’t a whole lot of money to support large games budgets on these platforms; in spite of their very impressive user-base statistics. If these devices can't provide adequate revenue for games like The Legend of Zelda they will not be able to kill off handheld devices.
Finally, this isn’t a problem for phones but a comment on the direction of all gaming devices. Over the next 10 years, with gaming becoming more popular among older people (in part because of gamers aging) and the development of markets in China, India and much of the rest of the world the videogame market may grow to be twice as large as it currently is (or possibly larger). Much like how the current videogame market can support the existence of two handheld devices, three home consoles and the PC (to a certain extent), it is entirely reasonable to assume that the growth in the market will enable portable computational devices (like phones and tablets) to be used heavily as gaming devices while dedicated videogame machines continue to exist and have a healthy market.
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I believe you're forgetting that all these devices have the fundamental basics in common with one another, enough to form a common market. All devices use the ARM CPU architecture, all major devices use a touch screen, all the touch screens are relatively the same size with the exception of the new tablet form factor. Lastly all devices can run programs based off cross platform languages such as Java. Finally almost all the devices out there in the marketplace today will likely be replaced within a 3 year period therefore you don't have the longevity associated with consoles or desktop/laptop PCs with portions of the market lagging far behind the rest. The number of actual major platforms really only numbers up to 4. You have Apple, Android, RIM and Symbian. The latter two are of course nearly completely ignored.
What proportion of handhelds are purchased to play the Legend of Zelda? Relative to the total userbase of handhelds the number of people playing such 'core' titles are quite small. Nevertheless if you consider how one smart-phone with $1-5 games has exceeded the revenue of one pre-existing platform in a few short years (PSP) since release and continues to grow substantially every year it is only a matter of time for the market to develop to the point where the whole range of genres can be supported on the platform. Furthermore as more competition develops between the differing platforms it is very likely that game prices on handhelds will be forced to come down in order to be competitive with smart phone type games, just as differing PC / Console games have eventually found their prices alligning with one another.
http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=43146
That is the common price for a title which costs $0-3 on iTunes.
There will come a time when pretty much anyone tech savvy enough to want to play games will own a capable gaming platform by default. At that time there comes a question whether they want a dedicated game playing device enough and have a desire to carry it alongside a smart phone, tablet or other similar devices. They would have to justify paying extra for capabilities which already exist in something they always have with them and they would have to justify the effort of taking it with them where-ever they go. I certainly don't think that the game market for dedicated handhelds will disapear, however im not certain that the game market for handhelds can be sustained on PSP and core DS style experiences. The issue is if Nintendo loses the mainstream then the 'core' doesn't provide the support for an entire ecosystem of games.
