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Forums - Gaming - Sony: "No clear competitor to NGP" Nintendo 3DS an "updated DS

rocketpig on 03 June 2011
Mr Khan said:
rocketpig said:
IMU1808 said:

"it's too big to fit into your pocket."

We have a problem...

I thought I was the only one who noticed this.

Oh well, I predicted the NGP would crash and burn the day it was announced. My stance hasn't changed on the product. Handheld gaming is a market of diminishing returns. Smartphones are crowding in on game space and unless you offer something completely different that is heavily reliant on your own first party offerings, I don't see the handheld making it for long.

I don't even see Nintendo doing that well in the handheld space this generation.

We can't say it's a market of diminishing returns. DS and PSP between them have made a market bigger than the entire console market was last generation, and bigger than the entire console market is this generation (though that may change as the consoles have varying amounts of life left in them). While 3DS and Vita may not achieve that level, it's way too soon to make that call. All we're seeing on the Handheld v. Smartphones front currently is the coincidental drop-offs of two devices late in their lives and the slow start of one device in its infancy vs a market that's finally starting to hit its stride and is less cyclically designed.

I don't think it's too early to make that call at all. These devices are competing (and losing) both on price and consumer headspace. It's 2011 and the name of the game is convergence. While the 3DS and NGP will be better gaming machines, they will NOT be better browsers, movie screens, app devices, and music players than iOS/Android devices.

And considering they're going to be priced $250-350 apiece with $40 games and will be directly competing with $50 iPhones and $400 Android tablets that straight-up kick their asses at everything other than gaming, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that the handheld market better figure out a different way of going about its business or it's going to slowly die away because casuals just don't care anymore and diehards are too small a population to support the massive development budgets for these $40 games.

I bought a 4.3" Android phone four months ago for $99. It does everything I need it to do and then some. Sure, I'd like a few better games for the thing but what it has holds me over when I need some quick game time. Next up, I'm going to buy a 10" Android 3.0 tablet for reading, browsing, and other non-laptop tasks. When I get around to picking one up by the end of the year, it will probably be about the same price as the NGP.

I cannot think of a single reason to buy either the 3DS or NGP. There are better devices out there for roughly the same amount of money. Nintendo and Sony need to stop pretending it's still 2004 because consumers know better. Most of them already carry the future in their pocket and call it a phone.




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o_O.Q on 03 June 2011
milkyjoe said:
o_O.Q said:
milkyjoe said:
o_O.Q said:

lol somehow when nintendo disses games for phones people seem to get deaf... the fact of the matter is that all companies try to push the idea that their product is better or more unique or original or whatever than other products out there... its called marketing

Not true, although the wild spinning of whatever anybody says never helps. For example, Iwata talks about 'content is king' in smartphone games (and in games in general), and cites Angry Birds as an example of a smartphone game done right.

Then follows hundreds of stories where it's suggested that Iwata is dismissing all smartphone games, including Angry Birds, as throwaway nonsense, and then you get anti-Nintendo types heralding Angry Birds as their champion in defeating Nintendo, thus entirely missing the point of what Iwata said in the first place...

Thus proving that it's never what you say but how people report on what you say that matters, and I imagine (or rather I hope) that in this instance with Sony, what they actually said was probably slightly more tame than the initial story suggested, but then tame doesn't get hits...

as far as i remember nintendo said something about smartphone developers filling the industry with low quality cheap games and that causes harm because he believes that they steal attention from what he percieves to be higher quality games produced for dedicated gaming devices... and personally i find that no less offensive its technically the same thing downplaying your competitor and then saying that the product you produce has a higher value

You see, this is exactly what I referred to. You've simply repeated what was reported by the media which was a suggestion that all smartphone games are lumped into one 'low quality' segment when the actual comments made were very specific in their meaning.

I watched the speech live that they took those 'quotes' from, and I saw the various things flash up on his presentation screen as he was talking about them. Iwata talked about low quality apps/games, such as the multiple fart apps or other such terrible throwaway nonsense (and if you don't think that such things are of low quality or that it's somehow wrong to say that a fart app is a terrible thing, then we are two very different people), as being the things that risked harming the industry.

He was very careful in separating Angry Birds and the like (i.e. the good examples of cheap games on the app store) as being things to be proud of, distancing them from the things harming the industry, whilst placing them alongside other high quality games on other devices (and not just handhelds either, as he talked about Angry Birds as being a "must have" game like Mario, COD and others). The media ignored that distinction so they could get hits, which then spiraled into Nintendo apparently being against the concept of smartphone gaming in general, and here you are simply perpetuating the myth, but you can't be blamed if that's what the media tells you.

But anyway, this is massively off topic so I'll leave it there...

and who is iwata to determine what is crap and what isn't? for all we know people may enjoy the games he was reffering to as crap more than games developed for sony or nintedo or microsoft consoles... all im saying is that what he said imo is just as offensive



Squilliam on 04 June 2011
TomaTito said:
Squilliam said:

Actually it's quite possible that the 3DS is the better take away handheld and Nintendo Cafe is the better stay at home handheld. The 3DS is more pocketable and probably has better battery life and Cafe has a larger screen as well as TV integrations.

I've said this before also. Depends on what Project Cafe is exactly, but from the rumours it can really put a dent in the home handheld market.

The rumours point to a 6 inch screen combined with the ability to play any console game directly.



Tease.

Acevil on 04 June 2011
Squilliam said:
TomaTito said:
Squilliam said:

Actually it's quite possible that the 3DS is the better take away handheld and Nintendo Cafe is the better stay at home handheld. The 3DS is more pocketable and probably has better battery life and Cafe has a larger screen as well as TV integrations.

I've said this before also. Depends on what Project Cafe is exactly, but from the rumours it can really put a dent in the home handheld market.

The rumours point to a 6 inch screen combined with the ability to play any console game directly.

It has been confirmed by Nikkei (sp). 



 

scottie on 04 June 2011
Mr Khan said:

Their tone is similar to the tone they took in the DS vs PSP fight, or with PS3 vs whatever else, which doesn't bode well for them creating something market-friendly


Came in to say exactly this.

 

3DS and Vita are both portable game consoles. They are competitors, wether Sony wants them to be or not. They also claimed that PS3 wasn't competing with Wii and that PSP wasn't competing with DS. Fact is, if the 3DS does well, more people will buy it, and more games will be made for it. This will take potential customers from Vita and give game developers less reason to make games for it, hence competition.