By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo Getting Outmarketed By Smartphone Games

kitler53 on 08 February 2015

the kate upton commercial certaintly got my attention. dear god she is hot.



Around the Network
Nettles on 08 February 2015

It's a shame really, because smartphone games are pretty horrible.



seinsmeld on 08 February 2015

u really can't compete with smartphones. its a convenience, people do everything with their phone from playing music to watching videos. ur phone is always their. maybe nintendo should produce games for phones or come out with a phone-type device. the majority games for phones aren't really complicated and lack the depth 3ds games have.



irstupid on 08 February 2015

Why single out Nintendo?

I don't recall any video game commercials at all during the Superbowl but a few phone games, so wouldn't it be Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft all getting out advertised by phone?



McDonaldsGuy on 08 February 2015

For people saying marketing is not important for Nintendo, remember the Wii would like to play commercials? Those were INCREDIBLY popular and helped turn the Wii into a phenomenon.

Nintendo NEEDS to market, and market great. Their refusal has caused the downfall of Wii U and the stagnation of the 3DS.



Around the Network
Materia-Blade on 08 February 2015
Skullwaker said:
Soundwave said:
Soccer moms and crossword puzzle players aren't the ones buying COD and Destiny nor are they likely to be impacted at all from smartphone gaming. So yes, whether you like it or not those are games with hardcore gameplay mechanics, they just happen to be extremely successful ones that a lot of mainstream players buy.

But there's little/no overlap between Destiny and Candy Crush.  

Soccer moms aren't the only casual market. I don't know if you've realized this, but the new casual market is indeed the average Call of Duty player. They pick up their XB1/PS4, and they buy like 4 games a year consisting of COD, Madden, FIFA and some overhyped game like Destiny and Watch Dogs and wait for the next year. And no, Call of Duty is absolutely not a game with hardcore gameplay mechanics. A game like Dark Souls has hardcore gameplay mechanics. A game like Fire Emblem has hardcore gameplay mechanics. Just because you shoot things, doesn't make it hardcore. Call of Duty is one of the most simple and braindead franchises in gaming today; a toddler could play it on hard and have no difficulty.

Almost everyone with a smart phone plays smart phone games. They might not play Candy Crush, but they likely play some other alternative. This isn't an issue exclusive to Nintendo. Nintendo's marketing is bullshit, but it has little, if anything, to do with the marketing of smartphone games. This notion that this market is somehow eating Nintendo alive is wrong. The only thing it's hurting is the handheld market, and even now the 3DS is still doing very well for itself. The Wii U's issue isn't that it's competing with smartphones, as that crowd that only games on phones is never going to be interested in any console because the cost is simply too high.

THIS infinite times, I would just substitute madden for AC.



Materia-Blade on 08 February 2015
Soundwave said:
Roronaa_chan said:
Who even plays these things? I don't know a single person IRL that does. Yet, I know that plenty do.. Scary world out there.

Apple sold 74 million iPhones in the three months of Oct-Dec '14 alone. To put that in perspective, Nintendo is struggling to hit 9 million 3DS' for their entire fiscal year (12 months) worldwide even with a new model revision. 

It's estimated that at least half of smartphone buyers game on their phone regularily/semi-regularily. And that's just iPhone alone, doesn't count other phone brands (Android) or tablets at all. 

Unless you live in 2004, odds are you know someone who plays smartphone games. 

Are you seriously saying that selling 3ds and iphones are the same thing?



JWeinCom on 08 February 2015
Soundwave said:
JWeinCom said:
Instead of arguing with all of the stupidity coming out of this topic, all that I'll say is this. It's a good thing that people from these message boards are not running Nintendo. I'm not saying Nintendo's marketing is perfect, but if people here ran Nintendo, they'd be broke within a week.

Pro-tip: Marketing a $300 machine (or even a $60 game) that is based on a one time fee is vastly different than marketing a F2P game that relies on micro-transactions.


So Nintendo's philosophy of basically never marketing at all is the smart play? 

I'm not saying they should spend a billion dollars doing something stupid like buying Capcom because I like Megaman or something idiotic like that; but having some mindshare with the general audience might be something worth investing in rather than letting your competitors (from both angles, MS/Sony on one front, and smartphones on the other) basically have free reign while you sit back twiddling your thumbs doing nothing for years at a time. 

At some point the whole "we don't like to compete (Iwata's own words), because we're Nintendo, we're a special snowflake" just becomes a load of bull sh*t. 

Sony and MS market constantly on television (successfully at that). Marketing has been essential to most successful home consoles. There's nothing magical or special about marketing a console game vs a smartphone game. 

NOA in general needs to be completely overhauled, it's fairly plain as day they are incompetent. No you wouldn't want a fanboy running the company, but someone with some actual understanding of the business who's more progressive and Westernized, understands modern (not 1980s) marketing, would be a world of help. 

I could tell this won't be too useful of a conversation, since you started with a strawman argument :-/  Accordingly, I'm not going to address  "So Nintendo's philosophy of basically never marketing at all is the smart play? " because it's an argument I never made.

"There's nothing magical or special about marketing a console game vs a smartphone game. "

If you truly think that trying to convince someone to download a software for free that you hope to extract money from, where the potential user base is at I believe well over 100 million requires the some marketing strategy as marketing either a 300 dollar machine, or a 60 dollar game with a potential user base of about 10 million, then I don't know what to say.  It's clearly a different situation, and it wouldn't really make sense to spend 4.5 million dollars + whatever people like Liam Nieson and Kate Upton charge to put an ad there.  It's simply not a smart way to spend nearly 5 million dollars.  



mountaindewslave on 08 February 2015

I think you're off base OP, the reality is that EVERYONE already has a smartphone so someone making smartphone games doesn't have to work that hard to attain interest from customers. Nintendo on the other hand has to market and attract people to BOTH their handheld systems AND games. the reality is that this is a much more difficult task

again, people already have phones. They don't already have a Nintendo DS necessarily. naturally someone might be quick to be attracted to a smartphone game since they already need and have a telephone or cell phone or whatever 



naruball on 08 February 2015

Don't know much about the US and celebrities affecting sales, but I remember that in the UK there was a time when wiiparty wasn't very successful but then a commercial for it aired with a popular UK band (think they're called JLS) and sales seriously picked up. Yes, a game you had to pay over 30 quid for.

And I don't get the whole "you can't judge x company from your armchair". Why not exactly? Just because Ninty is a powerful company, doesn't mean that they always make the right choices. Same with MS and xbone or Sony and ps3.

I feel that the ones running the company to the ground are the people who defend anything the company does and give them the wrong message. I think fans should be vocal in a respectful way so that the company can know what they need to at least consider changing.