Yep, another thread, but in all fairness iPhone vs. Nintendo/Sony seems to be popular news at the moment, everybody has to have an opinion about it.

Personally (you can check out my profile to see where I'm coming from) I don't think Nintendo has much to fear at the moment. The iPhone is a lucrative market for small developers and small projects, but even the most sold game thus far has brought in only about 4 million of revenue. The total market for games is not yet that big, though I can't give you any indication of how big it actually is. My own guesstimate is somewhere around 50 million revenue for the devs so far, but I could be very far off. If I'm even in the ballpark, that kind of market can not support Nintendo-like games, even very casual ones.

Then again, the iPhone platform is evolving at a rapid pace, and the things mentioned in the article may well prove to be recipes for a greater success.

By the way, I think it is kinda funny how people complain how difficult it is to get your app to get noticed. Isn't marketing something nearly all succesful companies do? Nobody can base their business on word-of-mouth and viral marketing alone, that's just not a viable plan for the long term, yet it seems to be what the majority of iPhone devs are doing.

there is one thing about the iphone that just doesn't play well with the term "gaming device".

for the most part, that piece of equipment is a phone and the itouch is an mp3 player. That's how they were introduced and reintroducing it as something else is a rather hefty if not nigh impossible job imo.

I don't know what it looks like with gaming on mobile phones in the Us but you can be assured that most of Europe doesn't see these devices as potential handheld consoles, especially the more we go east of the Ren.

It not quite as much a threat to the handheld market as PC gaming takes away from consoles... mainly because it is just 2 devices (iphone and ipod touch) but it is a threat in the same vein in that people will buy them as phones like they buy PCs for multimedia, but some will use them for gaming instead of buying a handheld or home console.

"Here you go Tiny Tim, your brand new $400 iPhone and $60 monthly service plan. Oh and here's our credit card number so you can buy games from the App store."

So right now we're looking at 100 million + DS units sold to gamers, versus a possible 43 million i-phone users by the end of this year, the percentage of gamers in that number being unknown.

Look, I love apple, but really this isn't even an argument. I have 4 friends with i-phones, none of whom have purchased a single game and I doubt they have any intention to anytime soon.

People buy the i-phone for phone and internet tech. I'm sure the allure of games is there for a small segment of gamers, but where are these people?

Here we are on a gaming sales website, and I have yet to ever read anything like "I love the games on my i-phone", or "you people have got to go out and trade your DS/PSP for an i-phone". Where are the threads about some killer game that is on the i-phone that we must have?

From what I can sense gaming on the i-phone is just something of an afterthought for most consumers who buy the thing.

Again, I haven't seen any evidence that it's cutting into the PSP/DS sales at all.

Nintendo doesn't have anything to worry about...yet. The iPhone/iPod Touch will both be restricted by many factors unless there is a redesign.

1. The types of software that can be created are limited because it's all touch based. Too many genres are not even realistically able to happen, which causes the iPhone to get swamped with puzzle games.

2. It's priced as a smartphone, not a gaming device. The price keeps the smartphone fans happy because they're getting the features they want. The gamers looking for a gaming device do not feel the need to spend $200-400 on an inferior software lineup. Apple is trying to merge the two, but we'll see how that goes.

3. The price keeps it out of the range of children. That's one major demographic gone.

If Apple wants to compete with Nintendo or even disrupt them, it's going to take a device that is more dedicated to gaming than the current i products are. Lower end models and buttons are a start. Even Nintendo when disrupting gaming knew that going all touch screen/motion controls and abandoning traditional control methods would not fly. It's far too restrictive.

Exactly.

I'm sorry, but I do think Nintendo's right... for now. They are sound in their thinking that there is too much... well, stuff... to dredge through on the App store, making it hard for someone to find a game from a developer unless they already know about it. Thus, the shelf-browser's sales will be lost. Not to mention that yes, while it is cheaper to develop for, most of the apps show said cheapness. I guess that could be a case of "You get what you pay for."

However, it's already happened in Japan- and portables are far from dead there. When even companies such as Square-Enix are doing cell phone exclusive games, it shows that there is a market. Yet, the portable market is still very strong over there for both the DS and PSP. So no, iPhone isn't going to kill either of them.

i agree