Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo need to port all their games to Apple TV and iOS so we don't have to buy their consoles. Amirite? Millions to be made!
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First Official Nintendo iOS Game 'Miitomo' Hits Japanese App Store
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Way to think only in black and white terms. There are ways for Nintendo to do this without it impacting their current console sales.
Example: porting classic NES and SNES games to iOS (with dedicated controllers). These are not console-sellers and their sales on the current Nintendo systems as classics will be marginal to their other sales at best. There is nothing to be lost for Nintendo, besides some development cost.
In addition, these ported games could serve a halo function for new Nintendo consoles.
When they could sell them on their classic console on their own devices and rake in 100% of the money.
How much would you pay for an NES game, btw? And how many 1 star reviews do you think it'd get for looking like an NES game on an HD device?
But you are confusing sales and margin. The margin on consumer electronics is pretty thin. It costs them much more to manufacture a ds than it would to port games to ios.How dare you?! 1 billion active iOS devices and 1,4 billion active Android devices are peanuts in comparison to the 57,94 million (sold) 3DS. No way Nintendo could make a profit there.
You misunderstood my ironic post. I was actually referring to the same post as you, which said Nintendo is making way more money with those retro games on their own device. Therefore i pointed out the gigantic potential installation base of ios/android and i didn't have any numbers for active 3DS, only the sold devices.
Sure, but the market on those consoles is vastly smaller than the current casual mobile gaming market for which the classic Nintendo games are perfectly suited.
I personally would easily pay 10 dollars for Mario, Metroid or Zelda and pay additional money for a good dedicated controller. People keep mentioning Apple´s 30% fee on App Store hosting, but forget that it is a headache free system for large content producers and I´m 100% convinced that Nintendo could even negotiate it down.
I don´t see an issue with the resolution, with so many games currently being retro in that respect and still receiving high marks. In addition, people know what they get. No-one would buy a 9,99 Nintendo classic on a whim, as they do with some of the no-name in app-purchase 1,99 games.
When a large number of iOS customers scoff at anything higher than 99-cents (and most even higher than "free") I don't see NES titles selling particularly well for $10.
Then you run into the issue of touch screen buttons being universally garbage. It's why the "iOS Gaming" honeymoon for me was particularly short-lived, maybe 9 months at most. In fact I had the urge to play Sonic CD last night so I re-downloaded the game to my iPhone and it stuck around for a grand total of 20 minutes after which I promptly booted from my phone in frustration.
The "Just buy a controller" suggestion is particularly hilarious. If you're going to jump through enough hoops to buy a $50 controller to play 30-year old games and start carrying it around with you, you may as well pick up a 2DS which plays games infinitely better than what you'll find in the garbage heap that is the app store.
Then you run into the issue of touch screen buttons being universally garbage. It's why the "iOS Gaming" honeymoon for me was particularly short-lived, maybe 9 months at most. In fact I had the urge to play Sonic CD last night so I re-downloaded the game to my iPhone and it stuck around for a grand total of 20 minutes after which I promptly booted from my phone in frustration.
The "Just buy a controller" suggestion is particularly hilarious. If you're going to jump through enough hoops to buy a $50 controller to play 30-year old games and start carrying it around with you, you may as well pick up a 2DS which plays games infinitely better than what you'll find in the garbage heap that is the app store.
Why is that relevant at all? Every retailer gets a large percentage of the profits. Best Buy gets 20-50% depending on how much they buy and the title.
Because 70% of $10 is $7 and 50% of $40 is $20.
Even in your worst-case scenario Nintendo stands to make more money on a 3DS Pokemon than a iOS Pokemon.
Plus to play the 3DS Pokemon the customer has to buy a 3DS, so Nintendo gets money from that as well.
And on top of that, once a customer owns a 3DS they're likely to buy more software for it, which means more money in Nintendo's pocket.
Basically in the end Nintendo stands to profit more sticking to their own hardware ecosystem.
It´s really interesting how you always spin that scenario, but neglect the fact that the whole iOS installed base is several orders of magnitudes larger than the amount of sold 3DSes. In addition you assume that Nintendo pays the 30% fee to Apple but do not even seem to realize that any large software developer can walk up to Apple and negotiate. If you think that everyone pays 30%, then you are naive to how business is really done.
There are several ways how Nintendo could earn a significant amount of money on porting games to iOS without it impacting their existing revenue lines (several people here have mentioned those), but you don´t seem to be prepared to even think beyond: "no they wouldn´t and they shouldn´t".