even if Nintendo moves to iOS, they'd better keep developing the Wii U, in order to respect all the people who spent lots of money with the Wii U 
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Nintendo Finally Considers Smartphone Move After Third Straight Annual Loss
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For software houses join a hardware ecosystem is not a problem, but Nintendo never used to pay royalties for another hardware company. It's a big cultural shift when you have to accept Apple getting 30% of your revenue.
Nintendo does have some really good and long lasting game markets.
Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokémon... Now these game title aren't linked to the popularity of the hardware of the Nintendo Console, but to the games themselves, that help sell the console.
People would probably buy these games if they were on iOS, Android, or even the PS4 and Xbox.
If a person wants a console. They will want one like a PS4 or and Xbox One, which has near state of the art processing abilities. If they don't need the horse power, they will go with a more versatile Smart Phone or Tablet. The middle of the road for the Wii U just doesn't really excite any one. However the Nintendo Game titles, are the only reason people are even remotely interested in the console. As they are games they can play with their family, without being too dull for adults and family friendly for kids.
even if Nintendo moves to iOS, they'd better keep developing the Wii U, in order to respect all the people who spent lots of money with the Wii U
Put it in the closet next to your Atari Jaguar.
I would totally buy Mario Kart on my ipad. As long as it's not ruined by IAP.
even if Nintendo moves to iOS, they'd better keep developing the Wii U, in order to respect all the people who spent lots of money with the Wii U
The transition could be even more brutal on portable devices, I see 3DS sales drop a lot even if just a few core IP titles make it to Android and iOS.
The 3DS is the only thing holding them above water at the moment given the disastrous Wii U sales numbers, so they would have to think about this move very carefully.
Another issue is pricing. Nintendo is a very large company with high cost structures, they still base their financials on packaged $40-60 software titles.
Today's average download price on smartphones and tablets is a fraction of that.
Sure, Nintendo could still command a premium, but probably still worse margins than today...
It's damned if you do, damned if you don't for Nintendo
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Nintendo screwed up for a lot of reasons. Here's a few:
* They missed out on all the zombie games and shooters.
* The yoga/chai tea thing isn't quite the lifestyle they hoped. They sidestepped it for a while, but the Wii U still reaks of it (listen to the theme music on the main menu haha). The Zombie hunting black and green super gamer crowd probably hate this stuff.
* Cheerful games aren't cool anymore. Blowing things up, acting like a gangster, and killing zombies is.
* It should have been black and green, or black and red, or black and yellow, or black and blue even. With corners. The Wii U is a giant piece of soap, and the gamepad is a giant soap.
* The Wiimotes always were, and still are a terrible controller interface.
* The gamepads are great, but $100+ on ebay and you can only use one (maybe 2?) at a time. Even then, the resolution is quickly becoming pretty dated.
* Nintendo screwed up the cool factor. Bigtime.
* Their online service is awful. If you buy downloaded games (or your console comes with them), and your console is stolen or fails, you're screwed. That's probably one of the worst things about Nintendo right now.
* They've still got decades of nickel and diming their customers to get over.
There's also the value arguments, where you buy a $300 console to play 4-5 games, suddenly it's not really worth it. I bought a Wii U myself because I just didn't have a good enough reason to buy an xbox or a ps4, but I did want to play the new zelda & mario games. For that it's great, but I can see where people are coming from.
* They missed out on all the zombie games and shooters.
* The yoga/chai tea thing isn't quite the lifestyle they hoped. They sidestepped it for a while, but the Wii U still reaks of it (listen to the theme music on the main menu haha). The Zombie hunting black and green super gamer crowd probably hate this stuff.
* Cheerful games aren't cool anymore. Blowing things up, acting like a gangster, and killing zombies is.
* It should have been black and green, or black and red, or black and yellow, or black and blue even. With corners. The Wii U is a giant piece of soap, and the gamepad is a giant soap.
* The Wiimotes always were, and still are a terrible controller interface.
* The gamepads are great, but $100+ on ebay and you can only use one (maybe 2?) at a time. Even then, the resolution is quickly becoming pretty dated.
* Nintendo screwed up the cool factor. Bigtime.
* Their online service is awful. If you buy downloaded games (or your console comes with them), and your console is stolen or fails, you're screwed. That's probably one of the worst things about Nintendo right now.
* They've still got decades of nickel and diming their customers to get over.
There's also the value arguments, where you buy a $300 console to play 4-5 games, suddenly it's not really worth it. I bought a Wii U myself because I just didn't have a good enough reason to buy an xbox or a ps4, but I did want to play the new zelda & mario games. For that it's great, but I can see where people are coming from.
I've been a lurker for years on this site but finally something forced me to join up and address some issues about Nintendo. Clearly the Apple Fans here have no idea about Nintendo, how they run, their history and how they make money.
Nintendo is NOT moving to smartphones. They earn their money through hardware sales and their first party games. How much profit do you think they will make from $3 dollar games on the App Store. There was a suggestion that Nintendo would have to sell over 750 million games on the App Store to earn the same profit as they currently do.
Nintendo believes in high quality games built on their hardware. Just like Apple believes in high quality hardware running on IOS. Putting any of their games on smartphone would damage the brands like Mario or Zelda and people will think they have become the cheap game's makers like games are not smartphones.
And please get the bloody idea of Apple and Nintendo coming together. Nintendo would prefer to pour fuel over their assets and buildings and set it on fire than let a American company get their hands on them and turn it into something they are not. Smartphone and tablets are terrible ways to play games and Apple has slowly been turning a great video game industry into a cheap two dollar business with games that are downloaded and deleted a few days after.
Nintendo can change and move with the times, they have been around for a hundred years and they will be fine in the long term.
Nintendo is NOT moving to smartphones. They earn their money through hardware sales and their first party games. How much profit do you think they will make from $3 dollar games on the App Store. There was a suggestion that Nintendo would have to sell over 750 million games on the App Store to earn the same profit as they currently do.
Nintendo believes in high quality games built on their hardware. Just like Apple believes in high quality hardware running on IOS. Putting any of their games on smartphone would damage the brands like Mario or Zelda and people will think they have become the cheap game's makers like games are not smartphones.
And please get the bloody idea of Apple and Nintendo coming together. Nintendo would prefer to pour fuel over their assets and buildings and set it on fire than let a American company get their hands on them and turn it into something they are not. Smartphone and tablets are terrible ways to play games and Apple has slowly been turning a great video game industry into a cheap two dollar business with games that are downloaded and deleted a few days after.
Nintendo can change and move with the times, they have been around for a hundred years and they will be fine in the long term.
I'm not sure how you can say that with a straight face. The iOS game market is, by the nature of the hardware, casual. Nintendo has a HUGE library of classic casual games that late Baby Boomer, Gen X and early Gen Yers would gobble up. That is the base market. Then it expands to late Gen Y and current generation. And that is just for the back catalog going back 35 years to Donkey Kong.
Also, when you say it's too late for Nintendo go get a big piece of the iOS pie, who exactly owns this big pie piece that is now under lock and key in Al Capone's vault? The is no single predominant game iOS game maker and the #1 game studio is constantly changing. Geez copy cat games like Candy Crush took in $500K a day in the iOS App store at their peak and you are telling us Nintendo couldn't make bank on classics like Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Zelda, etc. even as it develops new titles like EA?
People also don't know or forget that Nintendo release NES during a time where the video game market was crashing due to saturation of the market. Yet they emerged victorious. People laughed at them for adding motion controls. Then sony and Microsoft had to scramble around and add motion controls to their consoles.
No handheld console maker has yet to outsell a nintendo handheld since the relase of thr game boy.
Nintendo is unique because they are a dedicated gaming company that makes both games and consoles unlike Sony and Microsoft who were already established companies and decided to go into thr gaming industry.
Nintendo "plays it safe." There is no way they spend money, R&D on consoles without their handheld success. I doubt they would exist if solely a home console company, not with MS and Sony.
1983 could happen again. The high cost of HD games on Xbox One and PS4, tens of thousands of cheap games on IOS. If these IOS games tried to come on the NES in those days, 99% of them would be rejected for poor quality
I'm not sure I understand your diatribe. I owned the original NES and GameBoy, and many of those console's successors so I know Nintendo. They have not been as stellar of a company the past 15 years as you say. In fact, but for the Wii phenomenon and portables, they'd already be DOA. Their best asset right now is their game catalog. Their hardware is pathetic. Handhelds were awesome in the 90s and 00's but they are a bit obsolete now. The current generation of kids have iPod touches, iPhones, and iPads, not GameBoys (check sales# please don't argue on anecdotes, i.e., my niece loves her 3DS, etc). So if Nintendo is going to move with the times then it has to reconcile that the stand alone casual gaming hardware category is dead and isn't coming back.
Yes, Nintendo is an old company. 100 years ago is wasn't making video games, but playing cards.
I don't see a crash coming like in 1983 because the gaming user base is much larger today, back then it really was a male teenager hobby. Also, major markets like Asia were underdeveloped back then, people didn't have the purchasing power outside of Western Europe, Japan and the U.S. to buy PCs or consoles...and of course hardware costs dropped a lot considering inflation.
As for the quality argument: for most of these additional casual players, the poor quality (I largely agree with your sentiment as someone who enjoys video games since the 80s, although the top 1% of games on the app stores is high quality by now) of Android and iOS shovelware unfortunately doesn't matter.
The numbers prove it, these users are happy to play and enjoy simple games for a few minutes a day on breaks or in the evening. They don't have time to finish a Mario or Zelda game or play multi-player online games.
I'm also sad to see free2play (sometimes indeed just pay2win schemes from developers) emerge, but the costs of traditional, traditional games have become prohibitive and too risky for smaller studios.
I see a future of even fewer, blockbuster titles (GTA, Battlefield...) for PC, Sony and Microsoft platforms with non-gaming services (streaming, on-demand content) for core gamers - and a myriad of smaller and cheap downloadable titles on Android and iOS on the other end for casual gamers.
Where does this new world leave Nintendo long-term with their outdated online services, fewer multiplayer franchises and few third-party titles in general? I really don't know, they are somehow stuck in their old ways.
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70% is better than 0%, and they need to understand that.
imo, the days of portable condole are about to end. those who has advanced smartphone (android or iOS based) don't carry 2 (or 3) devices when their smartphone can do it all (games/music/phone calls). maybe those with the more basic smartphones would go for a console, but then consoles' and games' prices will have to go down, so that's not really a viable solution for nintendo.
i would really love playing super mario or donkeykong (and other titles) from nintendo, but i don't want ANOTHER device to carry around, to make sure it's charged and keep an eye on.
Oh, come on! Stop being all rational and stuff. We all know what would be ideal... and that is Nintendo games on smartphones, tablets and computers. It might not be likely, but it would be very cool. So stop making sense and join the hype train!
Whenever this happens, I hope Nontendo eases up on the app pricing. My 7-yr old son was begging for a 3DS for Christmas, so Santa obliged. Now it sits collecting dust because he can't afford the "good" games and dear old dad isn't forking over >$15 for even a used game.
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Nintendo would be foolish not to create game titles for the iPhone, and the iPad.
Let me correct that: Nintendo was foolish not to create game titles for the iPhone, and the iPad.
WAY too late to the game. They will never succeed making any of their own equipment. It is absolutely critical that they make as many as their games into apps as possible, and with their console-only games turning to apps on Roku and Apple TV using iOS devices as controllers. A lot of this won't be hard to do and will result in MILLIONS of happy people, which means LOTS OF MONEY!
So when you go to a shop and buy a Nintendo game, the shop selling it does that for free? The shop employees are all volunteers working for free? The shopping mall lets the shop open there rent free, and pays for their electricity? What world are you living in?
What?!?
How can you even dare to say that when the very article you're citing
tells of the greatest latecomer of all to the portable entertainment game,
that, of course, being Apple, now being King Of The Hill!
Mario this, Zelda that ....
It'll be a huge revenue stream for them no matter when they begin.
Anybody with a pulse.
What, you actually think only little kids play Nintendo?
The average gamer is in their 30s, my friend.
Nintendo's path isn't all that clear
They really have a couple of options that are realistic...
1. Continue the custom hardware/software route: this is their traditional strength, but they need to count on innovation to make it work - and the WiiU wasn't innovative in nearly the same way the Wii was.
2. Go all the way into software. Just start publishing for iOS/Android/Steam/Xbox/PS4 etc.
3. Do the Kindle model and use a customized Android. I think they may try this, but I expect them to fail.
They really have a couple of options that are realistic...
1. Continue the custom hardware/software route: this is their traditional strength, but they need to count on innovation to make it work - and the WiiU wasn't innovative in nearly the same way the Wii was.
2. Go all the way into software. Just start publishing for iOS/Android/Steam/Xbox/PS4 etc.
3. Do the Kindle model and use a customized Android. I think they may try this, but I expect them to fail.