I don't think it's controversial to state that $0.99 games won't have the production qualities of first-party Nintendo titles. The real questions are, which will shape the market in the coming years, and is there's room for both? I'm guessing yes to the latter, but who can say on the former.
Worth reading: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/03/04/nintendo.apple.games/index.html?hpt=C2 I think the sum-up that there is simply too much shit out there hits the nail on the head. But let's face it: The Wii is only a small step up. How many gimmicky mini game compilations does a system need?
Here is an article about Gameloft which I believe it can be related to this thread: http://kotaku.com/#!5732370/meet-the-least-imaginative-video-games-in-the-world
He does have a point to a certain degree. Yes, a lot of mobile phone games are complete shit however there are some excellent titles for very little money. These titles are just as polished if not a little short as those on the DS. Also Nintendo consoles are swarmed with gimmicky crap, especially the Wii which forced me to move on to the 360 and what a smart move that was. Not wrong but idiots :lol: People who play games on facebook and the likes of probably wouldn't play real games in the fist place so I don't see how it's a comparison. I'm a gamer but I can't stand all this social network stuff. sure, it may be the future but it's not for me. It's another one of these "sheep" trends. My mate does it so should I, if you know what I mean. Yakumo
The 200 million who play Facebook games are the same people who played Solitaire on Windows instead of buying a console. Calling them "idiots" is unfair; they obviously don't care about the kind of videogames we play, but that's hardly the point. Monetising them is the issue, and if profit can be made (through advertising etc) then who's to say it's a bad thing? Videogames are being played by everyone, just like books are read by everyone or films are watched by everyone. The disappointing thing from my perspective is that "gamers" still seem to feel that they're entitled to command and judge the entire domain. I don't play Farmville and I never will. I don't play "Scrabulous", or whatever they've decided to call Scrabble now. Point is, when I don't like an album or a book or a film I just avoid it. Sooner or later we're going to have to learn to do the same for games.
I'm not so sure Iwata is against cellphone games or social network games. These forms of gaming have a lot in common with his previous speeches about the value of expanding games into a medium everyone uses and the need to lower the financial barrier to entry for smaller game developers, as well as Nintendo's own efforts to establish a digital distribution service. I think he's more speaking against games/entertainment software that are carelessly made, quickly and cheaply made, in attempts cash in on a current trend or in the hopes of getting lucky in a particular digital marketplace. Games like these flood whatever market space they are presented in (e.g. App store), making quality titles hard to find and offering cheap, underwhelming experiences that ultimately have more of a chance at turning people off from gaming. Maybe I'm just putting my own words in Iwata's mouth, but I feel like he'd more likely be railing against cheap, bad games and the way cellphone and social network game markets lack the rules/motivation needed to push developers to create quality titles, rather than railing against all games and services that are outside of the realm of home and handheld consoles.
When you consider how much shovelware the Wii is host to, Iwata is in no position to comment on the quality or quantity of software in other mediums. Granted, Nintendo themselves don't create and release these titles but they do license them and allow their 'Seal of Approval' to appear on the box, thus immediately nullifying any high horse comments that phone and web game designers: and of the owners of the platforms they're played on: Pit Fighter on the SNES, anyone, or Home Alone? This though just puts the tin hat on it... He wants to maybe look at the ZOO, Nordic Games and Data Design releases of the last 4 years. The same game engine repackaged and retitled ad nauseum with little or no thought gone into design or mechanics. These titles are just spewed out month after month and show no signs of abating. Get your own house in order and pare back the dreck that has flooded your machine since day 1 and then maybe what you have to say will have some relevance. Until then keep schtum :thumbsup:
Yeah, these people aren't "gamers". Playing a videogame of any type does not make you a gamer, you are a gamer if you are happily investing large amounts of time and money in the hobby and it's something you take fairly seriously. Nintendo SHOULD be producing some limited goods for Smartphones though, IMO, but little $0.99 games aren't ever going to fully cannibalize the market for something like a DS because buyers of a DS, de facto, want more of an experience than a non-specialized device like a smartphone can provide.
I pretty much agree with what Iwata said. I've only played 2 iPhone games that were any good; DoDonPachi Resurrection and ESPgaluda II, and I don't think those really count because they're ports. I've never played a game on Facebook, but I don't really feel the need to. I never liked games like Sim City all that much, and Farmville looks like just an extremely simplified, dumbed-down version of that. You get what you pay for when it comes to media, to an extent. You can't expect a $2 game to have the kind of production value that a $60 game has. Of course there are tons of $60 games that are barely worth $2 as well. Here's something that blew my mind: I bought a used 360 game from Gamestop a while ago for $8 or $9. I don't remember what it was, but it was a decent game - and it was well worth $8 or $9. I told my friend about it, and he said something like, "You paid $9 for a videogame? Man, you got ripped. I can get an iPhone game for $2." I felt like saying, "Yeah, and you can get a piece of shit for free. Why should you pay for anything?" I don't get how he can think like that. He owned an NES at one point. He was alive and playing videogames long before the iPhone was invented. It's hard to have faith in humanity sometimes.
EDIT: First and foremost, this conversation is not about dollars because I am "elitist", it's about dollars because we're talking about the business implications of smartphone gaming for Nintendo. If that's not what this thread is about, then I apparently cannot read. I should have clarified. I am speaking of Facebook/Smartphone players who do not own consoles or dedicated portables. My point is that the people who are playing ONLY FB/Phone games were never Nintendo's customers to lose, they aren't interested enough in videogames to ever purchase something like a DS in the first place. Additionally, those who have historically purchased something like a DS may well also be playing Smartphone games (I certainly do), but while our purchases in that arena are helping to raise the sales stats of those more casual games, we aren't being cannibalized in the sense that it is somehow causing us to spend materially less on conventional "full-featured" games. Yes, I would also identify them as "non-gamers", as I am, for this purpose, defining "non gamers" as traditional paying customers of firms like Nintendo. The whole point of this discussion, insomuch as I can tell, is to address whether or not phone/FB games are corroding the customer base of "mainline" game companies like Nintendo. In order for us to evaluate whether or not this is occurring, we need to determine who Nintendo's actual customer base has been and whether or not they're going to be cannibalized. Also, personally, people who buy consoles and then pirate every single game are helping to kill the industry, so I hope they fall down a well and die. On fire. Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that in the United States, the percentage of people who do this is TINY. In Southeast Asia it's huge, but I'm only talking about my home market. I'm not trying to stratify people based on purchasing power. My point is that for someone to play videogames in the past, they had to buy a console, buy software, etc. It required a certain cash outlay and thus, by extension, that person had to really WANT to play games. It was a less casual decision to pay all that money, and the games themselves were more serious as a result because they had to be to justify the expense. And so now we have two categories of people: 1.) Those people, who played "real games" in the past. They might ALSO play smartphone games, but seeing as how they have already demonstrated a willingness to pay $X for "X" worth of videogame experience, it's unlikely that their tastes will immediately become more casual simply because of the emergence of a more casual alternative. 2.) Everyone else. Everyone else never bought games before, so it doesn't matter how much time they spend playing Farmville because it's not like they would otherwise be playing WoW. Cliffs: People who were only ever casual gamers will probably never become "hardcore" gamers. People who were "hardcore" gamers are not going to become more casual gamers simply because a more casual alternative to their hobby now exists.
too much shit at a low price-> Atari phenomenon. The whole Seal of Quality thing was put there to adjust the flow of the market so it doesn't run dry or floods.
Yeah, right Nintendo is doomed Basically what he said is that developers should always aim to maximize their revenue with relatively high price through the quality infused in their software. Selling games for a few bucks that are worthy ( maybe short in content but with good ideas ) isn't the problem ( Nintendo itself do it with the Bit Generation series ). Selling games only because they are cheap, with an aggressive competition toward very low price is the problem. The spread of the idea that videogames are only worth a few cents is what scares Nintendo. Obviously Apple doesn't give a fuck about the matter because they aren't really into videogames. They are simply a platform provider that profit from the royalties of the software released on their e-shop so the more there is the better.
To go back to my impossibly long post above, I don't see why this would even matter. Their existing long-time customer base isn't suddenly going to stop buying Zelda so they can play Farmville. They might do BOTH, but that doesn't affect Nintendo, it only affects Nintendo if they actually STOP buying "normal" games. As far as new casual gamers are concerned, Nintendo IS probably SOL there, but that's *why* these are casual gamers in the first place. Nintendo needs to realize what kind of customers they're dealing with and make product that appeals to them (i.e. stuff that doesn't necessitate a specialized Nintendo hardware purchase). That's the big hump that Nintendo seems unable to get over, is making software for hardware that isn't theirs (i.e. Smartphones). If they don't want to do this, then that demographic is going to be out of reach for them, but it doesn't mean they're going to be out of business because they still have a huge "conventional gamer" demographic. It's a decision, not a threat, per se.
