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I've always believed that a "software meritocracy" ... a market with entry to all and rewards to winners ... would create a massive wave of game development ... and the iPhone App Store has proved this true.
Meanwhile Nintendo has been having some problems. The 3DS has not sold as well as expected, even after Nintendo discounted the device (something they had not done for such a new item in quite some time ... maybe Virtual Boy?). The Wii's appeal has wained and the prospects for the next generation hardware are uncertian.
The result:
The last six months may have been much worse for Nintendo than the company has previously admitted. According to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun--as related by Reuters, Nintendo will show a fiscal first-half loss of 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) when it announces its earnings tomorrow.
At the same time there's a real hunger for Nintendo IP on iOS and other devices. An example would be "Duck Hunt AR" which was an augemented reality version of the classic "Duck Hunt" game. The app has already been pulled from the store, probably becuse of copyright issues.
Video demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgIhNIb1L5E
There is no doubt that Nintendo has created some of the greatest games in video game history and I for one, know they would be blockbusters on the iPhone and similar devices.
So, will Nintendo go the way of Sega and become a game publisher? Well unless some major changes occur, that seems to be a good probability.
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http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/sony-estimates-3-2b-loss-this-year-171-millio
n-cost-for-psn-b/
I don't think it makes financial sense for Nintendo to ever going to Android because of rampant piracy, and they're known for being aggressive for going after pirates.
I don't think Sony's Experia game sales have been worthwhile up to this point as well, so that doesn't indicate that it's a good plan.
Android has the problem that users are generally NOT opted into the billing system. On iOS over 95% have opted into iTunes.
Sony had a GOLDEN opportunity when Sony/Ericsson begged the parent company to allow them to do a phone based on the PSP:
http://www.extremepreneur.com/extremepreneur/2009/01/sony-to-sony-ericsson-drop-
dead.html
Heck, this is the exact same argument you could have used on the original Xbox, which, if you recall, was no success by any metric until Halo came along.
I'm not saying you're wrong, to be sure. That would require just as powerful a crystal ball as then one you're using. Would you like to share the evidence you're basing this off of? For the record, the 3DS has made a comeback in Japan, and I think there's been a lot of bad press around not very bad performance.
It's one thing to say that Nintendo's not as successful as it has been since 2006. I think most of us will agree with that. It's another thing to even think that Nintendo is doomed to bow out of the hardware race because it might only do as well as, say, the Nintendo Gamecube.
Please, tell us more!
If you look at the numbers, nearly $700 million are in exchange losses. A further $232 million in non-exchange losses.
Without the exchange loss, they'd be posting a $500 million profit.
From Bloomberg: "Nintendo, which gets about 80 percent of its revenue from Americas and Europe, is predicting lower profit after the yen gained against the dollar and surged to a decade high against the euro, trimming the repatriated value of overseas sales."
The markets together with the earthquake made this last year very bad to all the industry in Japan, so it's normal that Nintendo would suffer with that.
Plus, the 3DS may not be the seller they were expecting, but it's selling quite well. Just look at the DS sales during their first year... The media has been doing quite a bad work with 3DS.
The reason why so many people and media want to see Nintendo IP's on iOS is beyond me...
Also bear in mind that since its inception, the App store has only made $2.6 billion for developers (as of July this year). That's less than what Nintendo makes in a down year ($2.84 billion and I think that's just the first half).
Sure they wouldn't have as high expenses, those always spike when new hardware is launched. But they wouldn't have nearly as high a revenue, they'd have to split the money with Apple, have no royalties of their own from 3rd parties, and they'd still end up hurting from the exchange rate.
But yeah, wishful thinking but that in my opinion is not going to happen.
The entire video game industry is going thru a sea-change in the midst of all of this as well. It will be 'interesting' to see how the roll out of the next generation of consoles goes.
What would help Nintendo is if it adopted an "app store" like strategy to drive content to its devices. That would be a huge cultural shift for them. Nintendo's paternalistic view of software was motivated by the disaster of the collapse of the video game industry in '83. Times have changed and Apple's shown that a App Store with low barriers to entry can still produce brilliant titles.
It's an interesting affair in any case.
I agree that an App Store like strategy for their consoles would be great, and Nintendo really needs to pay attention to their online market.
But yeah, it's an interesting affair :)
Eventually Nintendo realized that CD-i was an abject failure and just walked away from the idea of a SuperFamicom/CD-i device.
FYI: The Baer patent case almost closed Activsion down (I was there). It was the event that pushed Activision into Chap. 11 and enabled Kotick to come in and rescue the company.
All I can remember is those atrocious Zelda games... If they decide to release their IPs on iOS, I just expect that they will be full scale Nintendo games in terms of overall quality and gameplay (unlike the Zelda CD-i titles...).
- The Economy at the time
- The value of the Yen at the time
- The DS was an experiment. It didn't have to move units, they had the true successor to the Game Boy at the sidelines, not really caring if the DS lived or died.
- By distancing itself from the Game Boy name, the DS also distanced itself from the lofty expectations associated with the brand.
- The Economy at the time
- Doom sayers are sitting around preaching about how screwed Nintendo is, shareholders are pressuring them with stupid suggestions. The climate around the 3DS is far worse, the most cynicism the DS got was that it wasn't going to hold out against the PSP, but again, it didn't really need to. It was cheaper, and like I said, primarily an experiment.
- Did I mention the economy?
Yes, iOS is more relevant today than it's ever been, and absolutely, Nintendo should step up the eShop to take on smaller downloads from the iOS dev crowd (getting GameLoft in there is a good first step), and of course there's plenty that Nintendo could and should learn from the iOS scene, but to say that nothing short of fully embracing iOS and jumping ship on their own investments will save them from TEH DOOM is just idiotic.
TL;DR: The original DS was cheaper, came at a very different time. Teh doom is still stupid.
I agree that they are better off than Sega was, when Sega left hardware entirely ... but it's not a rosy picture either.
To contrast: This is basically the first year Nintendo has posted a loss and most of it was from currency prices (rising yen versus falling euro). Nintendo holds around $10 billion in cash in various currencies and this is where a lot of the loss happened.
The 3DS has had a rough start but it's been the top-selling console in Japan since the price drop. Also:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38151/Nintendo_3DS_Sales_Hit_668M. php
And just to throw this out there: Microsoft launched the Xbox brand in 2001 and it did not become profitable until 2008.
This article's analysis is a little too simplistic.
Are Wiis being given away with a subscription to a money sinking, failed, and ahead of its time online service? No, no they are not.
The 3DS is selling more than the DS was at this point in it's lifetime. The Wii has one good (okay, amazing) game coming out for the rest of it's lifetime, and it's the most expensive game they've ever made, all the high profile 3DS games are about to launch, and Nintendo will have a home console out that will thoroughly out power Microsoft's and Sony's for 2 - 3 years.
At this very point in time, Nintendo has been doing WAY more spending and creating than selling. And the current thought is that Nintendo is going to abandon all that and make it's fortune by selling 99 cent games while Apple takes their cut and rakes in on the hardware?
That is, in all serious, far beyond stupidly absurd. WHY IS EVERYONE SAYING THIS??
Time will tell.
Sony on the other hand had the opportunity to do a PSP phone in 2008 and rejected it.
http://gigaom.com/2011/11/09/sorry-nintendo-sony-phone-games-win-more-dollars/
In 2009, portable gaming revenue in the U.S. was worth $2.7 billion. Sony and Nintendo, whose portable devices play games that can cost between $5 and $40, accounted for over 80 percent of mobile game revenue. Android and iOS games are usually free, 99 cents or, occasionally, a few dollars more. They made pretty big dent in 2010 by grabbing 34 percent of the revenue of $2.5 billion, but the major damage was done this year. By the end of 2011, Flurry says mobile game revenue in the U.S. will equal $3.3 billion, and iOS and Android will account for 58 percent of that, compared to Sony’s 6 percent, and Nintendo’s 36 percent.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pokemon-yellow/id501950963?mt=8
It's Finally Arrived!
Pokémon Yellow is here!
Your very own Pokémon legend is about to begin!
I don't know if this is licensed or what, but it sure looks like it was.
http://toucharcade.com/2012/02/20/non-functional-pokemon-yellow-app-hits-the-app
-store/
This part is interesting:
Nintendo or the Pokemon Company doesn't seem to be too concerned with pulling Pokemon apps, by the way. There are more than a handful on the store, all unsanctioned, and from what we can tell, unchanged since their initial appearances. The chart positioning is ultimately going to get Apple's attention, however. We expect Pokemon Yellow to disappear within hours of this posting.
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Pokedex+for+iPhone/news.asp?c=46630
The Pokemon Company announced a new version of the Pokedex compendium for iOS devices in Japan.
Available for download now, NeoGAF reports that the Pokedex app is compatible with iPhones 3GS and up, iPads (iPad 2 and up), and the 5th generation iPod Touch.
In terms of functionality, it appears to be a port of Pokedex 3D Pro, and uses the pre-Unova Pokemon models. This indicates that the app will deliver the same functionality of Pokedex 3D Pro.