Topic: Investors Heavily Criticize Nintendo's Performance

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't believe smartphone gaming is a fad. However, it certainly doesn't make sense for Nintendo to jump into that market, creatively or economically.

[Ceric]

I don't believe smartphone gaming is a fad. However, it certainly doesn't make sense for Nintendo to jump into that market, creatively or economically.

I agree with this.  I put smartphone gaming in the same space as Minesweeper and Solitare.  Which that space is hard to break into in a lasting way like Solitare.

[Ian Sane]

If Nintendo went into smartphone gaming it would kill the 3DS.  That's their competition.  Their investors might as well be asking them to make Xbox 360 games.  They can make smartphone games or they can make 3DS games but they can't make both.

I think handheld gaming is dying.  The DS owes a huge chunk of its success to casual gamers.  Those casual gamers are gone and no 3D gimmick is going to win them back.  They already own or want to own a smartphone.  If they can play games on their phone, they don't need to buy a Nintendo handheld.  You can argue that smartphone games suck.  Doesn't matter.  When did quality matter to casuals?  They just view videogames as a mindless distraction.  They can get that kind of game on their phone.

The market for a dedicated handheld videogame system are hardcore gamers.  It's the guys who just need to continue playing videogames when they're on the bus or on vacation.  They want a fuller experience than what a phone will provide for them.  The 3DS has done a shitty job of attracting this audience because it just plain has dick all selection for games.

I think the future is for handhelds and consoles to be one.  I don't mean we all play on these tiny screens because I sure don't want that.  I think though that we'll have one format and one can choose if they want to buy a handheld model or a home model.  Ideally you should be able to hook up your handheld to a TV as well.  You buy a game and it works on either model.  Graphics are plateauing on consoles and eventually handheld technology will catch up to them.  Then is to time to switch to one format.  Core gamers will enjoy having the flexibility to play games in whatever way best suits their lifestyle.  It isn't like you buy seperate songs or movies for home or portable purposes.  You can listen to MP3s on an MP3 player or though speakers in your house.  You can watch a DVD on your home theatre setup or on a portable DVD player on a plane.  There is no reason to have seperate formats for the same thing unless there is some technological limitation that demands it.  We used to have records for home and 8-tracks in your car.  Once we switched to cassettes and CDs, 8-tracks died because there was no point in having a seperate format when the normal format worked in both environments.

Next gen should be the unified format.  Though their interest in gimmicks like 3D and tablet controllers can **** that all up.  The gimmicks realistically are just an excuse to justify the seperate formats.  They impress casuals but that audience is lost to smartphones for GOOD so it's time Nintendo stopped artificially creating justifications for seperate hardware and merge them.  Hell, we already have the dual screen and touchscreen on both systems now!  If the 3DS successor is as powerful as the Wii U, why would it have to be a different format?

[Chozo Ghost]

We used to have records for home and 8-tracks in your car.  Once we switched to cassettes and CDs, 8-tracks died because there was no point in having a seperate format when the normal format worked in both environments.

8-tracks were not only for cars. The format died because it sucked not because it only worked in cars. My grandma had an 8 track player in her living room so I know for a fact it wasn't just a car thing, and I don't know why you're thinking it was.

[Stogi]

Children will always be the main target for handheld gaming. No parent wants to give their young child an expensive phone. They may let them play with their iphones and ipads, but they will never EVER buy them those products unless they expect it to be lost or broken in a week.

That's were Nintendo's niche has always lied. Children. KIDDY. Whether they are playing at home or on the go, they will always, always need games. Tough, durable games.

The reason why the DS was so popular was because it broaden it's appeal from children and teens to everyone. The GB:SP was the first step in making gaming cool or 'hip' for the masses, and the DS just built on that design. The 3DS is trying to continue that design and capitalize on the 3D fad. Who knows if it'll work. As a successor to the DS, it'll be just fine. But an outstanding success? We'll see.

[Ian Sane]

I'm pretty sure the reason 8 track was even invented was so that you could listen to music besides the radio in your car.  You could not possibly have a record player in a car.  The use in the car was the whole reason they took off, though they did offer home players.

If you think about it, why do we have seperate console and handheld videogame systems.  Why wasn't the Game Boy just a handheld NES?  Well NES carts are too big for starters but, ignoring that, shrinking the hardware into a handheld at the time would not have been cost feasible and would have devoured batteries.  That's why the Game Boy had to be scaled down and thus needed it's own format.  The Game Boy even had the same exact button layout as the NES.  It was entirely technological limitations that established the seperation between consoles and handhelds.  Otherwise the TurboExpress would have taken off and Sega would have bypassed the Game Gear entirely in favour of the Nomad.

Keep in mind that eventually downloads are going to be the future so we're not even going to be limited by the size of the media.  Both handhelds and consoles can connect to the internet.  In terms of specs the 3DS is actually SUPERIOR to the Wii!  So what keeps these things seperate?  Well the 3D of the 3DS cannot be replicated on a console without the purchase of a very expensive TV.  The dual screens and touchscreen are not available YET but will be when the Wii U comes out.  The Wii has motion control which, in the "waggle the remote" method, is not feasible on a handheld.  Kinect would also not be possible on a handheld.  But are any of these mandatory features?  3D sure isn't.  You can turn it off on the 3DS so there is no reason games could not just offer it as a feature that you can only see with a portable model or a 3DTV.  Kinect is an optional peripheral that could just be something that only works on in a home setting (it would still connect to your portable model for when you hook it up to the TV).  Despite Nintendo's attempts, the remote is no standard and the Wii U proves it.  Like Kinect it can work fine as an optional peripheral that can still work with the portable model when it is used in a home environment.

[Adrock]

I really don't think smartphones gaming is treading on Nintendo's ground. Many people playing games on smartphones didn't buy Nintendo handhelds to begin with. They went from nothing to Android/iPhone, not DS to Android/iPhone. No one is buying smartphones for the purpose of playing games. They're playing games because now they have a device they need and use for other things that just so happens to be able play games. I'm not convinced that the number of people who did own DS and shunned 3DS for smartphone games is terrible high. There will always be a market for dedicated portable game machines. They don't play the same types of games.

[Chozo Ghost]

The GB:SP was the first step in making gaming cool or 'hip' for the masses, and the DS just built on that design.

Actually, its been that way since the original spinach Gameboy. Tetris was the first big mainstream portable game. It was the killer app (along with Mario Land and Kirby and others) which put the Gameboy far ahead of every other competitor and made it mainstream. Adults owned and played original Gameboys just as they do with the DS today. Of course the gaming market had grown much larger since the late 80s, so there are more adults and people in general playing DSes and so on than Gameboys 20 years ago, but the adult to kid ratio of the original Spinach Gameboy probably isn't much different than the adult to kid ratio of the DS.

I remember reading an article somewhere once about how Gunpei Yokoi was inspired to create the Gameboy after watching an adult playing with a calculator on a train. He saw the potential and he was right. It wasn't just something for kids. Tetris was the Brain Age or Nintendogs of its day.

Otherwise the TurboExpress would have taken off and Sega would have bypassed the Game Gear entirely in favour of the Nomad.

Actually, the Game Gear itself was just a portable Master System. So it was a similar concept to the Nomad in that respect. The only difference between the Game Gear and the Master System other than the fact one was portable is that the carts were physically different, but with third party adapters it was easily possible to run master system carts on the game gear and vice versa.

[ThePerm]

I don't believe smartphone gaming is a fad. However, it certainly doesn't make sense for Nintendo to jump into that market, creatively or economically.

im not saying they'll go away, im saying that their spike in sales will. What will happen is there will come to be franchises in smartphone gaming that dominate the market and become popular and choke out competition. Also, certain games will peak, they'll release sequels, and these sequels will be basically the same thing with little difference, there will be diminishing returns. Sound Familiar?