That’s pretty doubtful. A third of all GCN owners owned Melee, only a tenth of Wii owners owned Brawl. Melee was a legitimate system champion whereas Brawl was just a good game (for people who don’t play fighting games).
Also, as some anecdotal evidence, I barely ever hear anybody talk about the new Smash game, except for Megaman being in it.
@serpent I agree with hawkingbird try reading carefully. The guy’s central point was that Nintendo’s greatest strength which is it’s strict adherence to it’s policies of quality and universal appeal is also it’s greates weakness. He’s saying Nintendo needs to start being more flexible and adapt to the current market if it wants to survive.
Nintendo can’t be self sufficient anymore and needs to realize they need the help of third party developers and at least on that front I completely agree.
@Raz0r @unreallystic I’m glad at the very least Nintendo has better financial sense than you two. Releasing first party Nintendo games on smartphones would be the gaming equivalent of the housing bubble crisis, short term profits in favor of long term suicide is not the way to go. Even you two said it yourselves, people buy Nintendo systems primarily for Nintendo games, the second those games become available elsewhere, their own hardware becomes the new ET.
Regardless of the smartphone hate, mobile gaming IS a big market and any major publisher without a mobile division is basically saying they don’t need any more money. Nintendo is crazy to not be cashing in on those IPs that EVERYONE knows.
I think that has to do with the hype train not being as strong with Smash U as it was with Brawl. The smash dojo would reveal new piece on Brawl everyday with a character reveal once a month. A screenshot a day isn’t as awesome.
Maybe it was, I don’t think it is anymore though. I remember looking into the sector awhile back, and while it was hot several years ago it cratered a bit after, and while it recovered a bit it’s still pretty far off those old highs. I remember looking at Zynga, GLUU and EA’s mobile platforms. Maybe it’s viable again, I don’t know, I don’t really trade anymore so I don’t have to look at this stuff.
The thing that I think mobile gaming really needs, is to shake off the assumption that it’s basically only shit like Angry Birds (which a lot of it is, no doubt.) But once onboard storage gets even bigger, the hardware gets more powerful, and publishers stop thinking about mobile games as time wasters rather than a true successor to the portable gaming, you’ll hopefully see games that rival what we see on portables. Graphically and sound-wise, we’re already there. Games like Real Racing 3, Modern Combat 4, and The Room are fantastic, borderline-console quality games.
But to me it seems like a no-brainer. You have a piece of hardware like an iPhone that EVERYONE has, and you’re not developing for it? Foolishness. Especially when Nintendo has loads of NES and SNES games that they really aren’t doing much with outside of putting them on VC. Expand VC to mobile and there’s a whole other market of folks you can sell to. NES games especially are perfect fare for mobiles because there aren’t a lot of buttons and they don’t require a lot of horsepower to run if you program them right.
As far as the companies go, the general opinion of Zynga is pretty low and EA doesn’t offer as much bang for the buck as other companies in the mobile dept so that might account for their stock prices. Try looking at a company like Gameloft, though. They have a better rep and their library of games is pretty solid.
You’ll need to change the controls entirely if you want to shake off that assumption. The touchscreen is contributing to the dumb down nature of many mobile games. Most game genres are incompatible with it. No matter how well optimized the controls are an FPS won’t feel good on a touchscreen. Even the games in which it can work on gets dumb down as endless runners are platformers that let’s the game do the running for you and shumps do the shooting for you.
I’m aware that bluetooth controllers are becoming more available but you think the average joe is gonna carry that controller around to play games?
Not to mention, as already pointed out, those controllers are incredibly expensive.
I’m not really in support of smartphone gaming, I prefer handhelds with traditional controls. But on gaming sites, there seems to be this dissonant attitude towards mobile gaming, as though it isn’t a threat to the last hardware platform Nintendo’s successful at. Jor-El trying to explain to the elders that Krypton is dying. We’re already seeing other game companies making serious attempts at getting established in an otherwise fledgling market. Why do “but but touch controls suck and they’re glorified flash games” always seem to drown out the point that these games are developed on devices nearly everyone has, and generates billions of dollars in revenue-- in Japan, more than console/handheld gaming?
Releasing official Nintendo games on smartphones would be shooting themselves in the foot. Why kill off the one strong aspect of your company just to make a quick buck?
Using a touchscreen for controlling games is ass and will never be able to work exactly like a handheld designed and optimized specifically for gaming. This is why I don’t like emulation on smartphones.
Why would it be a shoot in the foot? Releasing Nintendo and SNES games on the smartphone won’t take many resources at all. Actually, it would be so much easier for them to put out an optimized emulator for the smart phone for free and charge people $2-3 for an optimized ROM.
Since people are running emulators and ROMs on their phone already, making it way easier for them to do would be a huge cash grab that doesn’t cost much to make
also, playing simple RPGs on a smart phone is completely fine, it’s those action games that get all screwy
Yeah but the first statement you made is the same one everyone makes. The people that are going to buy those smartphone games already did it. They aren’t going to just keep buying new ones. That’s the argument against the Wii-U in the first place, that people that got Wii will just sit on their Wiis and not get a new one.
Nintendo would only be shooting themselves in the foot competing with their own handhelds, which right now dominate the market. If anything, if Nintendo REALLY wants into the smartphone business, all they have to do is slap Android onto their next handheld and put in phone features. Right now the smartphone market pretty much has topped off anyway, the hardware differences are very small and upgrades are very incremental. They can just start a subsidiary business for the cellphones so they’re not sold under the Nintendo moniker, and then slap the gaming onto the phones or a line of them, similarly to how most luxury car manufacturers have a budget car company they sell too.
if nintendo and samsung made a phone together that could play 3ds and DS cartridges, i would sell both my phone and 3ds and buy the thing on the spot
even if it doesn’t have 3D shenanigans
Well this is the stupidest thing I’ve read this year thus far.
They don’t just have games, they have games with subscriptions and monetized gameplay and social components so your bum ass friends can pressure you to keep playing or play the next thing. Doesn’t mean every or even many mobile games catch on at this point, but when one does it’s an inferno. It’s a volatile market that’s hard to predict, but gaming on smart devices is only a few years old.
I agree that making smartphone games would mean they’re competing with themselves against their last successful platform, but that also supports the claim that mobile gaming is threatening console/handhelds. If it was a different enough market, it wouldn’t matter if they put out Nintendo games (or gave a license out to other publishers, like those Philips/PC games years ago)
How stupid are you? You are going to sit there and type this out, not being facetious at all, and think they won’t change their business strategy? Everyone on the planet knows what happens when a business doesn’t adapt to the times with the music industry, and that is slowly happening to Nintendo. The company can go one of three ways: invest in more expensive hardware and compete for the gamer dollar but paying more out the nose to create this shit; keep putting out underpowered hardware that is aimed for “everyone” (which is a terrible marketing strategy, since to successfully market you must have a target audience); or be done with consoles all together and put out games on smartphones, devices almost everyone who matters has.
I think Nintendo should be given a couple of years to see if they have to go down the mobile gaming path. They are not going to compete with their own handheld for the moment. Even if you think releasing an emulator on smartphones appears to be not that big of a deal. I don’t think as a business they won’t take that decision based on what previously stated. Especially when they can use and run old school titles on their handheld as a selling point for that particular hardware as well with better controls on top of that as a feature.
However, if all fails for them this gen. Their IPs won’t die but the shift to mobile is going to happen. Or they need to make more powerful consoles tbh. Partner up with some other tech giant or think of something desperate to keep printing real money.
It’s not long term suicide. Short term profits - at THIS point - yes, suicide NO. I’m not saying “Son, they need to release that Mario Sunshine on the iPad yo, or that Luigi Mansion? son that would be CRAZY!”. I’m saying "Yo all those games they have on NES, SNES, GB, etc the stuff on truly DEAD consoles that make them NO MONEY, but are actually already playable on phones with emulators installed? They should release those and make money off them, its EASY, it can be done piece meal to milk them and build anticipation, it can be done through a single Nintendo app much like the Atari arcade app on iOS, and it will NOT negatively impact their ability to promote anything on new hardware. Lets cut the crap - do you realize how much money could be had if Nintendo released a Pokemon with in-app purchasing on droid/iOS that also had PvP to it? It’s money that is just SITTING THERE to be had and milked, and it won’t negatively impact their 3DS sales or their Wii U sales.
What Nintendo needs now more than anything is a vote of confidence. The Wii U isn’t bad hardware - behind yes - but it does bring some positives to the table, but its stuck in the cycle of no one wanting to develop for it because their are so few sold, and so few sold because no one wants to develop for it. The 3DS took a long time to get moving, and it’s good now, but they are in dire straights of losing the living room, they need to expand, get more confidence back, and use that to reposition themselves in the living room.
@raz0r you should try reading posts you quote more carefully.
@unreallystic A big part of Nintendo’s revenue comes from it’s shitty digital marketplace for Wii U and especially 3DS, where countless gamers are hungry for the old classics, just take a look at the 3DS thread. Releasing what you call “dead” games on smartphones would still possibly be Nintendo competing with themselves. It’s only anecdotal evidence, but I asked @sonichuman who manages a GameStop how his customers view Nintendo and he said a lot of people want to play Nintendo games, but just not on Nintendo systems and wish Nintendo would develop for MS and Sony. So if old Nintendo games were released on smart phones it may feed into this desire and train customers to expect newer and newer games to be released on them too as time went on, effectively killing all desire for new Nintendo hardware.
It’s a complicated and difficult position to be sure, I mean common sense dictates that the smart phone market is so profitable Nintendo would be dumb not to try to somehow tap into it. BUT the fact is people buy Nintendo systems for Nintendo developed games, no one goes “yo gotta get dat NFS on Wii!” and the second you suggest to consumers that they can get Nintendo games without committing to Nintendo hardware they’re done on that side of the business.
This article shows how all financial sites and analysts are clamoring for Nintendo to put their first party games on smart phones and the writer disagrees with that strategy: