Does Apple's iPhone OS 'Game Center' Threaten Nintendo? | Hacker News Reader

Does Apple's iPhone OS 'Game Center' Threaten Nintendo?

pcworld.com

13 pointsanderzole8 comments

Until an iPhone can provide the tactile satisfaction of pressing buttons or the current generation of gamers prefers a touch interface, IMO, no. Pardon the pun, but iPhone vs. Nintendo gaming is like comparing Apples to Oranges.

Touch-screens can be a serious threat, even without directly replacing all things a traditional handheld is good at. It just needs to reduce the argument for a dedicated gaming device, by providing enough games that the DS' audience enjoys.

Touch Screens are no good for a MegaMan. But games on the order of Cooking Mama, Nintendogs, Brain Age, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Harvest Moon, etc -- these make up a huge slice of the DS' most-popular titles. And they don't need buttons.

I think that as long as Mario and Zelda will require buttons, Nintendo will be safe.

Safe, certainly. But potentially finding themselves moving significantly less product to significantly fewer users.

Consider the home console situation: The PS2 had its run of the console business. But the PS3 is struggling to expand out of the core gamer niche. Sony's 'safe' in that the MGS, God of War and Final Fantasy fans aren't going anywhere. But the more-numerous, more-casual gamers, even the gamers who had PS2s and bought God of War, bought Wiis instead.

And the Wii does enough games well enough that it's harder to convince them to buy the PS3 and God of War 3, even though they know they'll never get a game quite like GoW3 on their Wii.

Linked from the article, patent application for game cotroller shell:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/193322/is_apple_developing_ga...

Gaming on the iPhone is nothing like gaming on the DS. The DS provides multiple interfaces (touch input via stylus, tactile game pad) for gaming. The DS is far cheaper. The battery lasts longer on the DS. The DS has better, fuller games, which won't tire you out after 20 minutes of playing.

iPhone is better for super casual gaming. 20 minutes while commuting. Sitting on the couch during a commercial.

Both have their merits, but the iPhone doesn't necessarily threaten Nintendo

No, but it sucks to be OpenFeint at this moment, or so I imagine...

If the iPhone was going to threaten Nintendo, it would have done it already. Game Center-like backends are hardly uncommon on it. OpenFeint has been around for a long time, and it's pretty prevalent.

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