There's a market for phones, and there's a market for consoles and handheld games consoles. The games on each platform are also completely different -- as they should be. Casual gaming is great, but the market for real games is also great.
Not everything is a zero sum game.
Nintendo needs to be an Apple (which it arguably already is), not a Sega. Keep the hardware software vertical integration. It's Nintendo's most valuable asset.
This is a Michael Dell "sell Apple and return the money to the investors" moment. Nintendo isn't the most profitable company in the world for a quarter and it's time to give up and start share cropping? Ridiculous.
It is completely viable to create an upgradable platform that does not obsolete itself by the time it is released - the problem is not technology itself, it is the console manufacturer management notion that it is a good idea to have planned obsoletion every 3 years or so to get people to buy new hardware.
Give me an upgradeable PS3 with an SSD and Steam (rather than the 10 times slower Bluray) - and tell me that it wont kill desktop gaming.
Nintendo, MS and Sony will be killed by mobile gaming - the latest Kal El pre-production silicon has a 12-core GPU and a 4-core CPU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvaDtshLY8&feature=playe...
Just a matter of time before Crysis 2 works on your big screen TV through mini HDMI - what remains to be figured out are the controllers
Customers already accept that they cannot play certain games (Crysis?) if their system is not upto mark. Windows 7 has the notion of a graphics "score" as well to figure out whether to turn on Aero.
The only reason why this is not done is forced obsoletion - the customer behavior has existed for a decade or more.
The Wii, X360 and the PS3 have been around for 5+ years, and will be around for at least 1-2 more. They've all sold a crapload of units. Remember all those articles about Nintendo selling a bazillion Wiis? They made truckloads of money.
Obsolete in 5-7 years is a pretty good product life time.
I think the one leg up Nintendo has over Apple is that no one is going to buy their under 14 year old an iPhone. But for anyone older, a iPhone would make more economical sense.
All of what can run and play on a DS unit can run and play on an iPhone, if you're talking about pixel pushing horsepower. But a lot of it will never play correctly (in terms of gameplay feel) because of the iPhone's lack of any physical controller.
There are quite a few games (eg. Plants vs Zombies) that work great on a touchscreen, but there's an entire universe of games that really need a physical controller to feel right -- which is why many, many DS games are d-pad controller focused for main gameplay despite the touchscreen being available as an option. It'll be a horribly sad day when Nintendo (and to a lesser degree, Sony) concede the entire market to touchscreen-only devices.
As a for-example, you will never play a true Mario Brothers platformer game on an iPhone. You simply can't capture the feel of that experience on a touchscreen-only device.
Pokemon could arguably work okay on a touchscreen-only device, but that's one title cherry picked out of thousands, there are tons of DS games that would suffer greatly by being stuffed into a touchscreen control scheme, and that includes lots of games that are nothing like "Call of Duty". It isn't about how complicated the control scheme is, it is about the need for actual physical switch controls. Even games with dead-simple control schemes like Bomberman or Tetris have this issue (and yes, I know there is Tetris for the iOS -- it is an abomination that proves my point nicely, IMO).
I've played Tetris for iPod (with the circular wheel) and that was playable and enjoyable. Controls just need to be adapted properly.
There's no reason the D-pad and physical buttons are required for good controls. Just because current game ports have bad touchscreen control implementations doesn't mean it's impossible. In fact, the bad implementations are probably due to the fact a lot of them naively try to simulate DS-style controls on a touch screen.
There are tons of iOS games that utilize the iphones touchscreen perfectly for good controls, so it's absolutely possible to design good controls into games. It's just like when the DS came out and they started designing games to take advantage of dual screens, touch screens, microphones, and cameras.
With that I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree. IMO just because you can slap a couple of "virtual joysticks" on the screen and pull input data from them does not mean you have a system that replicates dual-analog sticks, and I say that as both a programmer and a gamer.
"There are tons of iOS games that utilize the iphones touchscreen perfectly for good controls, so it's absolutely possible to design good controls into games."
Like I said, for some games, yes, you can have good touchscreen controls. But by limiting the system to only touchscreen controls you're cutting out a giant amount of games that could otherwise run fine on the hardware but whose controls do not naturally map to touchscreen.
Yes, you could produce a version of New Super Mario Bros that used a virtual touchscreen joystick, but it wouldn't be the same game, at all, because the physical nature of the controller has a huge impact on overall gameplay. Nintendo above all other companies recognizes this (thankfully), which is why they have continued to find success even after down periods in their hardware cycles. If they gave all that up and just focused on the iOS market, that would be the worst thing to happen to gaming since Looking Glass went under.
"It's just like when the DS came out and they started designing games to take advantage of dual screens, touch screens, microphones, and cameras."
When the DS first came out, games went crazy trying to support the touchscreen because of the novelty, yes, but well within a year of the system's launch they started to pull back on that and produce games with largely classical controls that only used the accessories for little flourishes and not for main gameplay. Why? Because there are a LOT of games that require physical switch controllers to play correctly. (The same applies to the Wii where they went nuts with motion control and eventually started using that primarily as a flourish for most games, because not all games are a natural fit for motion control).
They do almost replicate the joysticks. I never said it's a good replacement.
> Like I said, for some games, yes, you can have good touchscreen controls. But by limiting the system to only touchscreen controls you're cutting out a giant amount of games that could otherwise run fine on the hardware but whose controls do not naturally map to touchscreen.
You can make similar arguments against the PS3 or Xbox controllers for not having GPS, Touchscreen, or microphone inputs for controllers. Games take advantage of certain controls because they are made available, if they aren't available, you can adapt.
For the Wii and DS if they started abandoning the new ways of inputs and controls, it's only because the old style controls are still there. It's hard to change the way controls are designed and adapt to new inputs so obviously they'd stick to the standard controls if they are still there.
And you don't have to pay 40$ for a game, only 1-15$. As they said in Penny Arcade: Who has more fun, you with a 40$ game or me with 40 one dollar games?
In addition to that kids usually know exactly what games they want and don't care if they can get 50 games they've never heard about for $1. You don't reason with kids. You get them what they ask for if they deserve it.