While industry analysts might be conflicted about Nintendo's partnership with Japanese mobile firm DeNA - a deal which will see Nintendo's IP finally arrive on smartphones and tablets - the mobile development community has reacted in an extremely positive fashion, seeing the Japanese giant's entry into the market as something of a validation for mobile gaming.
Kristian Segerstrale, COO of Super Evil Megacorp, feels that Nintendo's move will have a positive impact on mobile gaming in general, forcing other developers to raise their game:
It's great to see that more core game developers are taking mass market touch screens seriously as a primary gaming device. Having more AAA game developers enter the market is beneficial for both players and the industry as it raises the standards for quality.
Meanwhile, Space Rhino Games President Michael A. Hoyos saw the agreement as a way for both Nintendo and DeNA to get one over on their rivals:
The deal with DeNA is like a small guy jumping on another small guy's shoulder to punch the big guys in the face. Not that DeNA and Nintendo are small, but the reality is they are no longer the leaders of their respective markets. The Nintendo/DeNA alliance is about to dominate mobile in a big way. From here to a year, we will all be saying, 'Oh yeah, they're back!'
Nancy Lu - Creator of Piiig Inc - referred to Nintendo as a "titan", but had some reservations regarding how the company would approach free-to-play on mobile:
Nintendo will be another titan in the mobile game industry, along the lines of Supercell. With their established brand name and likely support from Apple, they won't have issues getting visibility. The upsetting thing is that they will probably employ the same strategy of free-to-pay and cash in on virtual goods. For those of us who enjoyed playing Mario on consoles growing up, it will really change the way the game is played for the worse. I hope they carefully consider their monetization strategy so that they don't frustrate their old fans. If they do it right, it could really pave the way for a new wave of console-to-mobile games.
Ben Cousins - co-founder of The Outsiders - even went as far as to suggest that revenue created by Nintendo's smart device projects could overtake its core business with this playful comment:
Anyone want to predict which year Nintendo's smartphone game business will be bigger than their home console business?
Finally, Vlambeer's Rami Ismail - arguably one of the most respected developers working in mobile gaming today - stated that now Nintendo is joining the smart device industry, all previous bets are off:
If Nintendo can go into the mobile market, all predictions about this industry are void. Only predictions after March 17th are now valid.
What do you think about these comments? Let us know with a comment.
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 44
They won't be so positive once Nintendo schools everyone else.
Some real positive comments there.
I'm a little suprised, I thought some might have feared having more competition.
I'm okay with it honestly. They're still making their own hardware for their core games. Plus games on mobile are developed for mobile so they could be good. They won't be straight ports. Probably some DS/3ds games that are touch-based.
As long as Nintendo doesnt divert the normal amount of attention they give to their Handheld and Consoles, I really could care less about mobile games. Even better, if there is additional life brought to the games through mobile games interacting, I will just consider it DLC and go from there.
If there is a monthly/yearly subscription, I 'may' decide to go for it, or not. It depends on the content I get. I am worried about the "New Club Nintendo" system they are putting into place, however.
Honestly, I would love to see Nintendo make games and DeNA take over with the finalization of online play and interaction. I think Nintendo's strength is not online and if DeNA takes over that aspect, I am sure we will see more Nintendo magic brewing. I think that is what DeNA is looking for too.
I just want to rant over here and say that if Nintendo didn't come up with the touchscreen for the DS, the phones would barely have good games unlike now because everything about the games on phone is through means of touch.
Just wait and see what happens when Nintendo announces their first mobile game. Then we will say that Nintendo didn't have to go mobile.
What would be crazy is if some mobile publishers/developers would rush to release games and patent words that could potentially be used by Nintendo and ask some royalties later. I'm looking at you King for the word "Saga" or was it "Candy"?
They probably see it as Nintendo bringing in people that would only try out the Mobile market if Nintendo made games for it. That way, those people could try out games from these other developers...
@outburst - In that case Nintendo should hurry up and patent the word Super
@FireEmblem - Attack of the mario clones!
The only people I know playing mobile games are people who aren gamers persé but just people looking for something simple and mindless: kids, women and elderly people. That seems to be the same demographic group that did buy the wii: non-gamers looking for something simple and easy and fun. So could be something...
As I had a lot of great console-gaming experiences myself (also on handheld), i can't imagine degrading back to mobile games myself.
I understand why many of you are concerned about Nintendo's move to mobile, but I wouldn't be. Several people at my school talk about having Nintendo games on their smartphones. Once Nintendo lands a fantastic Mario game on The App Store/Google Play, they have officially struck gold.
As long as nintendo is about the quality games, I'm kind of platform agnostic. It's funny how market dynamics can work, though.
@FireEmblem That's what MS and Sony think - what can they copy from Nintendo?
"Another" Titan ? Whos the other one ?
I can see the world waiting each week for their regional downloads as we do now. It is exciting to think about the hype and the amount of fans they will reach now.
I honestly wouldn't mind Nintendo free-to-play games for my phone at all. I mean, I never pay for those, so it'll be more entertainment with IPs I enjoy for zero investment, and they'll surely make profit from the big mass of players out there, which will potentially improve their overall budget for home console games/manpower as well.
If they decide to make them ''pay once - play all you want'' instead, I guess my selection will be far more scarce. I'll definitely pick up anything Zelda or Fire Emblem-related they could possibly dish out, but the rest would likely be a nope.
@Einherjar - Titans
Rovio made $170 million last year
http://fortune.com/2015/03/19/angry-birds/
GungHo Online made $4.5mil PER DAY last year
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/228894/GungHo_has_made_45_million_in_revenue_a_day_during_2014.php
Supercell may have brought in $5 mil PER DAY
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-11-clash-of-clans-daily-revenue-at-5.15-million-hacker
King, well too many numbers for me, but $150ml dividend payment to stockholders must mean they are making some money
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-11-clash-of-clans-daily-revenue-at-5.15-million-hacker
The industry as a whole is growing, Nintendo gets a piece of that, it's still real money.
http://www.etcentric.org/mobile-gaming-revenue-on-an-upswing-supercell-is-top-earner/
Oh, and "titans" in the context of "in the mobile game industry". I'd say its a good bet that those 4 qualify as "titans" when compared to most of the rest.
@BLPs - Sony tried Mobile
Sony has been doing what Nintendo is about to do for a little over a year now, taking their PS3/4 games and making related app mini-games more as advertsiement than anything else:
Knack's Quest
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/06/unlock-knack-items-eventually-in-free-ios-match-3-game-out-no/
Run Sackboy Run (LBP)
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/05/run-sackboy-run-starts-an-endless-stitch-hunt-on-vita-mobile/
Ratchet & Clank
http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/20/ratchet-and-clank-before-the-nexus-companion-game-out-now-on-ios/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=PlayStation%20Mobile%20Inc.&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/playstation-mobile-inc./id912472174
@BLPs And not only that, many other companies, like UbiSoft face heavy criticism for their companion app practices.
Like i stated in an earlier post, the instances of a big "proper" video game company branching out into mobile gaming not facing heavy criticism are few and far between.
More often then not, these mobile "adverts" create more bad press then they help actually advertise the game in question.
Because lets face it, most people heavily into mobile gaming arent interested in video game consoles. Why ? Because they already have their gaming platform.
And those that do know about said advertisement games probably knew about the actual game beforehand anyways.
@BLPs - I know you were referring to their failed "Mobile Platform" campaign or whatever they were last calling it, seemed like Sony changed the name ever yyear, but Ijust wanted to pint out that Sony has already been making "app" games based on their IP but nobody on Pushsquare has been crying "Oh no Sony is doomed, their won't be a PS5 now.". For the past few days the Nintnedo DeNA news has bene treated like Nintneod "boldly going where no gaming company has gone before" meanwhile Sony has been doing the exact same thing for 18 months without nary a whisper.
@Einherjar - But did Knack, Ratchet & Clank: into the Nexus, Little Big Planet 3 and Sly Cooper 4 sell poorly b/c they had accompanying app games? Most of the fear and doom and intrepidation on here seems to be that Nintnedo games won't sell b/c people will play the app games instead, and I don't see that happening. The other fear is that Nitnendo will abandoned the hardware business, but I don't see Sony not making a PS5 b/c of a few app games.
So I'll grant you the app games may not be helping Sony's games garner more sales or making them any more money, but I don't see it as the end of Sony or its own continuing hardware support.
"It's great to see that more core game developers are taking mass market touch screens seriously as a primary gaming device."
I really don't think that's a thing that Nintendo was thinking. Secondary, maybe. Tertiary, absolutely. Primary, I don't think so.
"The upsetting thing is that they will probably employ the same strategy of free-to-pay and cash in on virtual goods."
Nintendo never said their mobile games would be free-to-play. I guess this is an assumption since the most successful games on mobile are free-to-play.
@rjejr What @BLPs said. Pretty much no one even heard or knew about these things. It wasnt advertised, it wasnt promoted. Heck, it wasnt even on the games box or anything.
With UbiSofts example, parts of the game were locked away if you didnt have access to the companion app, and thats what people got irritated by.
Sonys "advertising games" ran completely under the radar and thus, had no purpose whatsoever. They werent even any good as a stand alone title.
Thats basically why Sony canned the whole thing, it didnt work.
If you need to advertise your advertisement, somethings horribly wrong.
And be honest, most if not all of Nintendos own IPs dont really need "appetizers" as they are pretty well known and you know in advance what youre going to get.
And if that didnt get people interested so far, youre not going to win them over via mobile companion apps.
Trust me, this will end up like this:
"I dont need a 3DS, i can play Mario on my phone."
"But it isnt the same you know"
"They are all the same anyways"
Just look as Smash 4, people felt like "double dipping" although both games featured vastly different content.
People wont care that the next big Mario title is so much more than the mobile game, "its still a mario game, no need for a new console"
@BLPs - "Sony isn't doomed, unless they do something stupid,"
Unless?
PSPgo
24" 3D display for $500
Proprietary PSP and really expensive Vita memory cards
PS TV that doesn't even have Netflix much less Vue
Wonderbook (ok, that's not stupid stupid, more like PS Mobile and Move, just unsupported)
Sony loves doing stupid stuff. They're just really fortunate MS does worse stuff. I wont list it here, they have a history of well documented stupid
Aside from games, I hope Nintendo creates apps for their console games. I would love to have an offical MH4U app from Nintendo/Capcom for example.
@Einherjar - I get people being annoyed about the "locked" stuff. Is Microsoft even still promoting "2nd screen play" from a few years back when it was all the rage and the next big thing? I don't follow Xbox on a regular basis, just their E3 presentation and big news like Halo, Ttianfall etc. Kinect 2.0 looks like Wonderbook to me but it could be huge among Xbox owners for all I know.
Anyway my original point wasn't "What has Sony gained from their licensed app games?" but rather "Has entry into the app game market hurt Sony?" as so many people on here seem to worry about it hurting Ntinedo. Maybe it cost them a few bucks, but not doom and gloom. Also, like the mostly unheralded vikings, they were here first. I see Nintendo more as Christopher Columbus than Neil Armstrong. It's good their doing it, but I'm not worried about it.
@BLPs - I'm sure you realize almost your entire post can be rewritten simply replacing Sony w/ Ntinedo, here's a few examples that caught my eye.
"They could have given up on the Gamepad"
A lot of people say they did. Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze made no use of the Gamepad at all. And marketing has been lackluster. Mario Party 10 is using it and advertising it but its been 2 1/2 years since Nitneod Land. Of course it gets more use than Move, its in the box, not an optional accessory, but not much more.
In that 4th paragraph replace PS2 w/ Wii, Sony w/ Nintnedo and Playstation w/ Wii and keep the rest of the paragraph the same and it reads true. Complacency.
The 5th paragraph needs to be re-written, but ask Europeans about TVii, and the Wii audience about "asynchronous gameplay". Nintnedo's hadnheld division is obviously far superior to Sony's, it's not a 100% comparison, just similar.
There's a poster - Gamer83 - who writes in a very similar style to myself, and for the past year or so he and I have been having this same conversation, he's always complaining about Sony, I'm always complaining about Nitneod, but it's the same argument, just different viewpoints.
Kristian_Segerstrale wrote:
While i'm not sure Nintendo sees it that way i do hope they give it their all. When a game doesn't profit from a TV screen, button contols, two screens or 3D i don't see any good reason for it not being on a smart device.
And kudos to Nancy Lu for her beautiful words on what i was talking about here.
Nancy Lu's comment is right on the money. Nintendo has proven that they have no longer have any reservations about diving into the free to play micro-transaction business model with the release of Pokemon Shuffle, which is caustic to Nintendo's own traditional methodology of game and business design. DeNA, of course, has absolutely no reservations about employing their own specialty. Since DeNA is going to be the ones directing the infrastructure of the mobile entries, well... The writing is on the wall, so to speak, and Ms. Lu has done well to call it out.
@Savino I was talking about how it was being implemented in terms of interacting with the game. You can argue the same thing with the N64's rumble pak being no different than in the arcades and yet there is a big difference in that the pak is from a home console and not from an arcade unit.
Apple products are expensive so not many are gonna get their products. the DS on the other hand was affordable and came with a reasonable quality of games. The idea of making touch screen work with games and making it cheap to get the system is what people will remember because of how Nintendo perfected the DS compared to Apple or Palm.
It is massive news that has the potential to be industry changing
The NX should be a smartphone 3ds & Wii U controller.
@Artwark
No, Nintendo didn't invent touchscreens, or pioneer their current use. Pocket PCs were invented a long time ago
The puny mobile devs will bow before the king of games.Just think, this is just an advertising promotion for Nintendo's console and handheld.It is only a small part of the formula!
What bugs me about this is that the other devs don't even take their consoles into account. Saying that they are insignificant. And if u want the real Mario play it on a wii u or 3ds not your phone.
@LordGeovanni what are you worried about with the "New Club Nintendo"? I'm only asking, why the fears?
@FLUX_CAPACITOR Alright. But that also considers sales, specifically console sales and those are not doing so well.
@maukenboost
If it goes the way I understand, DeNA is in charge of it. This is also under my impression that there will be more DL games and less Physical rewards. I honestly have put off buying anything from NA CN until I collect all the coins I can in order to get everything I want and shop accordingly. Games that I can buy? Not exclusives. So I dont want to spend coins on that when there are physical exclusives also available.
Additionally, I worry that DeNA will focus on getting something for all the different video game avenues (phone, Tablet, PC, Wii U, 3DS, NX). If we had issues just getting basic things for Wii U and 3DS, I fear 6 different focuses will stretch Nintendo too much.
But this is all just my fears.
@LordGeovanni That is something to worry about, I agree.
@FLUX_CAPACITOR I'm sure they were referring to the console.
We'll have to wait and see what comes of this. But I have a hard time seeing anything other than Nintendo taking their shot at delivering their versions of the same crap that litters the App Store and Google Play Store. Using said apps as a sort of "gateway drug" to coerce people to buy/play on Nintendo dedicated hardware, that's a win. Personally, I'm not looking forward to endless runners with Mario characters; match-threes with Pokemanz (although those exist already); or Peggle-types with Pikmin; or something like that. On the other hand, I also wouldn't care for Nintendo "full-length" gaming experiences on mobile either. Hand me a Nintendo handheld and a decent console (or merge the two somehow), and I'm good.
@c1pher_c0mplet The endless runner parts of NSMB2 are better than nearly all of the mobile ones I have played (Except Punch Quest).
@unrandomsam I hear ya, bud. I'm just not looking forward to those type games. I've gone thru my mobile gaming phase a few years ago, got a DSi XL at the time, and never looked back again.
I've always though that Nintendo would use the apps to supplement their offerings on the handheld and console. I mean I would love to have certain games linked across each other. A Pokemon app that uses the camera to essentially be like Pokemon Snap. It could tap into weather and location info to have certain Pokemon come out and encourage travel to places and businesses.
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