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The Handheld War
The Escapist has an editorial up talking about the war currently raging in the trenches...and not the console war, for once. The new handhelds are duking it out for position, and he makes some interesting predictions. From the article: "Sony's stumble will clear the way for Nokia's N-Gage powered smartphones to be the #2 platform in handheld gaming. I see it developing into a PC-like platform. Think of it like this: Everybody has a PC. Everybody uses their PC for work and web. Some people also use it for gaming - enough people to make the PC, as a platform, the second biggest; it's the same concept with the smartphone."
The N-Gage is basically dead and buried. Nothing will bring it back.
This might be possible for the N-Gage if it were an open platform that other phone companies used, but by it only being in certain Nokia phones the likelihood of that happening is pretty low...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
It's true that cellphones are tending more towards visuals and including more games, but I doubt the kind of games that cellphone users want to play are the same as the ones that handheld console owners want. Cellphone games are mostly a way to kill time, whereas most handheld gamers are looking for a little extra.
In short: people who want to play handheld games will just buy a handheld console, and people who want to play cellphone games are content with the existing, non-N-Gage options.
He claims that the N-Gage will succeed in the fact that it will have the largest installed user base. N-Gage game compatable phones will be purchased by people who don't care, and ignorant pundits will then claim that means it's a successful console. When can we start measuring success in games sold, not consoles? It's the games where the money is made after all...
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Marketing and brandname are tough categories to compete in when dealing with such a tiny market. Nintendo and Sony are pretty much the only big players here.
Nokia's N-Gage came out as a joke, a well-repeated and oft-referenced comedy. Side-talkin!
They'll need to sink a lot of money into producing innovative and affordable products. But on top of that, they'll need to dish out a massive marketing campaign to remedy a terrible first impression.
If the writer envisions a multi-purpose handheld gaming system taking over the market due to integrating with other gadgets...Nokia won't be the one dishing it out.
My bet is a later generation of a Sony handheld due to the way they've been trying pack extra features into the PS3 past it's gaming features(Still remains to be seen what features survive into release...). Nintendo will probably try to stick to games and pleasing its hardcore fans.
In my opinion, integration is nice, but people are buying these handhelds for playing games first and foremost. The rest is window dressing.
I'm sorry I tried to read the entire FA, but I couldn't do it. By the end of the second page this guy must have referred to himself in the third person close to 10 times. "Steele Style" was my favorite.
This is the second post The Escapist has gotten, and so far I've found it painful to read an article half full of self horn blowing.
Seriously though, "Max Steele"? Who comes up with this shit?
It's called a joke...unless you think the line before it was serious: Sony has just now produced its third console, while Microsoft is already on its 360th. That's an order of magnitude more experience.
1) pc for work/console for gaming.
2) mobile phone for calls/gba,ds for gaming/ipod for portable music.
3) games draw way too much power from the mobile phones.
4) gaming while waiting for call=bad.
5) games on mobile phones SUCK.
"Sure, the DS may have TWO screens, one of them being a touch screen, allowing developers to get a bit creative, but it's just a matter of time for the novelty effect to wear off and for people to realize that these features do not actually enhance the gaming experience by much."
A touchscreen is much more efficient for any menu-based game, any game requiring a virtual keyboard, games with user-created content, "hands-on" games like card games and board games, and any PC-based genres like RTSs and FPSs. The second screen, while not entirely necessary, will nevertheless be useful for displaying stats, navigating menus, providing a map, and many other functions that would clutter the HUD in a typical game. Not only that, but the built-in mic will be almost necessary for online communication, provided that Nintendo utilizes it. Between the mic and the onscreen keyboard, the DS lends itself to networked games far better than the PSP does. Now it's up to developers to support it, but with Nintendo finally taking some initiative, third-parties will join in time.