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Console Makers Worry Over Apple's Growing Competition
The NY Times is running a story about the effect Apple is having on the console gaming market, making Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo worry that consumers will be satisfied playing games on devices that aren't necessarily focused on gaming. Quoting:
"The concerns highlight an accelerating shift away from hard-core games, which have traditionally driven console sales, to more casual ones played on cellphones. Of the 758 new game titles shown at the Tokyo Game Show, 168 were for cellphone platforms — more than twice as many as in the previous year. ... Apple's assault could even eat into sales of home consoles like Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 or Microsoft's XBox, as game-playing quickly becomes centered on cellphones. Many in the industry say that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft need to explore more radical changes to their businesses, including an emphasis on software rather than hardware and a better way for users to download games. 'As a platform, the cellphone has the biggest potential, because everybody owns one,' said Kazumi Kitaue, chief executive at another game maker, Konami Digital Entertainment. A family with three children might buy just one Wii or PlayStation to share, but those children will probably have cellphones of their own and download and play games, Mr. Kitaue said."
Or at least the Wii is.
Seriously, have any of these people actually played any games on it? They are uniformly quite terrible. The lack of physical buttons is simply too big of an obstacle. Sure you can do some interesting stuff with the accelerometer, but at some point you want to be able to mash some buttons to kill the baddies and the in this regard the iPhone simply sucks ass.
First, I'm more of a casual gamer. Frankly, the $60 titles generally don't hold my attention anymore and I've found the Arcade (xbox 360) titles to be much more fun. I think I've kind of gotten sick of the "wow look at the graphics!" "genre".
That being said, when I do want to sit and waste an hour or two playing games, I want to do so in the comfort of my living room with a nice 46" screen. Not a 3 inch screen. I want to play with a controller built at least somewhat ergonomically, not one that feels like my thumbs are going to snap.
I will concede that _any_ new game "system" will pull customers away from some other company to at least some degree, but I seriously doubt the top players need to worry about the iWhatever taking over their industry.
Although, diversifying in your target market(s) isn't a bad idea.
How does an iPhone compete with an XBox 360 or a PS 3 as the summary implies? It doesn't.
An iPhone at best competes with a DS, and even then, it's a sad comparison. It only really works if you put on your iPose blinders.
You don't even need to read the summary to see that this article is totally retarded.
A $200 iphone + $1200 a year for service plus $50 for games. So much cheaper!
I just hope that console games start becoming ports of mobile phone games. That would be justice for how they've ruined the PC game market.
Seriously, have any of these people actually played any games on it? They are uniformly quite terrible. The lack of physical buttons is simply too big of an obstacle. Sure you can do some interesting stuff with the accelerometer, but at some point you want to be able to mash some buttons to kill the baddies and the in this regard the iPhone simply sucks ass.
You're obviously not the target demographic. I'm guessing that, in other discussions, you've said similar things regarding perceived shortcomings with the Wii.
The target demographic that's mainly interested in "mash[ing] some buttons to kill the baddies" is the group that's currently buying XBox 360s and Playstation 3s - and, based on sales, it's pretty obvious it's a significantly smaller group than the group buying the Wii and/or interested in playing short games that you can pick up for a short while and set down afterward. And, in the end, overall sales is really pretty much the only thing any of these companies care about.
I am not meaning (or attempting) to demean your opinion. I'm just pointing out that it's unlikely you're a reflection of the audience Apple is after.
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Does the iPhone have many (any?) games that aren't of the simple silly cellphone variety? While there's a market for games like that, no doubt, there is also very clearly a market for games with more depth to them. Some of the top selling games are ones that have a good deal of complexity to them (the Sims being a great example), not the sort of thing that competes with a cellphone game.
Also, as you noted, the iPhone really isn't a competitor for a console just based off of the fact that it is a handheld. So while it might be a competitor for the DS and PSP, I don't see it making inroads in to the console market. People do not get handhelds to replace consoles. I have never met someone who has said "I got a DS so that I wouldn't have to get a Wii or 360." No, they get the handheld to play when they aren't at home. They don't get it to replace their console.
However even in the handheld market, it seems at this time that the iPhone doesn't have the games to be any real threat. While it may have some bigger games, a good many of its games are of the same, simple, cellphone variety we've seen in the past. Nothing wrong with that, and indeed probably what you want on a cell since it is the kind of thing to play for 15 minutes while waiting for the doctor. However that isn't the same market as people who want a game they can really get in to and play for longer periods of time.
Part of the problem I think is that there is this misperception in the media that casual games are taking people away from more involved games. They seem to have this idea that there are all these people who played very complicated games because they had to, and now, freed from that tyranny, have moved on to simple games. No, not so much. The people who are gamers and like complex games still play them. They continue to sell in ever increasing numbers. Rather what has happened is people who were not interested in games are now playing games because the casual games appeal to them. They don't want "hardcore" games, but a casual game is some occasional fun.
What that means is that the casual market does not cut in to the hardcore market. They are different groups. If anything, the hardcore market cuts in to the casual market, as some people start on the casual games, discover they are in fact a gamer and just didn't know it, and start buying more games.
I think what apple is targeting is the cash strapped parent who kids want multiple mobile devices. Though $200 for an iphone or iPod touch might seem out of line for a kids first device, if it can serve as the personal computer for browsing, email, and reading, can text, take pictures and movies, and play some games, it might seem a good alternative to phone plus a psp plus a music player, etc.
Like the mac,which made graphic processing affordable, the advantage is likely to be short lived. It should be simple to get something like a PSP and add a phone and some other trinkets. If that can happen,then people will likely migrate to it. One thing that I am surprised to see is that MS is not integrating the Windows Mobile, xbox, and zune technology into single product. The fact that we are talking about MS Windows 7 and a new Zune to me is incompressible. A Zune that has and HDMI port, but cannot play games, is simply silly.
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It is not the quality of the platform in question but rather the developer mindshare. iPhone is building up greater mindshare so more developers will aim for that platform. It does not matter how good your console is if nobody makes games for it.
I have a feeling that demographic doesn't really strike a lasting profit, however. Nintendo is slowly falling and has been for a few months - could the Wii's marketing be wearing off? Could the iPod Touch face the same downward curve?
Besides, while the Wii has had phenomenal sales, the other two consoles have still gathered an audience - numbers that most markets would BEG to have. The positive thing about the button mashers is that they're growing (gaming is very mainstream, even in the Xbox/PS3 variety) and they don't stop spending money. I mean, if the Xbox 360 and its failure rate (which may or may not be fixed; who knows) can lead the charge through the High-Definition consoles in this economic decline, what will get those gamers to stop spending money?
This article is just trying to create a false dichotomy, namely, one that assumes that game sales represent a zero sum game. So if Apples sales increase, Microsofts, Sony's and Nintendo's must decrease. This is not the case.
The real important facts are the one's that this article leaves out, like that in 2008, only 462 total games were shown, where as this year, 758 new games where shown. This is an increase of 62%! So in reality, Cellphone games have only increased 40% compared to the rest of new video games. A 40% increase, while large, is nothing to worry too much about, as the cellphone market is very immature; not very many cell phones can actually play games, vendors still lock-in most cell phones.
This is article is just a standard journalistic technique of creating a story where none exists.
including an emphasis on software rather than hardware
They'd better not, because that's where their competitive advantage is. The only reason anyone would play on a console instead of on their phone is because of the hardware (including bigger screen, the controllers, etc). If they focus only on software, then eventually any type of software that can be made for a console can be made for a phone.
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If I want a great multiplayer strategy game with complex rules and takes a lot of time to learn, I'll play that on my PC or Mac, if I want to blow a couple of hours in a racecar or fragging aliens in an FPS, then my console is pretty good at that. If I am on the bus and have 30 minutes, I might play Assasins Creed or bejewled on the iPhone. (or listen to a podcast, or watch a TV episode, or listen to music etc)
Sometimes I even play board games with my kids and soccer outside. All sorts of games have their place and I hope none of them goes away.
Actually, I find that the mashing buttons to kill the baddies falls squarely on the Wii, while beer drinking FPS tournaments are 360's big thing, and heavily priced bizarre gameplay falls in the ps3 arena.
Regardless, the biggest issue seems to me to be basic economics. What is the cost of your entertainment. I've been interested in picking up a next gen console since the wii came out. I've played all three extensively, and at the moment, their price point is nearly identical. But for me to get one game out of a system, I need to drop about $300 for the base system WITHOUT any games, and $50 for a relatively old game (Mario Galaxy is still $50, 3 years in). With high quality games like Braid coming out on steam for $5-$20 the comparable initial drop of $20 to start playing and $350 to start playing is an obvious choice. Needless to say, despite the fact I've typically enjoyed console gaming for years, the higher price point for individual games combined with the cost of the systems (which haven't dropped to levels that I feel the purchase is justified), makes people who share this opinion swing away from them.
I still haven't swung toward cellphone games, because generally, across the board, I haven't found many of them that are on par with games from the super nintendo. Tetris maybe, but I haven't found a good solid push for thought provoking games for a cell. The biggest challenge for me is that the cost of old classics is finally pushing up into the current 'new game' price point that I have no interest in.
I'm mostly hoping this commentary will shed some light on the mindset of a, possibly atypical, non-hard-core gamer.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
By taking away market share. It's the same way bicycles compete with cars, not the way BMW competes with Kia.
If you already have a gaming system in your pocket. Games cost $0.99-$10, and they're all 'fun' there will be a certain segment of the population that used to get a 360 that will just stick with the phone. Just as there are certain people who swear by PC gaming as being the 'best' because you can use your 105-key keyboard.
Now extend that a bit further. You now have a TON of developers that know the ins and outs of Cocoa programming, OpenGL (for the 3GS), etc.
Imagine a MMO where you can play at home on OS X, but when you go on the road, hop online for some 'short missions' or so.
So wait, you're saying the iPhone market is like the video game market, pre crash of 1983?
I'm talking about where tons of speculators hopped in the market to cash in on the hype and ended up creating a bubble that popped, causing an angry babylonian god to appear and wipe out over half the industry?
That's not like the iPhone market at all! It's all about quality and craftsmanship!
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I dont believe that for one second. No difference between the Iphone and the Wii? Find this person for me and I will show you someone that never completed the 2nd grade. Mobile games are nice when you have 15 minutes to kill. But who wants to stare at that small screen for that long? I have a instinct and I do alot of surfing when I am away from home. But once I am home I am on the PC for that. If the Iphone is picking up any portion of the market its not the same market that the console and the PC exist in. No one is going to say, hey, I decided to stop playing call of duty because bedazzle is cheaper. And any parent who thinks they can convince their child that Iphone games > Xbox is fooling themselves. You may be able to say, you can either get 1 or the other but not both. But what kid is going to fall for that. Next headline. "Arcades start to cut in console gaming since its only 25cents to play...."
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
It isn't about the graphics. Consoles have gotten to the point where everything is good enough. In the past, there was such a noticeable difference between console generations -- Atari vs NES, NES vs Super NES, N64 vs PS2. This generation has reached a point where graphics are good enough that there is not a huge need to upgrade in the mind of the consumers. Hell, the fact the people are still buying PS2 show that last generation is good enough for many people. Don't get me started on the Wii.
Game play counts. It has always counted and will always count. If graphics were all that anyone cared about, would anyone have ever played an Atari 2600? There are so many gorgeous games that just plain suck (Crysis, anyone?). There are plenty of games that have terrible graphics but are loved for the wonderful game play. How many people still pick up and play Super Mario? Starfox 64? Any Zelda Game?
If that was the case, then why aren't we satisfied with the original PlayStation, or the Super NES for that matter. Or even the original NES! Why aren't millions of people playing MUDs instead of World of Warcraft?
Try playing a FPS on an NES. How about a game like Mass Effect on a PS1. People upgrade consoles not just because of the graphics. Yes, graphics are apart of it, but so is things like RAM, Processor, and storage medium. People aren't satisfied with just a SNES for the same reason they don't still use 486's with Windows 3.1. By upgrading the hardware, it allows the developers to do more. More RAM means more and bigger levels. Faster Processor means more and better AI baddies. Also, Try fitting a 700+ Mb game on an Atari 2600 ROM Cartridge. It also helps that every five years, console makers tell people that they need to upgrade.
As for MUDs, they are very user-unfriendly that require arcane protocols that most people never use. Try telling Joe Sixpack how to use Telnet or how to dial into a BBS. I don't think that WoW is the best example of a graphically complex game. Last time I seen it, it still looked like a First generation PS2 game which proves the point that graphics aren't everything.
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I seriously doubt that all of these mega companies are "worried" that apple is going to assault their business and take them all out. This NYtimes article is just trying to make iPhones seem all that much cooler.
It looks like you entirely missed the point. Whether or not you believe the games on the iPhone terrible, it's a sizable market, and it's not even a gaming device.
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Anybody else here grow up during the 70s? 80s? 90s? Anybody else find the idea of Apple being any kind of force in gaming utterly bizarre?
Not saying it won't happen, or that Apple can't be a force in whatever field... but this is like "Ferrari, Lamborghini Worry Over Growing Competition From Oldsmobile" or something.
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Not true AC. As a long time PC gamer I have been very impressed with the quality and workability of iPhone games. All my gaming is now on the iPhone. The PC gathers dust. And yes I mostly play shooters.
iphone doesn't compete with living room game market. It expands the bathroom game market.
That seems to be a relatively short-sighted opinion, and clearly you're playing the wrong games (hint: ports of games from consoles that try to capture the same style of gameplay rarely work).
As someone who has been a gamer for a few decades now, as well as a happy iPhone owner, I can attest to the fact that the iPhone does indeed do video games well. That said, it obviously can't handle the same sorts of gameplay that consoles can handle, and, conversely, it can handle some gameplay that consoles are poorly-built to handle.
Consider Zen Bound. It's certainly a casual game, but the premise (using your fingers to rotate a 3D block of wood or metal in order to wrap a rope around as much of the shape as possible...just look at the video at the link) simply doesn't work well on any of the consoles at the moment. I was skeptical at first, but once I saw a few gameplay videos and then got my hands on it, I was sold; the game demonstrates a new form of play and is remarkably entertaining for such a simple concept
Or consider a game like Eliss. Again, remarkably entertaining and yet incredibly simple in concept and execution. Both of these rely heavily on a multitouch interface (Eliss in particular) that none of the other consoles or handheld game devices could possibly hope to match (neither of these have a chance of working on the DS or Wii). When iPhone developers play to the iPhone's strengths, it really shines. When they try to shoehorn gameplay that was made for an entirely different medium, such as a console, into the device, it shows (and it usually sucks).
Really, it all comes back to what it has always been about: making games fun. Quite a few of the developers and console makers have gotten caught up in the shinier graphics, yearly releases on spent franchises, and other such nonsense that they've forgotten what real gamers (read: not "frat bros") want, which is to have a fun time. 8-bit games weren't fun in spite of the graphics. Rather, the only thing that the developers could feasibly work on to differentiate themselves was the gameplay of their product, so they were forced to innovate if they wanted to produce sales, and we saw quite a few brilliant and entertaining examples of new gameplay from that generation. The introduction of 3D with the 64-bit era really changed the game as well, since it allowed for new forms of gameplay, but since then, the industry has stagnated and very little has really changed in terms of the types of gameplay that we can expect.
The iPhone, for all of its foibles and drawbacks, is offering developers a chance to get in on the ground floor with something that's fresh, different, and entirely game-changing. And I'm not talking about the iPhone itself, but rather about multitouch. I honestly believe that multitouch has the potential to provide a more entertaining interface than that of any current console, so while the iPhone may be relegated to "casual" games for now (and it is), it certainly has the potential to explode in the "hardcore" market if a few hardcore titles showcasing multitouch come out. What those titles would be, I have no idea, otherwise I'd be building it now to make my millions.
Your observations are off. Here's the numbers from vgchartz.com. First column is units of sw worldwide lifetime, second is attach rate.
PS3 153,204,847 6.24
Wii 334,499,258 6.26
360 254,496,331 7.93
So Wii's attach rate is basically tied with PS3.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Based on every other product Apple has ever produced, a game console from them would be sleek, stylish, cost in excess of $900.00 (us), have only 3 titles available(each of which would require you to repurchase the title when a patch came out), and a controller with only button. Of course it would have an alternate means to use the button, but it would require you to press the option button on the console itself while trying to press the controller button.
They make little to no money (and even lose money often) on the hardware itself. They make money because each title sold pays a license fee. It also indicates how well the owners like their gaming experience over all.
The wii was making profit on the hardware from day one, they only just now lowered the retail price three years after it's initial release.. they have been making lots off hardware alone
Yeah, open sourced games. Both of those were commercial at first and only opened later, those games have paid professionals working on their creation. Most unpaid open source games are horribly derivative and usually ugly and unintuitive.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I've only tried a few (on an iPod Touch, but the idea is the same). One was a driving game. You held the device a little bit like a steering wheel, turning it to make the car move. One was a variety of the Same Game. No buttons required; you touched items to make the disappear. I also played a port of Worms 2, which worked very well. The moving and aiming was a lot easier with the touchscreen than with a mouse and keyboard (I figured out the controls without reading the instructions, while last time I played on a PC I - and several other players - kept getting jump and fire mixed up).
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It's not about mindshare, it's about return on investment. A competent developer working with a competent artist can produce a successful flash game or an iPhone game in a month or two. Producing a PC or console game takes a few hundred people a year or two. A console game needs a thousand times more income to break even, but only sells for ten times more than an iPhone game so you need to sell a hundred times more of the console game for the same ROI. If you can sell an iPhone game to a tenth of the people you would have sold a console game to, you've made a better return, so that's a better place to put your investment.
This isn't really an Apple phenomenon. Lots of people were playing games on their phones before the iPhone came along, but the bigger screen of the iPhone and same-generation devices makes them a lot more attractive for games (ignore the touchscreen; it just changes the type of games you can play easily). Flash games were already starting to push this trend a little. Companies like PopCap have been raking in the cash for quite a few years. Their games cost a tiny fraction of what something like Spore costs to make, sell for a couple of dollars, and are bought by a very large number of people.
Even ignoring the sales, look at the ad-supported versions. I just looked at some numbers from a flash gaming site. Their popular games have around 10m plays. One that went up this week and is rated 5.4/10 (the lowest I've ever seen was 4.6/10, so that means very bad) has 200,000 plays. Each of these games shows an ad when it is launched, and is on a page containing ads. If they get 1Â per play from the ads then that works out at $100k for a good game and $2k for a bad game in the first week. And, remember, these games are not exclusive to this site. Even if they only get 0.1Â per play, these numbers are probably about right for the whole Internet, because the games show up on a lot of different sites with similar player figures. Each of these games looks like about a month's worth of work, at most. A few look like they could have been put together in an afternoon. Seen any console games with that kind of ROI recently?
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People always keep claiming that the Wii audience is fickle but there is no evidence to support it (the dropping sales? I wouldn't call dropping sales due to no major games for over a year fickle).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Just because they're now shitty cell phone games with touchscreen interfaces and slightly better graphics doesn't mean that they'll make even the slightest dent in actual console sales.
Bang on. When did this become a zero-sum game, anyway? As innumerable posters have pointed out, console games and cell phone games are NOT the same thing, used by the same people at the same kinds of times. There's a new emerging market as cell phones develop a modicum of processing power and screen size. Now we have another platform for gaming. That doesn't mean the old one will go away.
I find a lot of commercial games have extremely buggy network play these days... I never got to finish a multiplayer game of rise of nations over the internet, because one player would always drop out for some reason and bring the whole game to an end.
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I tried playing soccer inside a few times. It's just not a good idea.
Additive identity, multiplicative cancellation, distributive multiplication over addition: pick any two (unless 1 = 0)
IMO, what they're most worried about are price points. The consumer mindset for cell phone games seems to top out at about $5, and a lot of games that, were they released on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network might be $10, are $1-2 on the App Store.
The Nintendo DS version of Civilization Revolution was $30 at release. The Xbox 360 version was similarly priced.
The iPhone version is currently $5. It's essentially the same game. The controls aren't as good - and no one is saying that the other two don't have their place, because you don't always want to stare at a tiny screen. Developers have tried to put games for $10 on the App Store. While there's the occasional success, most of the time the reviews are filled with 1-star "$10 for a phone game?" reviews, and the game quickly shoots down the charts and out of the rankings and "Featured" lists.
Peggle for PC is still available for $10. It's the same price on the Xbox 360 (Live Arcade).
The iPhone version is $5.
The iPhone is causing people to shift their view as to an appropriate price point at the same time that many companies are trying to rip out a third of an otherwise complete Xbox or PS3 game so they can sell the rest as "Downloadable content" to squeeze that extra $5-10 out of each buyer. That, I believe, is terrifying to the marketing droids and finance people that actually run these companies.
Sony hasn't missed the point, because that's how the PSN store works. Haven't you used it?
There is nothing stopping any of the console makers from embracing the iPhone, and turning it into an extension of the console experience rather than a competitor to it. (Well, okay, something might stop Microsoft, but Sony and Nintendo have nothing to lose.)
With a single app the iPhone becomes a full color smart controller, with mutli-touch, motion sensing, and a built-in camera.
Allow developers to incorporate that functionality into the iPhone versions of their console games, and you enable a seamless gaming experience from home (where the epic action happens) to the larger world (where you mini-game, grind, or play in smaller-scale settings).
iPhone 3GS bestselling phone in Japan: I'd say that the iPhone is gaining popularity in Japan.
Most of the buyers for under $10 cellphone games are not the same people who buy $60 PS3 games.
They also get more coverage because there's just more games coming out, as development is quicker and easier.
Even now, it's ten times easier for a group to join a random server than it is to join a specific one.
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I guess I don't understand why people have that opinion on the 360. To me it seems to have the most diverse lineup. It has the most of what I care about (RPGs). The Wii falls short on pretty much any game category other than their well done first party games. But really, I still feel the wiimote is a gimmick...one that worked, mind you, but still a gimmick. I'd rather just have another button than have to waggle.
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