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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.
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.
#DeleteChrome
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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?
Does the iPhone have many (any?) games that aren't of the simple silly cellphone variety?
Myst for the iPhone
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
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.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
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 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)