Slashdot Mirror
Free 3G Wireless For Nintendo's Next Handheld?
itwbennett writes "'Nintendo is feeling the sting of competition from the iPhone,' writes Peter Smith in a recent post. 'At least, that's the feeling one gets when reading Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's thoughts on the future of Nintendo handhelds. According to a Financial Times piece, Iwata suggests the next Nintendo handheld (and to be clear, he isn't talking about the big screen DS launching in Japan next month) might include free 3G wireless, much like the Amazon Kindle does. The challenge is to offer the immediacy of downloading an inexpensive new game, anywhere, anytime, without forcing the user into some kind of monthly data plan.' From the FT piece: 'Only people who can pay thousands of yen a month [in mobile phone subscriptions] can be iPhone customers. That doesn't fit Nintendo customers because we make amusement products,' Mr Iwata said."
Not really innovative they are just in the first in the hand held gaming industry to want to offer free access to a network. No doubt it will end up being some what similar to Amazons evdo network for their kindle. Think Nintendo kindle for games (at least that's what I get from the article)
The ebook readers can get away with this cheaply because ebooks don't take up much space. Games on the other hand can be quite large, and I imagine the next-gen games meant to compete with the iPhone 3GS (which has more powerful hardware than both the current DSi and and PSP Go) will be even larger. Can Nintendo really front the costs to provide access to this service without increasing game price?
While it might not be revolutionary (the Kindle DID do it first :P), it is certainly something I would be interested in. I would never buy/use an iPhone (ridiculously overpriced, and the way Apple handles apps pisses me off), and I'm not a big one for ebooks (I like to have something with pages, that smells like paper and glue :) ). However, I do like having a portable gaming system for long drives/flights, or just waiting around. One of the biggest problems I've had with the Nintendo systems is that you either have to carry around a ton of cartridges in order to play, or you have to be happy with one/two, and if you finish them or grow bored, you're SoL. The ability to DL a new game on the fly would make the purchase of this system a no-brainer for me... even if I only used it once every few months, I feel like I would be getting worthwhile value out of it.
Who knows. Probably Japan at first.
You have to bear in mind that none of this will really be free. The 3G connection will be used to download content, which will cost money. Some of that money will go to the 3G network provider.
Just like with Kindle, where a ebook sales provide Amazon enough money to pay for all that "free" browsing.
The challenge is to offer the immediacy of downloading an inexpensive new game, anywhere, anytime, without forcing the user into some kind of monthly data plan.
There won't be a monthly plan, because it was be bundled into the price upfront. I also wouldn't be surprised if the median owner rarely used their 3G connection, and were subsidizing the small minority who uses it. There's a problem when Nintendo's handheld is more expensive than their full console. Especially when a large part of the success for the Wii is attributed to it's low price point.
Tethering your PC to an ISP that doesn't route packets to anything but Nintendo's Shop Channel servers won't accomplish much.
Games on the other hand can be quite large
How large? Classic NES, Super NES, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color games are 4 MiB or less (with a handful of exceptions). Even a DS-native game like Animal Crossing: Wild World is only 32 MiB. Compare that to the 256 MB of internal memory on a DSi or the 4 GB card in the DSi's SDHC slot.
more powerful hardware
Wii has more powerful hardware than the DS, but Wii Shop Channel games still weigh in less than 48 MB. (There are roughly eight "blocks" in 1 MB.)
Can Nintendo really front the costs to provide access to this service without increasing game price?
Full-size games cost $30 to $40 in the United States, partly due to the cost of making and shipping Game Cards. Do you think the 3G airtime to download, say, a 64 MB game will cost more than making and shipping a Game Card?
What I don't see is a major benefit of the ds hardware over the iphone.
A lot of DS and PSP fanboys on Slashdot prefer the tactile response of the directional pad and physical buttons on the "traditional" handhelds over the flat multitouch screen of an iPod Touch. Some of the members of tetrisconcept.net and harddrop.com (forums for hardcore Tetris fans) have tried Tetris on an iPhone, and the control scheme wasn't suitable for the sort of 100+ piece per minute play that they're used to.
as someone who had an ipod, a phone, and a dslite...I was carrying around a lot of stuff. The iphone, for me, consolidates everything into one package
I'm currently on a $5 per month plan at Virgin Mobile because I don't text or use a lot of minutes. I looked into an iPhone and found the convenience of a single device not worth the money for the required voice and data plans.
Perhaps I'm biased, since I love my DS, but I really don't see how the iPhone is hurting the DS in any way. My girlfriend owns both a DS and an iPhone and beyond the initial "Oh look at this cool game!" reaction, I've never seen her play a single game on the iPhone.
Are there really games on the iPhone that people would be willing to invest time on? Even with all the hype and articles about the issue, I really don't get the sense at all that the iPhone is in any way taking customers from Nintendo or Sony. Saying iPhone games are convenient is like saying regular cell phone brick games or tetris games are convenient - it doesn't change the fact that it'll drain your battery in an hour and fifteen minutes and isn't particularly engaging anyway.
There's no way an iPhone replicates "70-80%" of the functionality of a DS or PSP, they're two different things.
The way I see it, Nintendo isn't looking to gain back market share or anything - its sales definitely are not weak or faltering in any way, 115 million units compared to the PSP's 56 (or the iPhone's 21). Instead, they're probably just looking to expand their market more and more, and they may feel that downloading little or full-size games whenever the user wants may be the way to do it.
I don't have a Kindle, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the concept is, the Kindle isn't a 'general purpose' Internet device, like a smart phone - that is, I don't think you can really just browse the web, stream audio and video from youtube, hulu, or whatever. Basically, the data connection on the Kindle is special-purpose - for downloading Kindle eBooks/eZines/eNewspapers, which are a) relatively small, and b) the price of the 3G network bandwidth for the download is essentially bundled in the price of the content you purchase.
So, Amazon, I think, worked out a deal with carriers in different countries to pay for the cost of the downloads, by sharing the revenue generated by the content purchases with the network operators(granted, there is also some activity, like the user browsing the amazon kindle 'store', which doesn't directly generate revenue, but which is recovered by the user purchases).
In such a business model, the individual users are probably generating, collectively, much less bandwidth-use per device (on average) than your average smart-phone user, so the costs to the 3G network operator are relatively small. Any users who are using a lot more bandwidth than the average user are also paying a lot more for content than the average user, so the high-use users pay for themselves (as do the low-use users).
I could very easily see Nintendo working out such a deal with network operators if the only thing the online connectivity is used for is browsing the Nintendo store to find and purchase games/DLC, and then download the games after purchase. If, however, the Nintendo device allows web browsing and online play against/with other Nintendo users, then I have a harder time seeing that business model succeed (because the users, then, aren't necessarily paying indirectly for all the network bandwidth they use).
You don't _really_ want a dev kit to make games on it, you want a dev kit so you can pirate games.
Say I start by making a PC-based demo of the game in question. "I made this game, but Nintendo and Sony won't let me port it to their hardware." Would such a whine sound more credible?
There are other open portable gaming devices
Which of them have a distributor in the United States? Best Buy has never heard of a "GP2X" or a "Dingoo", and Pandora isn't out yet.