Cheap Games a Risk To the Industry, Says Nintendo President

Recent comments from Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime indicate that the company is worried about the effect of inexpensive mobile games on the industry. "'Angry Birds is a great piece of experience,' he said, 'but that is one compared to thousands of other pieces of content that for one or two dollars I think create a mentality for the consumer that a piece of gaming content should only be $2.' Taking one last dig at the mobile competition, Fils-Aime added that he 'think[s] some of those games are actually overpriced at $1 or $2, but that's a different story.'" While low-priced mobile games might not be good for Nintendo, it can still work out well for indie developers. 2DBoy, makers of World of Goo, released some statistics about launching the iPad version of the game.

Comments

Sounds familiar....

[SuricouRaven]

In related news, youtube is a threat to the television industry, and people who are so insolent as to make and release their own music for free are a threat to the music industry.

Marketing / planning is a threat to people.

[unity100]

Planning/marketing departments of corporations are filled with mba grads who have been taught to shove a product to public from the maximum price they think they can pay. and hence, depending on their self-judgment, they decide what the selling price of any product should be. since all corporations employ the same mindset, all look to each other, adopt similar price points, and then start thinking that that is a correct price point.

products are produced/sold up to that point. more products are not produced and sold, because that would decrease the 'optimum' point. naturally, as a result, as you can understand too, the 'mass production/competition aspects of capitalism, goes out of the door.

what we are seeing here, is the retort of a corporate man, who is used to corporations determining the price points (even unknowingly) instead of public. had there not been internet, this industry would - if we take gaming for example - just continue forcing a 'reality' which says that a 'decent' game should be worth $40-60. thanks to internet, even if the industry doesnt want to, competition enters the scene. corporate world, naturally, is unable to understand or stomach the situation and is threatened.

however, while gamers can get competition thanks to internet, the situation is to the contrary in almost all other sectors, ranging from auto industry to healthcare. corporations are determining what gets sold from what price range, and because majority of the corps do it, after a time it becomes the 'industry norm'.

Translation

[Opportunist]

We cannot compete with that! 2 bucks doesn't even cover the overhead for our beancounter and legal department that the games have to pull besides their own weight! Plus, state of the art graphics and animations are expensive, and since our games are hardly innovative in any way (seriously, usually we just improve graphics and increase the version counter), we cannot compete with games that rely on innovative gameplay and new, fresh ideas which are cheap but risky!

Is there some way we can outlaw those cheapskates?

Re:Translation

[Verunks]

you are kind of wrong, the problem here is that nintendo is in the same casual gamer market as cheap games, most wii and ds titles have graphics and animations from 10 years ago, so they're actually the same or worse than these 2$ games.
So these cheap games won't hurt sales of the elder scroll skyrim or battlefield 3 but it will be a problem for nintendogs, petz and shit like that

Re:Translation

[smash]

You're trolling, right? Most nintendo consoles are sold on the strength of super mario XXIV. Nintendo is no more or less guilty of sequel-itis and no more or less innovative than sony or microsoft. At least sony/microsoft have traditionally been a fuckload more open to third party developers actually being granted development licenses for their hardware.

if good games are $2

[smash]

... then you're going to need to provide something actually special for the cost of a console game aren't you? I have no problems paying a decent sum of money for something that will keep me entertained for say $2-5/hr.

However if your sole justification for charging 50-100 bucks per game is "oooh look at teh shiny!" and nothing else then kindly fucking die already.

cheers
gamers everywhere

$40 worth of risk

[RoverDaddy]

Even if it's true that the console game will give 40 times the value of the $1 mobile game, that can be seen as an enormous leap of faith to ask the consumer to make. What if I decide in the first 30 minutes I don't like the game? Can I take it back to Gamestop and get my money back? Fat chance. If I download a $1 game and decide I don't like it, then meh.
Considering how many $40 or $50 Wii games my kids have that never get played again, I can see how people can become leery of that model.

He's right.

[DavidDM]

Slashdot honestly doesn't seem to get content creation or business sometimes. By constantly lowering prices and conditioning customers to accept them, you actually stifle innovation and drive out businesses. In the bricks and mortar world this is what Wal-mart does, and they've managed to destroy and dominate markets while offering less overall quality and selection. For media, there is less barrier to entry, but the sheer number of crapware games competing at artificially low pricepoints are eventually going to start killing a lot of midrange developers as they simply can't make enough money in a reasonable timeframe. What the low price does is benefit AGGREGATORS not developers, who take a long tail approach and try and get tremendous amounts of content to make pennies on over time. And, of course there are no end of eager lemmings to help push themselves off the cliff. The low price points may make Apple and Steam rich, but not devs.