Console wars, schmonsole wars: Nintendo facing greatest risk from Apple, says WSJ
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 1:09pm by Blake
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is a self-proclaimed Apple fan, says the Wall Street Journal. He carries an iPhone and uses a MacBook. But he doesn’t consider Apple a direct competitor, despite Cupertino defiance in September, saying the DS doesn’t “stack up” to the iPod Touch or iPhone as a gaming device.
Iwata explains, “If we can’t make clear why customers pay a lot of money to play games on Nintendo hardware and Nintendo software and differentiate ourselves from games on the mobile phone or iPhone, then our future is dark.” Whatever the case, the Journal believes, “Nintendo faces the greatest risk from the emergence of Apple,” not Sony or Microsoft.
What do you think: could Apple finally be the one to bring down the portable Nintendo empire? Or are the two like comparing apples to oranges?
November 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Maybe someday the iPod/iPhone will be a real gaming platform, but not yet. Mobile phone games have a short half-life. You pay $5, play them regularly for a couple weeks, at most, then move on. Nothing like a Mario game, or an engrossing RPG. Or POKEMON!!
Also, most games still need buttons.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Aside from a long vacation, I haven’t taken my DS anywhere since getting an iPhone two years ago. The games aren’t as good but the combo of everything else the iPhone does plus some games provides more fun and satisfaction for someone like me.
The DS will dominate 16 and under but at this point, a game only device is a hard sell for the older gen.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I’m looking forward to decent games being available someday on my Palm Pre, thanks to its physical buttons, but until I start seeing things with the ingenuity of Scribblenauts, the depth of Phantom Hourglass, and the responsiveness of Space Invaders Extreme on mobile platforms, I’m not leaving my DS behind.
Of course, most people my age are pretty content to play Bejeweled by sliding their fingers around a touchscreen or pay a few bucks to play Galaga with fake buttons for five minutes before deciding it’s not as good as they remember it (when actually it’s the controls that suck.)
November 11th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
You know? It is quite possible… The only thing the iTouch really needs to be considered a serious portable gaming device is to get the developers on its side! If Atlus or any RPG developer/publisher ever manages to get one of their IPs on an iTouch… watch out, DS!!
November 11th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
All well and good, WSJ, except that, well, Apple is secretly dismayed that the iPhone/touch have become such successful gaming platforms…
Doom game creator suggests Apple embarrassed about iPhone gaming
Come now, Internet, that link is from just this last Friday. Do your research!
November 11th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
It would a sad day if Apple actually got a decent foothold in gaming. They’re at least as bad as Nintendo has been in the past about developer relations, and just a pain to deal with as a company.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
It is kind of funny that iPhone is considered a gaming platform, while Mac is definately NOT.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
there are some neat apps on the iphone/ipod touch but in my opinion, two obstacles that are barriers for it to really break into the handheld market as a full fledged competitor to nintendo are that it has no physical buttons and battery life. until steve jobs put some buttons on it, nintendo shouldn’t be overly worried about apple storming the handheld market.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
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November 11th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I think they will only be in direct competiton if they release the iGame or whatever. As fun as some of the games on the iPhone are, I doubt anyone would buy one on the games alone – I’m getting mine as a phone primarily, then a camera, then a mobile internet access device and I MIGHT use it for gaming after that.
To be perfectly honest I don’t play my DS that much at all (although when I pick up Scribblenauts in a couple of weeks that could all change).
November 11th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
When they release games like Phantom hourglass and Kingdom Hearts on the DS, it just clarifies why the iPhone/iPod Touch will never be what the DS is. The iTouch is good to pass the time whilst waiting for a lecture to start at college, but I’ve yet to find a game on iDevice that I’ll go out of my way to play. The iTouch/Phone is way too pick-up-and-play, nowhere near enough depth in the games.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I don’t think, not anytime soon. The reason I say that because playing a game on the Touch sucks monkey b****s as there is no physical controls on it and that makes playing games very hard!
November 12th, 2009 at 12:22 am
They should just get a room already and make a baby.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:38 am
You know, there’s actually a problem here that even *I* wasn’t paying enough attention to.
iPhone games will never really replace DS games, or games on a dedicated gaming portable…
But gaming competes with EVERYTHING that you could be spending your time on. And if what is basically a flash app fills that 30 minutes of free time you’ve got… well… you’re probably not going to bother with the dedicated hardware. It’ll be really bad when you get decent web browsing on a mobile or handheld. Most of my time is actually spent reading websites, not playing video games. If I could do that EVERYWHERE… well. Bad for portables to be sure.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
I sold my ds not that long ago due. And my wii is still in its box since I moved. But my itouch goes everywhere with me. And it has fantastic games on it. Zenonia is a great hack slash Zelda LttP feel to it. Eliminate is an amazing FPS deathmatch game. Robocalypse, which i believe is a port from a DS game. looks great on the Touch. Alive-4-ever is a great top down zombie rpg shooter. There are great driving games on it. Baseball superstars is an awesome baseball game similar to old school baseball games but with new features. I think the biggest problem with Nintendo and the DS is downloadable content. There aren’t enough awesome games coming out every day. And there are very few developers “allowed” to make games for the DS, that includes downloadable and carts. Which should be extinct. Just more plastic for the city dump in the end.
That and I would rather pay $3 for a game that isn’t as long on the touch than $10-20 on the ds for a piece of garbage revamp of a game thats been recreated multiple times on multiple consoles.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
@ steve
Just so we’re clear here, what exactly was your DS library composed of before you sold it off?
November 12th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I could see the iPhone sucking away the casual gaming market that Nintendo seems to covet so much. Spending a few bucks to play a quick Diner Dash type game on the iPhone would appeal to most of the causal gamers I know. Paying 4-6 times that to play the same game on the DS would not.
But more of a threat is the new social gaming market, such as Facebook’s Farmtown, or Restaurant City (which EA just bought when it bought Playfish). Most of the people I know who played causal games have stopped playing these and moved on to social games. A handheld version of these could only work on a cell phone. The social gamers I know want to play all the time and I can’t see them wanting to run from one WIFI hotspot to another with their DS to check the status of their Farmtown crop.
Nintendo might find itself completely shut out of this market, with no way in. Animal Crossing, for example, could make an ideal social game, but how could Nintendo capitalize on this? They’d need to add a cell phone to the DS and get rid of the bizarre friend-code system.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Sorry, @finland, but I disagree.
I am well into the older gen crowd you mention (more than 16 years after my 16th birthday) and the DS is a great sell to me.
In fact I have bought two (passed one on to the kids) and I am looking at getting three more (two ds lites for my kids – I have six – and a new dsi for me).
I play it constantly even though I own a smartphone (Blackberry Bold) and am planning on buying an iTouch for Christmas (if my wife doesn’t come through with one for me).
I went in to a new Apple store that just opened here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (the first and only in our city) and compared the iTouch to my Blackberry and my DS and it just doesn’t match up with what I want.
BUT, when I compared it to my iPod Classic it totally blew me away. The iTouch will be my main music device.
But for games I will stick with the DS.
And for phone/email/web it will be the Bold.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
whats the best games on ds? whats the best games on apple? how do they compare? that answers the question.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
there are a ton of gamers out there, who are into gaming from the shockwave/bigfish games direction and may not consider themselves gamers, even casual gamers. The DS may be perfect for them but they may not be thinking about owning a dedicated gaming machine, and so getting games through an iphone is going to be more of a natural fit. It’s similar to the large following facebook games can have, even while there are a great many (better) completely free games available elsewhere online.