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Posts tagged with "nintendo"

Shigeru Miyamoto: “I Wish I Had Designed Angry Birds”→

Shigeru Miyamoto: “I Wish I Had Designed Angry Birds”

Simon Parkin of HookShot writes about their interview with legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto:

When we asked him what games he has been enjoying on his smartphone of late, he replied: “There aren’t many games that I’ve played recently that have been truly convincing to me. But that said, I have very much enjoyed Angry Birds, especially the way in which it combines traditional and new game elements in exciting ways. Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it’s one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first.

In the interview, Miyamoto also offers his take on the game’s control scheme, and how it could have been better on his company’s portable console, the DS. Nintendo’s guru, the mastermind behind an incredible number of successes and milestones in the videogame history, announced his intention to go back to creating new, fresh games to find the company’s next big hit. I previously discussed the position of Nintendo in today’s highly mobile gaming ecosystem here, and here.

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The Apple Of Gaming

A great piece by Craig Grannell at Revert To Saved about the current state of Nintendo:

For a long time, I considered Nintendo the Apple of gaming—a company that cared about the details and about the right things (fun, excitement, enjoyment). Nintendo’s problem these days is that Apple is now the Apple of gaming—and the Japanese veteran needs to fight back, perhaps borrowing some of the tricks used by the plucky American upstart.

Yours truly, two months ago:

It’s always about the games, ultimately, but the hardware matters, too. More importantly, integration of hardware and software matters, and with my iOS gaming background I think Nintendo still has to get this right. Using the 3DS after years of iPhones and iPads feels strange because I’m dealing with a device that’s pretty capable spec-wise, yet doesn’t show the same amount of attention to detail, integration and flexibility that my iPhone has. I can play Angry Birds on my iPad, quickly look up a webpage, send an iMessage to my friend real quick and then effortlessly come back to the game. I challenge you to do the same on the 3DS with that joke of Internet browser and “suspended” software on the Home screen.

The problem with Nintendo is that for the longest time they thought only geeks and iPhone nerds were paying attention to App Store games, replacing their handhelds with iPads and iPods. It turns out, previous Nintendo customers are actually moving to mobile platforms – I’ll throw Android in the mix as well – for all their gaming needs. Blame changes in society, blame the recession, blame the advancements in graphics processing that made Infinity Blade II possible – mobile gaming is very much real, albeit immature, and Nintendo failed to forecast just how much of an impact it would have on its business. Shame on them for being so stubborn. Now they are paying the consequences, and will likely continue to pay until the Wii U comes out. To get a visual representation of what Nintendo is exactly facing, check out this chart by ngmoco’s Ben Cousins comparing Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo by revenue:

What’s next for Nintendo? That’s a question with no answer, really, as you can’t just know what the company’s up to without having some kind of inside knowledge of their secret plans. Rather, I’d start by proposing some ideas that might be worth considering at the light of iOS’ popularity in mobile games and the changes in consumer behavior:

- Ship a moden interface for managing a device: users don’t want to be treated like 3 years-old anymore. Make it accessible, flexible, elegant, fast. This is functional to the point below, which is:

- Make accessing, saving and managing digital content easier. Nintendo’s current solution is a joke – will Nintendo Network be any better? We shall see.

- Embrace social networking: let players link their Nintendo Network profiles to their Twitter, Facebook or Google+ identities, and allow them to interact with Nintendo content outside of Nintendo’s online platform.

- Create an ecosystem: make Nintendo Network the single marketplace for all kinds of Nintendo content. Drop regional restrictions and adopt an App Store-like distribution model with worldwide releases, price tiers, promo codes, developer pages. Unlike the App Store, drop user reviews and allow free trials. Let users rely on their Nintendo ID for all kinds of possible future Nintendo services.

- Drop resistive touch-screens: the future is multi-touch. Delay the Wii U if necessary to make it absolutely right.

- Don’t drop cartridges entirely, but embrace a digital distribution strategy that makes sense. Advise all developers to release digital versions of their games on Nintendo Network, and perhaps reward buyers of physical copies with free unlockable in-app extras. The goal is to achieve a win-win situation both if you’re buying digital or physical.

- Ditch friend codes. Because, seriously, why are we still using friend codes in 2012?

- Create fresh, innovative, strong new IPs while emphasizing the importance and value of historical brands. Fortunately, that seems exactly what Miyamoto is doing.

- Use cutting-edge hardware: let’s face it, people like to play Call of Duty and Uncharted these days. Whilst good graphics aren’t synonym of good games, they sure help in nurturing an ecosystem of variegate games – those who make presentation their selling point, and the ones that are more focused on gameplay with less impressive graphics. Angry Birds was possible in 2009, but that didn’t stop Apple from leap-frogging itself year over year with the A4 and A5. Make consoles that can stand the onslaught of the Tegras and A6s released every year.

- Ultimately, stay true to gaming. Users don’t want to read emails on their handheld or have Office on it. Internet-connected doesn’t mean PC-like.

This morning I retweeted three tweets by Zac Cichy:

I don’t know how Nintendo should implement these proposed changes in the next months, but I am sure these are ideas more than just a couple of bloggers agree with. The money just isn’t there anymore, and Nintendo needs to evolve before it’s too late.

[Nintendo Headquarters via David Offf]

Nintendo 3DS From An iOS User’s Perspective

Last week, I bought a Nintendo 3DS with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. And coming back to “regular” portable console gaming after four years of multitouch iOS gaming felt strange.

As I explained in my Aquaria review yesterday, I started playing with a Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was six. Actually, my home console gaming experience started with the SNES, but my parents had already bought me a Game Boy. I grew up with Game Boys (classic, Pocket, Color, Advance, and various iterations of the latter), Nintendo’s consoles (SNES, N64, Game Cube, Wii) and Sony’s PlayStation (PSX and PS2). I skipped SEGA’s Dreamcast and Microsoft’s original Xbox, albeit in 2008 I decided, for some reason, to buy an Xbox 360. I basically never touched it. In fact, I’m pretty sure my 360 still has the original Dashboard view – I don’t even know how to update the thing.

I’ve been a “regular” gamer from 1994 to 2007. Four years ago, something happened: as I graduated from high school and got a job, I found to have less time for gaming. Things got even worse after I started MacStories, gaming time-wise. At the same time, whilst my DS and PSP and 360 were catching the dust, I started playing the casual game for iPhone that you can get at $0.99 in the App Store and doesn’t make you fell all guilty about it. After all, it’s just a .99 game that you can play for 20 minutes, not hours. You didn’t spend $60 and 40 hours on a game – I bet a lot of people know the feeling. At least initially, casual iPhone gaming was the cure for ex-gamers that still wanted a quick bite off the digital entertainment scene.

So for nearly four years I bought nothing but iPhone and iPad games. I was quite happy with the results: I could play the latest hit for 30 minutes a day, and say that “I enjoyed it”. I clicked the Buy button on a lot of games: most of them I never finished. But they still gave me the illusion of enjoyment as they were little $0.99 gems I couldn’t feel guilty about. It’s easy to say you’ve “enjoyed” something that costs less than a dollar. So my iTunes library grew larger and full of half-finished, presumably enjoyed iOS games. Read more

Nintendo 3DS Sales Affected By iOS Devices→

Nintendo 3DS Sales Affected By iOS Devices

Electronista reports the sales of the Nintendo 3DS won’t match the ones of the original Nintendo DS, according to iSuppli:

Nintendo’s 3DS sales will never match those of the earlier DS line due to competition from Apple and Google, IHS iSuppli said this weekend. The 3DS would hit 11.6 million devices in 2011, but it would always lag behind what the DS line managed at the same point in its history, hitting 69.9 million systems versus 90.9 million.

I was one of the people who stood in line at my local videogame store in 2004 to get an early DS unit imported from the US (back then, games didn’t have regional restrictions), and I bought a DSLite and DSi after that. But something’s changed in the mobile gaming industry since November 2004 (when the original DS went on sale), and that’s the quick adoption of app stores and touch-based smartphones. In fact, iSuppli believes that the iPod touch, the iPhone and iPad are affecting the sales of the 3DS, which is struggling in keeping sales numbers up in Japan. Official numbers haven’t been released yet (they’ll be available later this week), but the 3DS is doing okay for now. It’s just that there’s a general assumption it won’t do as well as the DS in the long term, mainly because the market has changed to accommodate iOS and Android devices as gaming machines that also happen to do many other things – again, thanks to online marketplaces like the App Store. On top of that, DS games are still sold in cartridges at $40 whilst you can find thousands of $2.99 - $9.99 games in the App Store. And with digital downloads, you don’t have to worry about physically carrying around anything except, well, your phone or tablet.

There are a lot of factors to consider when comparing Nintendo’s portable consoles to iOS devices (personally, I don’t believe the console will die anytime soon), but it’s very clear that in this new market many users are playing games on new devices like the iPod touch. Nintendo will keep selling its 3DS models for years, but don’t expect those numbers to be as huge as the original DS.

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Nintendo Still Doesn’t Get The (New) Mobile Market→

Nintendo Still Doesn’t Get The Mobile Market

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, speaking about “quality video games” and mobile platforms like iOS and Android:

In a feisty attack on the fastest-growing sectors of the video-game industry, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that smartphone games and social-media games focus on quantity instead of quality.

“They are not like gaming consoles, there’s no motivation [for] high-value video games,” Iwata said at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

I’d say this is one of the biggest problems a company like Nintendo is facing right now: trying to compete in the mobile gaming space with a device that’s just meant for gaming, while consumers are demanding something that goes beyond cartridges and games sold at $40 a piece. And so they try to build “social functionalities” into their consoles, hoping that an avatar creation feature or in-console communication would provide a solution to a market that’s deeply changed in the past four years.

Should Nintendo change at its roots and start doing all that consumers want? No. But the way I see it, they should pull their head out of the sand and understand that the rules have changed and it’s time to stop complaining, and start building to stay in the game. Those Angry Birds won’t go away by themselves.

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Gameloft’s VP Talks Premium Games, Maturing iOS Gaming Market And EA’s Sale Tactics

Last week over at Mobile World Congress Gameloft’s vice president Gonzague de Vallois spoke to PocketGamer and had some interesting remarks regarding iOS gaming. One of the things he spoke about was iOS gamers gaining an increasingly high expectation for games on the platform, particularly in regards to graphics and utilizing the full potential of the device.

He says that taste’s of iOS gamers are maturing and are moving on from supporting the small developers who make small, casual games to the games that are more fully featured and more fully use the potential of the device. To me at least, this seems like a bit of an odd comment given the continuing success of games such as Angry Birds and the caliber of indie games that are continuing to come to the App Store such as Rockin’ Rockets.

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Are iOS Game Prices Creating Culture of Disposability? Nintendo Boss Thinks So

The head honcho of Nintendo North America, Reggie Fils-Aime has criticized the price levels of apps in the iTunes App Store claiming that the low prices create a “mentality” for consumers that portable games should only be a few dollars. Fils-Aimes who is the Nintendo North American president and chief operating officer felt that such a mentality also breeds a culture that believes content is disposable because of the cheap price and that this was one of the gaming industries biggest risks today.

Whilst Fils-Aime’s is not the most independent commentator on this issue with his company’s Nintendo DS platform directly competing with the gaming aspects of iOS, his points do have some validity. Games on the App store have tended to be below $5 compared to DS and PSP games that are typically well above that range. The presumption is the Fils-Aime’s fears that the App store prices will spread across to all platforms and lead to more gimmicky, simplistic games rather than well though out, in-depth game experiences.

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Modded SNES Controller and Nintendo 64 Become iPhone and iPad Docks

In what could be described as a pretty surprising turn of events, Nintendo now considers Apple the biggest threat to its mobile gaming dominance. Etsy user Geekunique, however, wants to bring some love back between Cupertino and Kyoto and find a way to let old Nintendo consoles and modern iOS devices play nice together. Geekunique, in fact, modded an old SNES controller and a Nintendo 64 to become iPhone and iPad docks, respectively.

It seems pretty easy to cut a hole in the controller and place an iPhone dock connector in there but hey – you can avoid the trouble and buy these things now at Etsy. If you think you really need them, be quick: I guess they’ll be sold out pretty soon.

[via TUAW]