Nintendo singles out Apple as "enemy of the future"
updated 02:00 pm EDT, Fri May 7, 2010
Nintendo shifting attention from Sony to Apple
Nintendo is now targeting Apple as its primary challenger in handheld gaming, a leak from within the gaming giant confirmed on Friday. The Japanese firm's president, Satoru Iwata, is now believed to have shifted Nintendo's attention away from Sony's PSP and towards the iPad, iPhone and iPod as the largest threats. Apple is the "enemy of the future," the Times source said.
While outwardly confident, Nintendo is reportedly worried due to its first drop in profits since 2004 and a corresponding rare drop in the number of DS gaming systems. Both the hardware and software teams have refocused themselves to restore a level of "surprise" to their lineups that would please gamers.
A large part of the company's faith in reviving its efforts hinge on the 3DS, which will be formally unveiled at E3 and may ship in the fall. It will be the first truly major handheld introduction for Nintendo since the original DS in 2004 and will at the least have glasses-free 3D displays as its key feature. Unlike nearly every other Nintendo console in the past decade, it may also tout performance as it could have a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra and larger, high-resolution screens that might not be matched by Apple or Sony.
Publicly, Nintendo has usually tried to deny that Apple would have any impact on its market but has found it increasingly difficult to hide the influence of its American rival. Apple has been taking mobile game revenue from Nintendo even though many iPhone games cost have prices a third or less of their DS counterparts. In terms of sheer units, Apple is also poised to outsell Nintendo as it moved 8.75 million iPhones just in its last quarter alone and millions of iPod touch players at the same time; Nintendo only expects to sell 30 million units for its entire fiscal year.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2007
nintendo take your blinders off and wake up to wha
Nintendo... it's great that you want to sabre rattle against Apple, but let's get realistic about where the tidal wave of momentum is right now in the marketplace and who holds the biggest sabre. Apple is clearly out performing it's competitors (Google isn't far behind on Android OS) and those two are the ones who are bringing the products to market that people want. They're also the ones creating the content consumption ecosystem (mostly apple) that everybody else is trying to copy. So why not participate in that game instead?! The mobile device war will continue to be Apple against Google and everybody else will continue to fight for their table scraps.
So instead of directly trying to outdo Apple in the short term on the hardware side, why not participate in the huge app explosion that Apple clearly dominates and start creating some amazing games for Apple's own devices. I'd probably buy a couple of Nintendo games for my iPhone or iPad if/when I buy one, but I'll never buy another single purpose device like a DSi XL or Kindle. Sure, you can continue to create your own gaming hardware and piss away money in that space, but why not make it back up on the other side and develop great games for the iphone, ipad and android platforms. Seems like your roadmap is way off course and a bit in denial.
PS. hey Microsoft... you too! Stop creating crappy hardware and mobile operating systems and develop apps for these devices too! You're both in denial that the market shifted a away from you a few years back and choose another direction.