Written by cervelli on Sunday, September 27, 2009

Nintendo & Co.: changing the game

Tokyo Game Show (TGS) has passed, and The New York Times has an interesting piece suggested by the hardcore gamers’ convention titled “Apple’s Shadow Hangs Over Game Console Makers“.

Image courtesy of The New York Times

The article is about the market of game consoles and alike, which is feeling the competition of the new de facto game reference platform: the iPhone and iPod Touch.

From The New York Times:

TOKYO — As video game giants like Sony and Microsoft touted their new gizmos at the Tokyo Game Show this week, industry executives had more than the coming holiday sales season on their minds.

Apple’s recent foray into video games — with the iPhone, the iPod Touch and its ever-expanding online App Store — is causing as much hand-wringing among old industry players as the global economic slump, which threatens to take the steam out of year-end shopping for the second consecutive year.

Among the questions voiced by video game executives: How can Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft keep consumers hooked on game-only consoles, like the Wii or even the PlayStation Portable, when Apple offers games on popular, everyday devices that double as cellphones and music players?

And how can game developers and the makers of big consoles persuade consumers to buy the latest shoot’em-ups for $30 or more, when Apple’s App store is full of games, created by developers around the world and approved by Apple, that cost as little as 99 cents — or even are free?

This year the video game industry has experienced the biggest decline since 2000, and the $0.99 iPhone games storm has played a role. The gaming market model must be changing, and it’s clear that the smartphones and cellphones are becoming the platforms of the future, just because everybody owns, at least, one. Thus at the TGS 168 of the 758 new game titles were for cellphone platforms, i.e. more than twice as many as in the previous year.

Once I bought a PlayStation 2, but I have never been a hardcore gamer, and now I limit myself to some freeware games (Solitaire and Arvale, which I really like) installed on my Palm OS smartphone. I hate taking more than one device and my Palm Centro is the only device is always with me, but sometimes I regret not having my wife’s iPod Touch to play “The Secret of Monkey Island” or one of those colorful $0.99 games.

If there was a really convergent device, able to get things done, to organize my life and to play games at the price of the Apple App Store, I would buy many video games, and Nintendo, Sony, Capcom, Konami and all others could conquer a really unexpected customer.

P.S. No! I am not buying an iPhone!

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