Apple Is Nintendo's "Enemy of the Future"

Pickens writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that video game industry revenue fell by 26 percent in April, adding more concerns about the health of the industry in the worst year-over-year decline since July 2009. But the big news is that the decline in portable sales makes up 61 percent of the overall monthly decline, suggesting that the Nintendo DS platform is losing steam but also reflecting the growing clout of the iPhone platform as the iPhone and iPod Touch continue to draw in more casual gamers, the iPad offers a bigger screen experience, and Apple announces the 'Game Center' — a social gaming hub with console-like online gaming features. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata is understood to have told his senior executives recently to regard the battle with Sony as a victory already won and to treat Apple, and its iPhone and iPad devices, as the 'enemy of the future.' 'If Nintendo's future mobile platforms are to be any kind of success, the company will have to figure out how to take on the ease of use afforded by the App Store,' writes Nicholas Deleon. A large part of Nintendo's faith in reviving its efforts hinge on the 3DS, which may ship in the fall, the first truly major handheld introduction for Nintendo since the original DS in 2004. He adds, 'Maybe Nintendo should just release a phone?'"

Re:"year over year" decline

[Daetrin]

"Year over year" [about.com] means comparing the sales for the current month with the sales from the same month last year. The reason for doing this is that the industry generally follows cycles. Comparing sales in January to sales in December would be uninformative because of the huge boost to sales during the holiday season.

What the article says is that the difference, or rather the loss, between April 2009 sales and April 2010 sales was larger than any other since July 2009. July 2010 doesn't factor into the equation at all.

Re:can't see the forest for the trees...

[Red Flayer]

Emphasis mine:

The economy has continued to worsen in the previous two years and unemployment continues to rise.

Depends on how you calculate it. Unemployment is only continuing to rise because we've been using numbers that underestimate the unemployed; as we correct for that (rather, it corrects itself as more people are trying to enter the workforce), the unemployment number can be going up even though we have more people gainfully employed.

I wish we could use employment figures instead of unemployment figures, it'd be a lot more clear. Currently unemployment figures are based on something like this, with B being the "unemployment" figures:

A) Fully Employed
B) Unemployed, but looking for work
C) Unemployed, but not looking
D) Underemployed

The current situation is that people are moving from C to B, and so the "unemployment" figure is going up, even though A (fully employed people) is also going up.

If you really want to look at video game spending as a function of general economic health, you should compare the video game market to consumer spending. Consumer spending has risen for seven months straight -- yet video game sales haven't mirrored this rise in spending. So it's likely that the cause of decreased sales is dependent on more factors than just the general state of the economy.

Re:can't see the forest for the trees...

[CronoCloud]

Fallout 3 may "look" like an FPS to the unedumacated, but it's not, it's an RPG. Didn't you play it? You can be the best Quake/Team Fortress/Counterstrike player in the world and have the best mouse skills, but that won't help you much in Fallout 3 since your accuracy and damage is based on your stats/perks/skills and in how good a repair your weapon is.