Cheap Games a Risk To the Industry, Says Nintendo President 310
Recent comments from Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime indicate that the company is worried about the effect of inexpensive mobile games on the industry.
"'Angry Birds is a great piece of experience,' he said, 'but that is one compared to thousands of other pieces of content that for one or two dollars I think create a mentality for the consumer that a piece of gaming content should only be $2.' Taking one last dig at the mobile competition, Fils-Aime added that he 'think[s] some of those games are actually overpriced at $1 or $2, but that's a different story.'"
While low-priced mobile games might not be good for Nintendo, it can still work out well for indie developers. 2DBoy, makers of World of Goo, released some statistics about launching the iPad version of the game.
Re:Boohoo, competition. (Score:4, Informative)
The free market makes capitalists have to work harder for their profits. They'd much rather have the lazy security of a monopoly.
Re:Translation (Score:2, Informative)
Mario platformer
Mario driver
Mario fighter
Mario RPG
Mario sports
What's next? Mario farm? Mario tycoon?
They made a wand that didn't perform as expected. Their games are over priced for the younger market.
They live on their name and nothing else.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Informative)
As always, I see most Slashdot representative comments being completely wrong when it comes to Nintendo.
It seems like some people wait for every news on Nintendo to spew all the ire and BS that keep them enraged inside.
I'm still wondering where people are seeing anything about "competing". Yet, a lot of posts act like he talked about competing with these mobile devices.
Fils-Aime, who is NOT CEO of Nintendo (which should give a clue as to how misleading this news is) is talking about the content, the games, and people's perception of value on games. It has nothing to do with graphics or animations or whatever problem people have with Nintendo, it's about content and its value to the consumer. He's saying it's dangerous for the industry to make people believe that whatever the content in a game, it has a very low value (and so a very low price).
He doesn't even say it's threatening anyone right now, he says its a possible risk.
People on Slashdot, as with the DS or the Wii (or even the first iPod), are already talking like 3DS is dead on arrival and Nintendo is doomed (as always).
Yet, it's for opposite reasons. $2 games would kill most HD console games types faster than any Wii or DS ones.
I think what Reggie said is more a warning to 3rd parties. We see lots of 3rd parties porting their already (or not) profitable games to mobile platforms, for a very cheap price, and sometimes it's exactly the same content. The problem is that a consumer who paid $40-$70 for a game, that sees the same one for $5 on his mobile, will not really be happy about ever paying the high price again. And if lots of them come to the same realization, you will see mostly western 3rd parties die left and right (worse than what we see today). Because most western 3rd party games (and lots of eastern ones too) rely on selling a lot at launch, and then quickly die. If they don't sell a lot at launch, you see the games with quick slashed prices. 3rd parties can do that because the cost of the game is already taken care of by the other platforms, but there are very few people (the hardcore) that will want to pay so much more to have the privilege of playing the game day 1.
Nintendo doesn't have this problem as their games sell with veeery long tail. Basically, 3rd parties (the big one) are shooting themselves in the foot if they go on, and less 3rd parties alive to make games for Nintendo platforms means less revenue for Nintendo.
Apart from that, Reggie is not really complaining, not yet at least, as even the DS is right now more threatened by the 3DS than by any mobile device with games.
They're not in direct competition like computer games (like flash games and all that existed for a long time) are not competing directly with console games (except for devs resources). Or that would mean consoles are winning...