Nintendo Chills Mobile Ambitions After Animal Crossing Success 15
Nintendo is retreating from the $77 billion mobile gaming arena after disappointing results deflated once-lofty ambitions, ending a multiyear effort just as the market goes through an unprecedented Covid-era boom. From a report: President Shuntaro Furukawa proclaimed two years ago that smartphone games would be a $1 billion business with growth potential, building on his predecessor's promise that Nintendo would release two to three mobile titles each year. That spurred hopes among investors that the gaming powerhouse could carve out a substantial slice of the market. In May, however, the president adopted a markedly different tune, saying "We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market." Nintendo's shares slid 4% the day after that remark. Close observers might have sensed Nintendo was growing disillusioned with the mobile realm even earlier. Its smartphone games project was born out of necessity to shore up the bottom line amid the Wii U's failure. Now, riding a surge in Switch popularity and investor confidence, the Kyoto-based company appears to have reassessed the mobile business and narrowed its focus to its own console ecosystem.
Just make actual Nintendo quality mobile games (Score:3, Insightful)
If Nintendo released actual full content games for $20-$50 instead of free or nearly free things which are crippled by monetization schemes, I think their fans would be happy to buy more Nintendo branded games on their phones and tablets.
I know I would.
Re: Just make actual Nintendo quality mobile games (Score:4, Insightful)
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I pay for apps occasionally. The real situation is that users aren't paying more than a buck or two unless the app is actually worth more than a buck or two. Most of them are crap. That crap is not worth fifty dollars. Most of the time it's not worth twenty dollars, either.
If I have some inkling that the app will last through multiple Android versions and it's actually good then I might pay more. But so far I've seen very little effort in those directions.
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It's frankly hard to imagine a non-crap non-casual game that caters to touchscreen experience. Sure, you *can* have real joysticks paired to a phone, but no sane person is going to bother to make a mobile game that also requires a joystick rather than targeting a game console.
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They only need to support game controllers. Any one who doesn't want to use one can have an inferior experience. While they are at it, Nintendo should make a phone game controller that doesn't suck. Maybe they can accomplish that where everyone else has failed.
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I think the compromises required for a game to be even vaguely playable with a touch screen would compromise the experience for controller users. You could never assume the player could view the entire display while playing (touch screen user would necessarily obscure the view). You could never require controls that would require more than two thumbs of pressing at a time (nothing that would require 'shoulder' buttons). Generally more extreme variations on typical compromises made for portable game systems,
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Personally I have the 8 Bit do sn30 pro plus with the phone clip and it works pretty well.
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I'm not a big game player, I tend to stick with Tetris, but I did buy Dead Space Mobile back when it came out in 2011. I remember having quite a bit of fun with it. That game was in the third person with an "over-the-shoulder" perspective but the same control scheme would work just as well for a first-person game.
I also had N.O.V.A. 3 with the same control setup but from a first-person perspective. I remember it being described as a "Halo knockoff". I don't remember having any complaints about the control
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I would gladly pay $50 for a $20 phone game.
Because that would mean a $20 phone game existed.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/i... [forbes.com]
Nintendo later released Mario Kart Tour which followed the typical mobile "buy gems/coins/whatever" model. It's apparently more successful than Super Mario Run:
https://www.cultofmac.com/6753... [cultofmac.com]
Because they don't want to make their IP garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
Well you have cell phones that get hocked to the public as these things you should replace every two years. When you make a platform seem like such a throwaway type thing, it shouldn't surprise anyone when the expectation for the content is as equally throwaway. Mobile gaming is a pretty throwaway experience, play for three-four minutes, watch an ad, maybe buy some $0.19 DLC, forget about everything, get a notification, play for another three-four minutes, repeat till you finally uninstall the shit. And you know if that's your cup of tea, cool. But not every company wants to drag their IP through that. You see Nintendo's games doing the whole, you get a few levels, but pay this one price and get the rest of the game. Kind of like the whole 1980s freeware style of gaming. Because they just really don't want to drag their IP into the throwaway experience of mobile gaming. Especially when they now have a platform that's doing really well and providing the console level experience in the typical mobile game usage.
They're walking a fine line (Score:4, Informative)
Fantastic news. (Score:1)