Should Nintendo feel threatened by Apple's gaming push?
pple's shaken up quite a few markets over the last few years, first with the iPhone and now with its iPad. But do manufacturers of video game hardware have any reason to be concerned? Sure, Apple's App Store has sold millions of downloads, but is that success cutting into the bottom line of a company like Nintendo?
In a recent interview with Kotaku, Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America argued that Apple posed absolutely no threat whatsoever to the dominance of its DS in the portable arena: "Clearly it doesn't look like their platform is a viable profit platform for game development because so many of the games are free versus paid downloads… If our games represent a range between snacks of entertainment and full meals depending on the type of game, [Apple's] aren't even a mouthful, in terms of the gaming experience you get."
Come now, Reggie — you can't tell me you're not a little bit jealous of the rather large piece of the pie Apple has taken for itself. Your company makes games for a device that accompanies me on long plane trips and holidays, whereas Apple publishes games that can quite literally follow me anywhere. Whether those games are substantial or whether they provide Apple a reasonable profit is irrelevant — overnight, Nintendo's DS has been supplanted as the premier portable platform.
Clearly, Nintendo's been a bit shaken up by the ramifications of Apple entering the gaming space. The DSiWare line is basically its own attempt at running an App store. And while the vast majority of the games available for the iPhone are complete and utter crap, the top tier of releases have taken mobile gaming to places it's never been before.
By no means am I declaring this the end of Nintendo — Pokemon and Mario should keep the company going for many years to come. There's no denying, however, that they've missed an opportunity. As much as it seemed older gamers would be taken in by titles like Brain Age, the point still stands — the DSi can't take calls.
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