By Michael Lowell
March 5, 2011
Nintendo and Their 3DS Dilemma: Part Two
Part One: A New, Smarter Competitor
Part Two: Convenience, Casual Gaming, and Domination
“Mikey Lowell, you’re so crazy. The Nintendo 3DS isn’t about price points and market saturation and consumer psychology! Nintendo is simply doing what smart companies do: They’re making the best product they can. Companies want to milk the stereoscopic input gravy train before consumers suffer headaches thinking about the technology. That’s all. Stop being such a cynic!” Hey, I said Nintendo was stubborn. I didn’t say they were stupid. Nintendo knows the industry and they know the business. They know the history of the portable gaming market. Hell, they created it. They know that the Nintendo 3DS is a statement claiming the best of portable video games can stand with the best of console and computer gamers. Well, it’s always possible. There have been some great portable video games. The problem? Those great games have never dictated the sales charts. In-fact, they have been harmful in the pursuit of sales. High-quality console games have never sold portable devices and that is not going to change in the near future. Not now, it isn’t.
This was settled a very long time ago. Nintendo settled this with their Game Boy. That device made its way to the United States in July of 1989. And even in 1989, the Game Boy wasn’t much of a device. It was cheap in more ways than one. The ninety-dollar trinket could display games in four stunning shades of gray. The marketing sounded something like this: “You can play video games while you’re outside of the house!” Surely, Nintendo wasn’t claiming the games were going to match their console counterparts. But what about the competition? It wouldn’t be a discussion of video game history if we couldn’t invoke the good name of Atari. That is, “Atari finds another way to screw things up.”
After the Crash of 1983 and the complete burnout of the Atari 5200 (a “premium” video game console in a market that was still satisfied with the Atari 2600), Atari went to work on the Atari 7800. The device was slated for a 1984 release and (whether market trends or corporate bureaucracy held it back) was horribly dated by its 1986 release. By this point, Atari’s name was synonymous with the Crash. That certainly didn’t help Atari’s cause. But Nintendo kick-started that whole “Japanese make better console hardware than Americans” narrative with the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was a superior piece of hardware. Better graphics, better sound, better hardware. The console sold consumers on massive and colorful worlds that the Atari 7800 was never capable of matching. Nintendo won, Atari lost.
By 1989, Atari had enough. They were not going to get fucked over by “inferior hardware” again. By the late eighties, the first sixteen-bit video game consoles (a combination of eight-and-sixteen-bit hardware under a single roof) were making their way to consumers. At the same time, Nintendo was figuring out how to make video games portable. It was a completely untapped market. Portable video game devices dotted the late seventies and early eighties, but other than the Nintendo Game & Watch series and a constant supply of handheld devices from Tiger Electronics, this market was a non-entity. Nobody had devised a portable video game device with changeable cartridges. Atari decided they were not going to miss out on this one.
I lifted this picture from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can lift content from. Stop me.
Making its way into the United States a month prior to the Sega Genesis, the sixteen-bit Atari Lynx made its way to American consumers in September of 1989, two months after the Game Boy hit the States. Ignore the terrible battery life (approximately six hours on six AA batteries) and you had a damn good piece of hardware. And the Lynx wasn’t a case of the Atari Jaguar, where Atari fashioned an advertising fellatio frenzy for the device’s hardware specs and forgot to secure publishers who could program decent games for the console. A number of the games on the Lynx played very, very well, including a very good air combat game in Blue Lightning and excellent ports of Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon, Rampart, and Klax. In contrast to most of the failed hardware that dots the history of video games, the Lynx wasn’t lacking in the software department.
The Lynx was an incredible counter-point to the Game Boy. When it came to hardware, the only thing going for the Game Boy was its price point, selling for half the price of the Lynx. But better hardware allows for more complicated games, and “more complicated” usually means “more interesting”. What were companies going to do with a Game Boy that couldn’t even render color? Four shades of grey? That’s all you’re giving me? The Atari Lynx had better graphics than the Nintendo Entertainment System! And then the Game Boy kicked the ever-loving shit out of the Atari Lynx and banished it to history, “that portable device Atari released before they put the nail in the coffin with the Jaguar.”
“Wait, you’re serious? People gave up on that thing?” Nintendo did a couple of things to assure that the Lynx could not compete with the Game Boy. First off, Nintendo was still in the “If You Make Games For Competing Devices, We Will Destroy You” Mode that American courts eventually declared illegal. That cut off a number of prospective developers from creating games for the Lynx. But more importantly, Nintendo did two other things: They released Super Mario Land as a launch title. Then they made Tetris the pack-in title. Game over. Atari lost the portable gaming war before the Lynx had even made it to shelves. And by the time Sega released its Game Gear during the early nineties, Sega had also lost the portable gaming war. Nintendo would parlay this dominance into fifteen years of uncontested market control.
“So Nintendo had brand recognition! That’s why they won! You even said it yourself: Atari’s name was tarnished. Anybody over the age of sixteen didn’t want anything to do with the company.” That would be a misunderstanding. See, both Tetris and Super Mario got to the public in 1985. Neither game was particularly complex. Mario needs a directional pad, a run button, and a jump button. Tetris needs a directional pad and a button to rotate the pieces. That made them ideal for a 1989 portable gaming console. With the exception of the graphics, they were totally faithful to their predecessors. (“But Super Mario Land wasn’t very good!” That had nothing to do with the conversion. Shigeru Miyamoto had nothing to do with Super Mario Land. Miyamoto equals “Good Mario Game”. Go look it up.) Super Mario Land and Tetris would combine to sell nearly fifty million units and became the killer apps for the Game Boy until Pokémon: Red and Blue were released in the mid-nineties. The first major successful portable game device taught us the most important lesson of successful portable video games: The best portable games don’t lose anything in their transition from a console or computer to a portable game device. And if a franchise began its life cycle on a portable device, it would not gain any utility if it was ported to a console. These games then offer more to the consumer because they are portable. “Game X” versus “Portable Game X”. “Portable Game X” will win every time.
So, why is that? Why do simple games rule supreme on portable gaming devices? And why has that held true for over twenty years? Portable gaming technology is now catching up with the aging seventh-generation of consoles, so this is a pretty good time to pose the question. This simply isn’t a case of “on-the-go gaming needs to be simple”. Modern portable devices have sleep modes and those devices can be adjusted to the busy lives of non-gamers. And the hardware is quite good now. After all, a Nintendo DS is simply a portable Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 3DS has been sold to consumers as a portable Nintendo Wii. And there’s a lot of good games for each of those consoles. Companies are going to be playing the marketing card. And you know what they’re going to ask? “What sounds better to you: A PlayStation 3 that can only be played in your house? Or a PlayStation 3 that you can take anywhere you would like?”
There’s a gigantic problem with the idea of a portable PlayStation and the man or woman who finds a solution will become very rich one day. Smartphones can do a lot of very useful things. Unfortunately, nearly every one of these involve data consumption. “You can surf the internet! You can read things on Facebook! You can play cheap games! What an incredible device!” These on-the-go devices are not built for data creation. Say all the wonderful things you want about your iPad, but this site was built with a desktop computer. That’s the only way it could have been done. The desktop isn’t concerned with battery life, it’s not concerned with mobility, it’s designed to kick ass. With a desktop computer, input is the important function. Video game controllers work the same way. The primary concern of a good video game controller is that it fits your hands and works well. And if that input device isn’t suitable for the genre, you can switch it out. You can buy a fightstick for Street Fighter. You can buy a plastic guitar for Rock Band. You can buy a dance pad for Dance Dance Revolution. In the video game universe where computer gamers obsess over mouse sensitivity and mouse acceleration and the number of “pixels lost” with certain mouse settings,* precision is paramount.
With a phone or portable video game device, convenience comes first. The precision, proficiency, and efficiency of input is secondary. And long-time gamers have a pretty strong opinion on video games that are too complicated for the control scheme: They suck. Game Design 101 says you can’t sacrifice the control scheme so the device can fit in someone’s pocket. But Marketing 101 says you have to do that. How else do you fulfill the “portable” in “portable video games”? That’s why the Game Boy Advance had its issues. The device was lauded as a portable Super Nintendo. When companies ported their Super Nintendo titles to the Game Boy Advance, they were then confronted with two fewer face buttons. The result was a bunch of games featuring stunted control schemes. (See: Metroid Fusion.) That’s why the Sony PSP has struggled to make due without a second thumbstick. One only has to look at Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a game that stunts its difficulty to make sure the player has enough time to line up his shots. The control scheme simply isn’t built to aim a weapon. And then you have an iPhone where companies are forced to program their control schemes into the touchscreen. And if there’s anything worse than a sloppy control scheme, it’s a sloppy emulated control scheme. That’s why the best-selling portable games remain simple: You can’t over-exert a control scheme that isn’t capable of doing what you would like it to. Once you build a complicated game for a portable device, you end up having that product compared to the competition on computers and consoles. Once you do that, the hardcore audience you are targeting with that game asks a simple question: “Why would I want to play this game on a portable device when I can get a better experience with my home gaming center? You can’t even give me a proper control scheme!” And they will be correct.
In the brief history of portable video games, “scaled-down versions of established games” have proven the most forgettable products. The people anxiously waiting for Super Street Fighter IV 3D have forgotten that miniaturized versions of fighting games have all been lost to history, whether it’s Mortal Kombat for the Game Boy and Tekken for the Game Boy Advance; lest the people fawning over a sequel to Kid Icarus forget that the Game Boy already delivered on one of those.* Hardcore gamers agree with me on this. Go through any “greatest games” list. What are the usual portable suspects? We already got the love for Tetris out of the way. Next up? Pokémon: Red and Blue somehow revolutionized the Japanese Role-Playing Game by dumbing it down further than was ever thought possible. Its creators then used a robust, tradeable library of characters to create word of mouth between twelve-year-olds. Most recently? Angry Birds is built on the idea that casual gamers want something to do in the five minutes between the important Facebook comments that define their busy lives. Out of thousands of games for Nintendo devices and tens of thousands of mobile phone games, those three games are just about it. In the portable market where simple games light up the sales charts, I’m the only person who played Advance Wars and you’re the only person who played the Phoenix Wright series. Think you’ll ever find Mario Kart DS on a greatest games list? Not as long as Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 get the love and Mario Kart Wii dominates the console sales charts. What about The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening? It’s not topping Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time. The hardcore gamers who argue about silly things like the “greatest games” have already determined that the portable format yields inferior versions of their favorite console games. Nintendo is now asking those same hardcore gamers to purchase a Nintendo 3DS and play scaled-down versions of their favorite console games.
Arguably the best franchise nobody is willing to acknowledge. Such is the life of a deep portable gaming franchise.
It simply doesn’t lend itself to an identity for the device. Look at the current generation of video game consoles. The Xbox 360 has a reputation as the console where you can play shooters online and aim dick jokes at your thirteen-year-old adversaries. The PlayStation 3 is a carry-over living on the reputation of the PlayStation 2. That is, “it doesn’t matter what genre you’re into, you’ll find something to like”. The Nintendo Wii is the family video game console and dust collection box. It’s the console that mom and dad can purchase for their kids and play Mario with. What identity can a video game console develop when it’s built on hand-me-downs? Nobody has found a way to make hand-me-downs play better with stereoscopic input and that’s not happening for a while. Not as long as game developers are content with developing hand-me-downs for portable gaming devices.
The Sony PSP was supposed to demonstrate that hand-me-downs can’t work on portable gaming devices. Sony sold 65 million of the damn things! It only has fifteen million units to go before it reaches the Game Boy Advance. And I mean, nobody thought ill of that device. People should be lauding Sony for finding room in the market for a second dedicated portable video game device. Instead, everyone is talking about the product like it was a colossal failure. Nobody wants to make games for the thing. (At least not in the States, they don’t. The play-on-the-go Japanese consumer culture holds some scant objections to my comments. Even in that market, they’re losing ground.) Certainly, Sony didn’t do themselves any favors by thinking their inflated sense of brand recognition (i.e. Ken Kutaragi’s infamous PlayStation 3 comment that people “will work more hours to buy one”) and their reputation for quality hardware could trump an emerging-yet-voracious market for smartphones. The Sony PSP lost its audience for a simple reason: If you had a quirky game, you published it for the Nintendo DS. You had a much better chance of turning a profit because it was a cheaper device to develop for and boasted a much larger install base. What did that leave the Sony PSP? A development cast of mega-publishers who aren’t interested in taking any risks. That meant an entire library of miniaturized console games based on established franchise. That is, “precisely what does not sell on portable devices”. That is, “what Nintendo now believes will sell the Nintendo 3DS”.
That’s Nintendo’s strategy and they’re entitled to run with it. It’s one hell of a “damned if you do” situation: If Nintendo continues extending their appeal to casual gamers, Apple will price Nintendo out of competition; if Nintendo tries to win the hardcore gamer, they will reserve their services for a niche audience. What is one of the biggest players in the history of video games supposed to do? Eh, they’ll probably sell a hundred million units because “They’re Nintendo!” I’ve found this whole “capitalism” and “free market” thing often defies logic when a company assumes “god status”. Damn the irrational consumer. Damn them.
ual Gaming, and Domination
“Mikey Lowell, you’re so crazy. The Nintendo 3DS isn’t about price points and market saturation and consumer psychology! Nintendo is simply doing what smart companies do: They’re making the best product they can. Companies want to milk the stereoscopic input gravy train before consumers suffer headaches thinking about the technology. That’s all. Stop being such a cynic!” Hey, I said Nintendo was stubborn. I didn’t say they were stupid. Nintendo knows the industry and they know the business. They know the history of the portable gaming market. Hell, they created it. They know that the Nintendo 3DS is a statement claiming the best of portable video games can stand with the best of console and computer gamers. And if they can hang with the big ticket, they can certainly stuff the iPhone. Well, it’s always possible. There have been some great portable video games. The problem? Those great games have never dictated the sales charts. In-fact, they have been harmful in the pursuit of sales. High-quality console games do not sell portable devices and that isn’t changing for some time.
This was settled a very long time ago. Nintendo settled this with their Game Boy. That device made its way to the United States in July of 1989. And even in 1989, the Game Boy wasn’t much of a device. It was cheap in more ways that one. The ninety-dollar trinket could display games in four stunning shades of grey. The marketing sounded something like this: “You can play video games while you’re outside of the house!” Surely, Nintendo wasn’t claiming the games were going to match their console counterparts. But what about the competition? It wouldn’t be a discussion of video game history if we couldn’t invoke the good name of Atari. That is, “Atari finds another way to screw things up.”
After the Crash of 1983 and the complete burnout of the Atari 5200 (a “premium” video game console in a market that was still satisfied with the Atari 2600), Atari went to work on the Atari 7800. The device was slated for a 1984 release and (whether market or corporate bureaucracy held it back) was horribly dated by its 1986 release. By this point, Atari’s name was synonymous with the Crash. That certainly didn’t help Atari’s cause. But Nintendo kick-started that whole “the Japanese make better console hardware than Americans” thing with the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was a superior piece of hardware. Better graphics, better sound, better hardware. The console sold consumers on massive and colorful worlds that the Atari 7800 was never capable of matching. Nintendo won, Atari lost.
By 1989, Atari had enough. They were not going to get fucked over by “inferior hardware” again. By the late eighties, the first sixteen-bit video game consoles (a combination of eight-and-sixteen-bit hardware under a single roof) were making their way to consumers. At the same time, Nintendo was figuring out how to make video games portable. It was a completely untapped market. Portable video game devices dotted the late seventies and early eighties, but other than the Nintendo Game & Watch series and a constant supply of handheld devices from Tiger Electronics, this market was a non-entity. Nobody had devised a portable video game device with changeable cartridges. Atari decided they were not going to miss out on this one.
[ ]
Making its way into the United States a month prior to the Sega Genesis, the sixteen-bit Atari Lynx made its way to American consumers in September of 1989, two months after the Game Boy hit the States. Ignore the terrible battery life (approximately six hours on six AA batteries) and you had a damn good piece of hardware. And the Lynx wasn’t a case of the Atari Jaguar, where Atari fashioned an advertising fellatio frenzy for the device’s hardware specs and forgot to secure publishers who could program decent games for the console. A number of the games on the Lynx played very, very well, including a very good air combat game in Blue Lightning and excellent ports of Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon, Rampart, and Klax. In contrast to most of the failed hardware that dots the history of video games, the Lynx wasn’t lacking in the software department.
The Lynx was a very good counter-point to the Game Boy. When it came to hardware, the only thing going for the Game Boy was its price point, selling for half the price of the Lynx. But better hardware allows for more complicated games, and “more complicated” usually means “more interesting”. What were companies going to do with a Game Boy that couldn’t match the technical moxy of the Nintendo Entertainment System, a piece of hardware that was showing its age? Four shades of grey? That’s all you’re giving me? The Atari Lynx could render a twelve-bit color scheme.
And then the Game Boy kicked the ever-loving shit out of the Atari Lynx and banished it to history, “that portable device Atari released before they put the nail in the coffin with the Jaguar.”
“Wait, you’re serious? People gave up on that thing?” Nintendo did a couple of things to assure that the Lynx could not compete with the Game Boy. First off, Nintendo was still in the “If You Make Games For Competing Devices, We Will Destroy You” Mode that American courts eventually declared illegal. That cut off a number of prospective developers from creating games for the Lynx. But more importantly, Nintendo did two other things: They released Super Mario Land as a launch title. Then they made Tetris the pack-in title. Game over. Atari lost the portable gaming war before the Lynx had even made it to shelves. And by the time Sega released its Game Gear during the early nineties, Sega had also lost the portable gaming war. Nintendo would parlay this dominance into fifteen years of uncontested market control.
“So Nintendo had brand recognition! That’s why they won! You even said it yourself: Atari’s name was tarnished. Anybody over the age of sixteen didn’t want anything to do with the company.” That would be a misunderstanding. See, both Tetris and Mario got to the public in 1985. Neither game was particularly complex. Mario needs a directional pad, a run button, and a jump button. Tetris needs a directional pad and a button to rotate the pieces. That made them ideal for a 1989 portable gaming console. Other than graphics, they were totally faithful to their predecessors. (“But Super Mario Land wasn’t very good!” That had nothing to do with the conversion. Shigeru Miyamoto had nothing to do with Super Mario Land. Miyamoto equals “Good Mario Game”. Go look it up.) Super Mario Land and Tetris would combine to sell nearly fifty units and became the killer apps for the Game Boy until Pokémon: Red and Blue were released in the mid-nineties. The first major successful portable game device taught us the most important lesson of successful portable video games: The best portable games don’t lose anything in their transition from a console or computer to a portable game device. Or, they would not gain any utility if they were ported to a console. These games then offer more to the consumer because they are portable. “Game X” versus “Portable Game X”. “Portable Game X” will win every time.
So, why is that? Why do simple games rule supreme on portable gaming devices? And why has that held true for over twenty years? This simply isn’t a case of “on-the-go gaming needs to be simple”. Modern portable devices have sleep modes and those devices are capable of making an adjustment. And the hardware is quite good now. After all, a Nintendo DS is simply a portable Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 3DS has been sold to consumers as a portable Nintendo Wii. And there’s a lot of good games for each of those consoles. With portable gaming technology is now catching up with the aging seventh-generation of consoles, this is a pretty good time to ask the question. Companies are going to be playing the marketing card, after all. And you know what they’re going to ask? What sounds better to you: A PlayStation 3 that can only be played in your house? Or a PlayStation 3 that you can take anywhere you would like?
There’s a gigantic problem with the idea of a portable PlayStation and the man or woman who finds a solution will become very rich one day. Smartphones can do a lot of very useful things. Unfortunately, nearly every one of these involve data consumption. “You can make calls! You can surf the internet! You can read things on Facebook! What an incredible device!” These on-the-go devices are not built for data creation. Say all the wonderful things you want about your iPad, but this site was built with a desktop computer. That’s the only way it could have been done. The desktop isn’t concerned with battery life, it’s not concerned with mobility, it’s designed to kick ass. With a desktop computer, input is the important function. Video game controllers work the same way. The primary concern of a good video game controller is that it fits your hands and works well. And if that input device isn’t suitable for the genre, you can switch it out. You can buy a fightstick for Street Fighter. You can buy a plastic guitar for Rock Band. You can buy a dance pad for Dance Dance Revolution. In the video game universe where computer gamers obsess over mouse sensitivty and mouse acceleration and the number of “pixels lost” with certain mouse settings, it’s an understatement to say that precision is paramount.
With a phone or portable video game device, convenience comes first. The precision, proficiency, and efficiency of input is secondary. And lon-time gamers have a pretty strong opinion on video games that are too complicated for the control scheme: They suck. Game Design 101 says you can’t sacrifice the control scheme so the device can fit in someone’s pocket. But Marketing 101 says you have to do that. How else do you fulfill the “portable” in “portable video games”? That’s why the Game Boy Advance had its issues. The device was lauded as a portable Super Nintendo. When companies ported their Super Nintendo titles to the Game Boy Advance, they were then confronted with two fewer face buttons. The result was a bunch of games featuring stunted control schemes. (See: Metroid Fusion). That’s why the Sony PSP has struggled to make due without a second thumbstick. One only has to look at Metal Gear Solid: Peace Weaker and a cast of enemies that compensate for the control scheme and give the player ample time to line up their shots. That’s why you have an iPhone where companies are forced to program their control schemes into the touchscreen. And if there’s anything worse than a sloppy control scheme, it’s a sloppy emulated control scheme. That’s why the best-selling portable games remain simple. You can’t over-exert a control scheme that isn’t capable of doing what you would like it to. Once you build a complicated game for a portable device, you end up having that product compared to the competition on computers and consoles. Once you do that, the hardcore audience you are targeting with that game asks a simple question: “Why would I want to play this game on a portable device when I can get a better experience with my home gaming center? You can’t even give me a proper control scheme!” And they will be correct.
In the brief history of portable video games, “scaled-down versions of established games” have proven the most forgettable products. The people anxiously waiting for Super Street Fighter IV 3D have forgotten that miniaturized versionf of fighting games have all been lost to history, whether it’s Mortal Kombat for the Game Boy and Tekken for the Game Boy Advance; lest the people fawning over a sequel to Kid Icarus forget that the Game Boy already delivered on one of those. Hardcore gamers agree with me on this. Go through any “greatest games” list. What are the usual portable suspects? We already got the love for Tetris out of the way. Next up? Pokémon: Red and Blue somehow revolutionized the Japanese Role-Playing Game by dumbing it down further than was ever thought possible. Its creators then used a robust, tradeable library of characters to create word of mouth between twelve-year-olds. Most recently? Angry Birds is built on the idea that casual gamers want something to do in the five minutes between the important Facebook comments that define their busy lives. Those three games are just about it. In the portable market where simple games light up the sales charts, I’m the only person who played Advance Wars and you’re the only person who played the Phoenix Wright series. Think you’ll ever find Mario Kart DS on a greatest games list? Not as long as Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 get the love and Mario Kart Wii dominates the console sales charts. What about The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening? It’s not topping Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time. The hardcore gamers who argue about silly things like the “greatest games” have already determined that the portable format yields inferior versions of their favorite console games. Nintendo is now asking those same hardcore gamers to purchase a Nintendo 3DS and play scaled-down versions of their favorite console games.
It simply doesn’t lend itself to an identity for the device. Look at the current generation of video game consoles. The Xbox 360 has a reputation as the console where you can play shooters online and aim dick jokes at your thirteen-year-old adversaries. The PlayStation 3 is a carry-over living on the reputation of the PlayStation 2. That is, “it doesn’t matter what genre you’re into, you’ll find something to like”. The Nintendo Wii is the family video game console and dust collection box. It’s the console that mom and dad can purchase for their kids and play Mario with. What identity can a video game console develop when it’s built on hand-me-downs? Nobody has found a way to make hand-me-downs play better with stereoscopic input and that’s not happening for a while. Not as long as game developers are content with developing hand-me-downs for portable gaming devices.
The Sony PSP was supposed to demonstrated that hand-me-downs can’t work on portable gaming devices. Sony sold 65 million of the damn things! It only has fifteen million units to go before it reaches the Game Boy Advance. And I mean, nobody thought ill of that device. People should be laudingg Sony for finding room in the market for a second dedicated portable video game device. Instead, everyone is talking about the product like it was a colossal failure. Nobody wants to make games for the thing. (At least not in the States, they don’t. The play-as-you-go Japanese market holds some scant objections to my comments. That’s about it.) Certainly, Sony didn’t do themselves any favors by thinking their inflated sense of brand recognition (i.e. Ken Kutaragi’s infamous PlayStation 3 comment that people “will work more hours to buy one”) and their reputation for quality hardware could trump an emerging-yet-voracious market for smartphones. The Sony PSP lost its audience for a simple reason: If you had a quirky game, you published it for the Nintendo DS. You had a much better chance of turning a profit because it was a cheaper device to develop for and boasted a much larger install base. What did that leave the Sony PSP? A development cast of mega-publishers who aren’t interested in taking any risks. That meant an entire library of miniaturized console games based on established franchise. That is, “precisely what does not sell on portable devices”. That is, “what Nintendo now believes will sell the Nintendo 3DS”.
That’s Nintendo’s strategy and they’re entitled to run with it. It’s one hell of a “damned if you do” situation. If Nintendo continues extending their appeal to casual gamers, Apple will price Nintendo out of competition. If Nintendo tries to win the hardcore gamer, they will reserve their services for a niche audience. What is one of the biggest players in the history of video games supposed to do?
Eh, they’ll probably sell a hundred million units because “They’re Nintendo!” I’ve found this whole “capitalism” and “free market” thing often defies logic when a company assumes “god status”. Damn the irrational consumer. Damn them.
I can’t believe people are excited over 3D. Even that weaboo guy on Kotaku said he turned it off on the 3DS. The thing about 3D is that first it seems impressive, like the first 1 or 2 movies but after that you get used to the effect and it just becomes a nuisance.
I never got this whole “PSP is a failure thing”. 65 million units is a lot. On the other hand I never heard anyone say the N64 was a failure even though it sold half that.
Comment by Q-veta on March 5, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Coming from someone who played Stratego when he was young and is one of the four people in Montreal who can play the card game Dominion, I absolutely loved Advance wars. I even drew out a map and made a board game out of it (which is simpler then you may think).
I gave up completely on consoles portable or not after the Playstation 2 simply because internet play on PC is cheap and can be an extremely social and fulfilling environment. But if I still played console games I would definitely think the 3DS is a catch-22. I would rather wrap up a Wii in a backpack and bring it along with me more than a lower-tier gaming experience.
Here is hoping that cloud gaming can reach twitch latencies and hardware becomes a thing of the past!
Comment by Abraxas on March 5, 2011 at 8:16 pm
“You can buy a dance pad for Dance Dance Revolution. In the video game universe where computer gamers obsess over mouse sensitivty [...]”
You spelled sensitivity wrong.
Comment by Anonymous on March 5, 2011 at 9:23 pm
@Abraxas: Advance Wars is just an incredible series. I’m really not a turn-based strategy buff and I still had some incredible fun with it. As far as the “console gaming on portables goes”, I guess it’s like this: If I want to play console games while I’m out of the house, I’ll go ahead and stay home. I don’t feel it’s worth the investment to put down “primary gaming device” money on a secondary gaming device.
As for cloud gaming…that’s another story entirely. Maybe I should ramble on about that sometime.
@Anonymous: Thanks for the heads-up. It shall be amended.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 5, 2011 at 9:52 pm
One only has to look at Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a game that stunts its difficult to make sure the player has enough time to line up his shots.
Typo there, supposed to be spelled “difficulty”.
Also, the NGP/PSP2 seems to address the control scheme feature and boasts to have graphics somehwere between the PS2 and PS3. No idea about the price tag, but it has the long-asked-for second analog stick, a stopgap measure for two additional shoulder buttons, and decent graphics and support for PSN on the go with 3G technology, which the Nintendo STILL has failed to properly address.
As a Hardcore Gamer, the PSP2 basically has everything I wanted in a handheld console. However, I’m wondering what you think about this console. If Sony DOES price the PSP2 right to be competitive against the 3DS, do you think Sony will be able to take the hardcore market back?
Comment by White Phoenix on March 5, 2011 at 9:59 pm
It’s going to be whether or not there’s enough hardcore gamers who are interested in spending the money on the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony PSP to sustain a market now sharing duties with smartphones. It’s probably going to come down to developer support. If Sony can only unleash its own developers on the Sony NGP or they can only match the Nintendo 3DS (where companies port the same games to both consoles), Nintendo probably wins out because of superior brand recognition and probably wins out because I’ll gander that Sony will be taking a much bigger loss on the sale of each NGP. Sony has to perform much better than Nintendo to hold ground. I say they have to find a killer app for the device. The PSP does not have that. The Nintendo devices always have Pokémon and Mario to fall back on. If both companies go into the market on even terms (and it’s clear that’s not the case), then I’d pick Nintendo every time.
And thanks for picking up the spelling error. Always appreciate when you guys do that.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 5, 2011 at 11:09 pm
The main reason developers pulled out of backing the PSP is due to the same problems plaguing the PS3 at the moment: they offered features that Sony removed, and people restored them via custom firmware. The PSP became insanely easy to pirate games on (and, coincidentally, was a pretty good platform for making your own homebrew games). Developers backed off because they were too afraid of the machinations of the piracy machine, so a fairly decent handheld got completely neglected.
Now, Sony (thinks they have) learned their lesson, and are suing the shit out of anyone who tries to make the PS3 usable again. The DS had similar issues with piracy, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s amazing that people make games at all, with all the fret about people downloading games for free.
Oh, wait, game sales are still increasing (although, most of those are big name console sequels, with PC gamers being neglected or otherwise being thrown into ported games with less-than-optimal support for them).
Comment by Astral on March 6, 2011 at 2:13 am
Bravo, another excellent piece.
I really have to wonder if Nintendo’s investors are nervous, especially with Nintendo’s careless attitude thinking that because they’re Nintendo, they’ll make money. That didn’t work out so well on the N64, or the Gamecube.
I wish Nintendo would have stuck with their Blue Ocean Strategy, enticing new players, and making new games with “Wii” in the title, minus Wii Music of course. Nintendo was so exciting when the Wii started, now they squandered their potential.
Please, just for me, heck, all of us, write a Metroid Other M review for me, I could use a good laugh. And would love to see you tear a new one for Sakamoto.
Comment by Toadofsky on March 6, 2011 at 3:38 am
This owns. You own.
Comment by Anon on March 6, 2011 at 3:53 am
@Astral: Yeah, the issues concerning piracy didn’t help the device at all. While I typically dismiss computer and console gaming piracy, I actually believe it could be a legitimate issue for the portable devices, which become a substantially better portable product when you load all the games into a single flash card. The UMD is quite the dreadful format and I haven’t heard a nice thing about them. The brand identity is still a huge issue, though. Good luck convincing those potential software pirates that they should pay for a game that “plays just like the one I already have on a console”. Sony isn’t going to do themselves any sympathy on the software piracy front with the fiascofuck they’ve got going with the PlayStation 3. They’re going all Jack T. Ripper on their user base.
@Toadofsky: Nintendo was in a lose-lose situation with the new user base they had courted. That user base was not going to buy any new games unless they had “Wii” or “Mario” in the title (as the top-seven-selling Nintendo Wii games and their combined two-hundred-million-plus units have done). The reality is that if you strip away the casual user base, you were left with an audience that had given up on Nintendo products all the way back in the late nineties, now split between the PlayStation 3 and the XBox 360. If mobile gaming picks up to the point where the target consumers don’t see a need for console hardware at all, Nintendo is in very deep shit.
Oh, and I will be getting around to Metroid: Other M at some point in the future. I plan on doing it with all of the Metroid games. If Other M and its content are half as true as what I’ve read on the internet, it sounds like I would have a field day.
@Anon: Yup. It’s pretty much what I do every day. <3
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 6, 2011 at 4:55 am
@Astral
What did Sony remove from the PSP? They removed backwards compatibility with the PS2 to cut costs and I’m pretty sure the hackers aren’t going to put that back in. They removed Linux because the hackers were removing the restriction Sony put on the RSX. Sony always had Linux on their home consoles, this was just the first time it was leading to piracy. And it did anyway.
“Now, Sony (thinks they have) learned their lesson, and are suing the shit out of anyone who tries to make the PS3 usable again.”
What you can’t live without Linux on the PS3? It seems pretty usable to me.
@Toadofsky
“I wish Nintendo would have stuck with their Blue Ocean Strategy, enticing new players, and making new games with “Wii” in the title, minus Wii Music of course. Nintendo was so exciting when the Wii started, now they squandered their potential.”
I’m pretty sure they realized the casual players WILL leave at some point so they had to give the hardcore the Super Mario Galaxies, the Zeldas, the Metroid (Prime 3, not Other M obviously that one just sucks) and the Super Smash Bros Brawl. I guess they had the good idea putting both “Mario” and “Wii” in Mario Kart Wii to sell that much.
Comment by Q-veta on March 6, 2011 at 5:30 am
I still cannot fathom why DS third-party devs (I am mostly thinking here of Shu Takumi, since I like his works) won’t port their games to the PC. They would sell a shitton more copies than with the DS.
In Poland especially this is ridiculous: games on the PC average about 80-90 zł. Phoenix Wright games – 160 zł. Not to mention the fact that I have to buy the freaking console for it, another 780 zł, even though I would be sitting two feet away from my PC anyway.
I dropped my money on my current PC simply because, as you said, I do other stuff with it, e.g. translate. I cannot justify spending upwards to 1000 zł to play one game on a screen the size of a playing card. At least with the PS3 or XBOX360 the production values are much higher, so there’s that.
It is so damn obvious to port all the Phoenix Wright games to a PC and offer a decent price for them that I just cannot wrap my head around the concept of not doing so. I mean, they made Steam for Christ’s sake!
Comment by TB on March 6, 2011 at 1:13 pm
@Q-veta
They removed the ability to make your own games utilizing the SDK, something present in 1.0. This was kind of a big deal for me, because I didn’t have the money to constantly buy overpriced games that would last me maybe five hours, and would rather play the games that people did in their spare time (Roguehack was a great game at the time, as was having OpenTTD). The device had a lot of potential, but it was squandered in fear. I haven’t really been a fan of Sony since the PSP fiasco.
And the Linux issue is a widespread thing affecting just more than just home users of the PS3. (In a similar vein, the ability to create my own programs as Sony attempts to replace my desktop computer would have been a big draw, had I bothered buying it) Organizations ranging from the government to various military branches have been using PS3′s hooked up in tandem to execute various computations on the powerful (and comparatively cheap) GPU. With Linux removed, it’s just a game system. They advertised functionality as a part of “why you should buy this system” and then removed it. Now Sony gets to pay for their massive clusterfuck by trying to sue the Internet. Best of luck to them.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/05/how-removing-ps3-linux-hurts-the-air-force.ars
Comment by Astral on March 6, 2011 at 2:06 pm
As an addition to my post, the PSP’s best games were often the emulated Playstation games. Final Fantasy 7 in your pocket? Priceless.
Comment by Astral on March 6, 2011 at 2:06 pm
@ Mike:
True, but I just can’t stand that hardcore nonsense half the time. Glad to hear you’re doing a Metroid piece, can’t wait to read it.
I wrote a review of it a LONG time ago….
http://www.bitmob.com/articles/metroid-its-all-down-hill-from-here
Have a look if you’re so inclined. ;)
Comment by Toadofsky on March 6, 2011 at 4:27 pm
@TB: I’m not familiar with the logistics of getting Nintendo DS titles onto a personal computer (whether a Nintendo licensing agreement would let them do that, how easy that port can be created), so I don’t know if I can give you a good answer. The platforms and the ability to develop for them are very similar (anyone can make a game for the personal computer and Nintendo is pretty loose when it comes to development for their devices). The matter of game distribution in Eastern Europe (in addition to Brazil and Southeast Asia and China and Russia) is something that is absolutely going to have to be amended before companies can continue complaining about software piracy, though. I’ve heard the horror stories of obtaining legitimate software in those parts of the world. I can understand the disdain.
@Astral: Sony’s reaction to the PlayStation 3 fiasco is going to go down as one of the most interesting business spectacles in the history of this business. The reach Sony believes they hold in downing their purported enemies of the console are almost comical. The fact that the United States government has actually upheld some of that reach is terrifying.
@Toadofsky: Good read, I’ll throw a link on the Twitter feed. While I think the Metroid formula is unmatched in terms of game design, it’s really amusing that the series has only had two games really strive for legendary status in Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. The rest have all either had some major issues or simply been missing something. Other M just sounds like a fucking nightmare from what I’ve read. I don’t want Ninja Gaiden in my Metroid, and not with the misogynistic bullcrap.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 6, 2011 at 11:23 pm
I thought I could play Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (being my first and only jump into the series) because of my love for turn-based SRPGs like Front Mission 3 and Disgaea. Then the 6+ hour long tutorial continuously kicked my ass and I gave up like a chump…
My only problem with the removal of “install OS” on models that were sold with the functionality is that that functionality was a selling point that Sony touted. I understand their decision to not include it with the Slim and other future models, but they should have honored the consumers who had already purcahsed their PS3s with the function.
Comment by iamKelly on March 7, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Advance Wars is a completely different beast. It’s like a simpler brand of Civilization. And “simpler brand of Civilization” probably does a gigantic disservice to the depth and complexity of both of those games. The game’s only real issue was the strength of CO powers (for those who don’t know, you pick a commanding officer and then you can unleash special abilities after so much damage has been done), and that has been supposedly fixed in the most recent game. Awesome stuff. All goes back to the American gaming complex, though: Thinking games are dumb.
As far as the “Other OS” situation goes, I’ll throw in the simple answer: I’m going to assume that offering a certain functionality and then removing it while demand for the service still exists is illegal.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 7, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Yeah, I knew the game was very different, but I thought that the turn-based element would be common ground enough for me to get a good grasp on it. Nope….
I need to try to other games because I had read that Days of Ruin had an insanely steep difficulty curve and was fairly inaccessible to people not already familiar with the series… It seemed like a lot of fun, but the game seemed to be programmed to teach people how to play by stomping their faces into the mud. I like brutal games but I couldn’t take it anymore.
Comment by iamKelly on March 8, 2011 at 3:58 am
Yeah, a lot more moving parts in Advance Wars. It’s tough to wrap your head around a game like that when the attacking player always gets an advantage. Psychologically, it can be grinding to get into a long, drawn-out fight, even if the map and the situation calls for it. It’s not like other games where you can grind out a gargantuan advantage simply by out-classing the competition. You’re almost guaranteed to take some shots.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 8, 2011 at 2:53 pm
That was probably my problem with the mission I finally gave up on… I am not a very patient person. And that game seemed to require a lot.
Comment by iamKelly on March 8, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Yeah, I used to be that way. Reading up on Civilization gave me some new appreciation for the turn-based strategy game. Going to get back into those.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 9, 2011 at 12:36 am
For a long time, I really wanted a ds….
Then I got the iphone.
When I experienced iphone gaming, I predicted the same thing as you to my Nintendo fanboy friend, he said I was crazy.
Comment by kikimonster on March 11, 2011 at 3:16 am
I think people need to realize that video games are as much impacted by the logistics of improving technology as any other medium. Television killed radio, the internet killed print journalism, and now, all-in-one portable devices are hammering one-dimensional portable devices. Good to know I’m not the only person who came to the conclusion, though. Ensures me I’m not crazy. o.o
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 11, 2011 at 3:21 am
@ Mike:
Don’t be so sure of that now!
:p
Comment by Toadofsky on March 13, 2011 at 5:00 am
Well, guess we have to see how it all plays out. I’ve been wrong before. Yes, it’s happened.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 13, 2011 at 11:22 pm
I just tried a 3DS, and I have come to the conclusion that it is indeed a waste of money, and gives me a headache as well.
Virtual Boy 2. That’s how I see this thing going.
Way to foul up Nintendo…
Comment by Toadofsky on March 20, 2011 at 11:42 pm
When I get to play around with one, we’ll see how it turns out. This could potentially end up being like the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS, where the later models are undoubtedly superior. Way too early to tell.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 21, 2011 at 12:12 am
I’m trying not to be overly critical. Mainly because the original DS launch was racked with awful games/ports. A year later, and things changed massively.
But for me, the 3D effect is not that impressive. It could be because of the Pilotwings game, which it pisses me off that they didn’t put more islands on that game. Of course, Nintendo probably didn’t really want to put that much time into that game.
I honestly can’t see myself buying this thing right now, or even a year from now, especially at the price point, and a lack of decent looking games for it.
Until they fix the length of the battery, and put out a NEW 2D Mario game, I’ll hold off…
Comment by Toadofsky on March 21, 2011 at 4:25 pm
I wasn’t impressed by the stereoscopic output on the PlayStation 3, either. I’m really, really not interested in this “paper-thin three-dimensional effect” thing. The Nintendo DS has room for decent games, anyway. As I mentioned, the Nintendo portables should be doing games that the consoles can’t. Of course, from Nintendo’s point of view, it’s really hard since nobody thinks of the Wii as anything more powerful than the PlayStation 2.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 21, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Please stop calling “arcade sticks” “fightsticks”.
That’s name of the brand Madcatz created while brands like “real arcade pro” existed many years earlier.
It’s like calling every car a “Chevy”, and it makes you look ignorant.
Comment by tataki on November 8, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Did some research and you’re correct. Thanks for pointing it out.
Comment by Mike Lowell on November 8, 2011 at 10:26 pm