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Is ipads, smartphones hurting the big 3
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30-11-2011 5:26pm#1
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Join Date:Posts: 50635
I see a crash coming in the smartphone market before it stabilises. There's a bit of a goldrush in the market at the moment but I can see the low price points being unsustainable when consumers start demanding more of their smartphone games. You'll see the small indies being weeded out and a stabilisation of the market around big developers and publishers. I really don't see the iphone or android devices being able to offer me the depth of game that I get on the DS and PSP for the price they are selling for, the handheld market will definitely take a bit of a hit but I don't see it going away. Smartphones have priced themselves out of the childrens and teen market which despite what skewed reports show, is the biggest market for these devices. As a gamer, most of the smartphone games are throw away or unexplanably popular, the god awful angry birds being the big one. While they are interesting I'm never going to get a game as polished or as enthralling as etrian odyssey or Pokemon.
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ShadowHearth wrote: »It is effecting handhelds.
Ya, I'm paraphrasing but I think Ipod devices and the like have taken about 20% of their sales; the only consumers at risk are the casuals who need something/anything to play to waste time (eg commuting) and don't particularly care what it is.
Like there'll always be a place for a dedicated gaming handheld that can deliver games that phones can't, it'll just get it's casual market stripped away. But as long as games like pokemon, mario, zelda, uncharted etc have exclusivity, then handhelds will have a place.
That said, they gotta slash the price of handheld games - they're almost equal to console-game prices but take half the development/staff. Ridiculous. So, this competition will only be great for us the consumer. Game prices will HAVE TO come down to compete
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Join Date:Posts: 50635
I think the handheld market will still be there for gamers and for children. However the smartphones have now taken the casual market that nintendo worked so hard to entice with games like brain training. They're pretty much gone now.
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I agree with you. Any game I've played on a phone hasn't been very deep, with simple mechanics, and short play sessions. They're easy to pick up and play for 5 minutes while you're waiting for something. That said, with the more advanced/involving games on the DS I sometimes wonder if it'd be more fun to be playing on a bigger console instead of crouched over a handheld.Retr0gamer wrote: »While they are interesting I'm never going to get a game as polished or as enthralling as etrian odyssey or Pokemon.
I do find DS games pricey. I was looking at some older DS games earlier this week, and the fact that they were still over £20 on Amazon made me reconsider getting them. I don't so much look at it and think of how many cheap phone games I could get, I think of the 360 or PS3 game I could get and play on the TV instead.
I think Penny-Arcade showed both sides of the argument when the 3DS price dropped:
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Join Date:Posts: 50635
Mr Trade In wrote: »If the big American RPG publishers started releasing JRPG games on the Ipad and Android markets I would ditch my PSP and 3DS in an instant, €45 for Tales of the Abyss is a pain I am not looking forward to tomorrow.
The thing is you can't make a massive WRPG or JRPG, sell it for 99c and expect to make a profit. Big budget games just can't work in that environment.
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With regard Angry Birds paving the way for more developers to sell millions of copies of their games, it really should be pointed out that Rovio are not really a small developer, at least not in the manner people are describing them. Angry Birds was their 52nd game in 6 years, had a team of at least 10 people working on it and cost over €100,000 to develop. That figure also ignores the fact that they already had their tech in place. Now, sure their success is monumental but this is only one in a sea of unknown, underwhelming and poor selling titles from not just themselves but other developers too.
While Apple entering the home console market would result in some change, I think you're highly overestimating the effect it would have on the market the big three exist in.The moment that the Apple television set enters the living room, along with the App Store, is the minute the console gaming landscape changes forever. It means that triple-AAA developers don't need to sign away their IP and their profits to a publisher just for market access. It means publishers don't need to bow to platform holder's licensing fees. It means the next mass-market console smash hit could be created by some guy coding in his sitting room wearing a dressing gown.- Publishers will still be needed for marketing and funding - even Rovio used Chillingo to publish the initial release of Angry Birds.
- Publishers (or developers) will still need to hand over 30% of their revenue to Apple, not to mention a further 25% of their profits if they were to use UDK or a similar third-party engine.
- Games such as Infinity Blade could not be made by some guy coding in his sitting room.
Sony said they'd have various pricing tiers on the platform which is an extremely clever move. You'll have the likes of Uncharted: Golden Abyss for those people who don't mind forking out £30 for the latest big release but you'll probably have Vita ports of mobile games at more sane prices. Microsoft are pushing their Xbox Live brand onto Windows Phone 7 as part of a drive to improve the feature set of the OS, I don't think it has much to do with this topic. Nintendo are probably like me, they keep hearing how great mobile devices are for gaming and then get confused when they can't find the d-pad and buttons on the device.It's clearly got the big 3 rattled. Just today, a Sony suit went on record to say that Vita software prices would be impacted by the 99c smartphone game phenomenon. XBox are pushing their XBox Live brand into the mobile space to retain mindshare. Nintendo, well...are as slow to react to industry trends as ever, but it's hard not see a little iPhone/iPad influence in their upcoming Wii U.
Actually I'd argue publishers are far more interested in free to play games on mobile devices rather than AAA titles at the moment. Over the last year or so it's proven to be extremely profitable for a large number of titles and most of the big acquisitions by publishers have been in this area.Dont be at yourself wrote: »Triple-A is untested on iOS at the moment, but all signs point to it being a success. There is a perception that smartphone users are married to the 99c price point, but in actual fact developers have noticed sales have increased when they raised their price from 99c upwards. There are also plenty of (relatively) high price titles, like Infinity Blade, Football Manager and the Gameloft games, which consistently reach the very upper reaches of the charts, despite a higher price point.
As for the games you've mentioned, Infinity Blade is an exception due to the visuals it boasts. It's not really a great example when you take into consideration the work that would have gone into it, the people who were involved and the costs involved for developers who would need to licence Unreal and the tools required to utilise it properly. With regard to Football Manager and Gameloft, they have the advantage of leveraging big licences to sell their games and as such, are able to command higher prices.0 -
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