I'd love to come for a drink. Where is the nearest defibrillator? - Mike Magee
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Apple wins gamers' approval
APP STORE WATCHER Distimo has shown once again that the Iphone is becoming the portable gaming platform of choice.
While most commentators have been concentrating on the lack of hardware and software features on the Iphone, the device is pretty well suited to casual gaming. Nintendo itself has shown the power of casual gamers with its all conquering Wii, but the handheld gaming king is being usurped by Apple.
Flurry's figures show that the Iphone OS increased its US gaming market share by 14 per cent in 2009. Nintendo took a five per cent hit with Sony's dying PSP showing a massive nine per cent drop, putting it far below the devices from the fruity toymaker.
Initial surprise at seeing a mediocre smartphone doing so well in a foreign market should give way to the realisation that Nintendo and Sony simply failed to evolve. The problem for the two industry stalwarts is that the Iphone takes a pragmatic approach to gaming, something that is missing from the various PSP and DS incarnations.
Sony's PSP has always been popular with techie types not just for the high quality experience it provides but the fledgling homebrew community which brought affordable games to all. Sony and developers constantly use this as an excuse for the PSP failing to take off, but in truth paying up to 30 quid for a PSP game was just pure fantasy. The Iphone was the first portable platform to offer games, albeit of a lower quality, at throwaway prices.
Distimo's figures show that the average price for any app varies considerably between regions, but sit comfortably above $2 in all regions. The pricing is skewed by conversion rates and pricing tiers but even the biggest spenders, Europeans, are paying on average $3.86 per app. This is still a long way below the tatty PSP and DS titles found in the second hand bin at your local games store.
With greater competition the average price paid on apps are dropping in all regions with Asian punters seeing a 27 per cent decrease since December. The problem for developers is getting their title noticed above others. With limited screen space there's only so far users are willing to scroll down to find an app.
Developers, by nature a creative bunch, will undoubtedly come up with innovative ways to get their apps seen. Tommy Refenes saw considerable success in promoting his useless application by pushing its price up until it hit $400. With at least one documented sale at that price, Apple dumped the app which was approved by their own censors after Refenes went off on one at the recent Games Developer Conference.
Distimo's sales figures show that unlike other app genres, any particular game is yet to dominate the sales charts throughout the world, although Plants vs. Zombies does chart highly in four out of the six territories sampled.
The Ipad should, in theory, bring more credence to the Iphone OS as a gaming platform. The innards, although lacking in general computing features, is more suited to gaming. The increased screen size, although far from providing an immersive experience, should give the punter a better feel for the game.
The problem for developers, other than getting hold of an Ipad prior to launch, is the way gamers might interface with the device. Games that rely on the relatively nimble dimensions of the Iphone will have to adapt and realise that you can't wrap your hand around the Ipad or easily tilt the device with just one hand.
Whether we start to see games aimed at the Iphone or the Ipad side by side will be dependant not just on the developer but whether Apple filters the App Store depending on which device you are using to access it. Developers it seems aren't particularly bothered and according to Flurry's figures, 44 per cent of all applications that are being tested on the Ipad are games.
Although the App Store is chock full of games, it is instant messaging applications that head the sales list. App.mobiler's Live Messenger charts in the top 10 in all markets and claims the top spot in North and South America and is in the top three in Europe and Asia.
Both Distimo and Flurry are showing that it is games developers who are most pleased at the Ipad's impending arrival. The Iphone OS has given them an alternative platform, albeit just as closed as anything from Nintendo or Sony, to produce affordable and enjoyable games.
Nintendo, more than Sony, is seen as the grandfather of portable gaming. After leaving the likes of Atari's Lynx and Sega's Game Gear among others in it wake it is seeing serious competition from a company that has rarely been associated with gaming, Apple.
The way that the cappuccino company overtook Sony was by doing something that Jobs must loathe, selling something for cheap. By lowering the price of gaming, the fruity toymaker has reaped the rewards, but the question is whether Jobs' Mob will transfer this strategy to general purpose computing. µ
Tags: Apple
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@Michael
No, many kids may not have the money for an iPhone but they sure as heck can and do get $199 Pod Touches.
@Kerome
Actually Apple has sold well over 75 million iPhone OS devices in less than 3 years (and incidentally 300 million iPods) so has already overtaken the PSP which took 5 years to reach 60 million.
This article is oh-so-right on. Nintendo for the first time in ages is facing serious competition.
The closing paragraphs however assert that the iPhone/iPod touch are "closed" systems like Nintendo and PSP. I beg to differ. ANYONE with $99 can join the iPhone developer's program as an individual and post apps! That is OPEN baby! I tried for 3 years to become a Nintendo developer and THEY REFUSED to sell me a development kit at any price, and SONY is open for business but the development kit is $10,000. That is 100 years of Apple's fees, so there is no comparison for the small developer. Also NINTENDO will NOT sell your title for you when you are done nor will Sony, so you are faced with serious marketing costs as you have to go RETAIL.
Simply put, Apple is encouraging the garage developer - which is in their roots - and the other companies arrogantly ignore the creativity of the hundreds of thousands of under-employed programmers across the world.
Because Apple, Nokia, Android, and Blackberry are all offering not only a cheap developer program but a sales channel with a reasonable 30% cut (only 20% for Blackberry), these mobile platforms are going to clobber Nintendo, and both Sony and Nintendo are going to greatly regret the inability to change with the times and allow individual creativity to flower.
We are now in a new gold rush age where someone with a terrific game can make a killing without millions backing them. Sure the PC market with its cinema-like realism will continue to offer high class gaming experiences with attendant massive costs, but boy it is great to see the low end tip up.
The app store has done over 3 billion downloads... that is a lot and you are seeing the dimming of Nintendo's results as they show declines...
but remember Nintendo is still making billions and hardly in any real danger, but their growth is ending and Nintendo will not be the major force it has been in the future, as overall its slice of the pie will shrink dramatically.
the iPad is an awesome gaming platform; the highest mass-market touchscreen device ever released has amazing possibilities, and will reach far beyond gaming into medical and educational uses.
Who can argue with a computer that is updated automatically, virus free, and as we say in the vernacular here in the states "dog-shit" simple.
If you consider all the copies of Windows ever sold that were bundles with solitair, the PC is the number one gaming device in the world, and has always been.
Apple is to stingy to bundle a game, so people have to shell out a few bucks. That hardly makes it a game platform.
But, since we're on the subject of phones, I'd be interested in knowing the number of games on phones (not just smart phones) by each manufacturer: LG, Motorolla, etc. Including the games that came pre-installed.
Then we can see what manufacturer REALLY has the biggest game market share.
The iPhone has come a long way in gaming, together with the Touch, but it's still a long way short of the Nintendo DS. Comparative sales are about 40m for the iPhone, 60m for the PSP, and 125m for the DS (including Lite and DSi).
In terms of being the dominant platform, in volume sales terms iPhone is a significant player, but in terms of value it's a much smaller market. The iPhone just is not sustaining game price points that are high enough.
That said, it's clear to see which way the wind is blowing. Nintendo's inclusion of things like 3D display and an ebook reader shows they are well aware of iPhone's appeal... it's something to keep an eye on for the next few years, but for now the DS still rules the roost.
I cAnt hElp bUt lAugh aT aLl tHe aPple fAnbois gEtting aLl pAnicy aBout nOt sPelling Iphone aNd Ipad cOrrectly. (screw it, this is getting too hard)
Anyone who reads The Inquirer should be aware of the fact that they do not bow down and obey companies creative capitalisation of product names. The iphone will NEVER be a gaming platform. to play an FPS you have to cover half the bloody screen and even then it's damn near impossible to aim. Fighting games like Street Fighter requires you to cover the characters with your thumbs so you cant get any idea where your dude is. At best it's a micro-transaction sinkhole of tacky little indie games. It will never replace PSP or DS.
Have any market analysists stopped to think that maybe Nintendo and Sony have reached market saturation so no-one needs to buy their consoles anymore, or that they think it's damn well about time a new one was on the way?
Must have been a slow news day if they're saying the Iphone is better than something
You may want to correct your article. The correct names of the devices are iPad and iPhone (with lower case "i" and capital "P".
Other than that - interesting article with interesting perspective
yeah. if you want to play boggle, or soduko (whatever spelling), or hangman or whatever. basicly the parents giving the device to their off-spring as a "sit down and shut up" measure.
i don't see mario kart hitting the iPhone anytime soon. most the 3D games on the iPhone are basicly proof of concept. not really anything i've seen anyone want to play for a long time beyond the inital "oooh, pretty" bit.
however the playstation emulator on the nokia n900 looks interesting. big back catalog of games etc... and quake3. nice that it can be done, but not sure about carrying round a seperate PS3 joypad for the n900 to have a decent control interface would go down so well.
however, this is where we are going. a personal device that does games, interwebs, phone, twatter, myface, spacebook, musics, all in one.
and we are nearly there.
the Iphone is becoming the portable gaming platform of choice.
Your joking right? Iphone the gaming platform of choice?
It will never be a gaming platform of choice.
Do you see all the kids playing games on iphones? Nope.. do you see any kids with an iphone? Not really.. Do you think you will see all the kids in the future with iphones playing games? Nope. Do you see just about every kid with a PSP or DS... Yep
I think most that read this article will be LOL.
Nintendo has being resting in it's laurels for quite a while, The DS and Wii made so much success that it really didn't had to do anything yet.
Until very recently the undepowered Wii cost more than a more up-to-date X360. Now they are tied, but Wii still sells more. The DS is also overpriced if you make the math with it's BOM.
Apple knew how to take advantage of it's app store and with so much games at ridiculously prices, it's only expected that people would buy then even if they play once and never again.
You can bet that nintendo will take it to account when they define 3DS business model. I'd bet in totally downloadable content, no more cartridges, cards or whatsoever. Then there will be in it's online catalog fully featured games and less elaborated, cheap games. If Nintendo were to listen, I'd advise them to make every game downloadable for free. Then they'd work as a demo, if the game is approved, you buy it and the entire game can be unlocked online. Nobody likes to buy games in the dark.
As far as I can see is very little "right" about an iPad, an Ipad, or an Eyepad, for that matter. Useless for ebooks, with its back-lit eyeball-burning screen (after which, you may well be wearing "eyepads"). Might as well pick up something more powerful, more economical, less limited, and less tied into Jobs' mind-control network, a.k.a. the "Apple eco(nomic)system".
Just because money is to be made from apps sold on Itunes (or is that "iTunes") doesn't mean that's the "best" place for developers (or customers) to put the fruits of their labours. I think freedom is becoming more fashionable as of late, what with Google flipping the bird to a similarly-oppressive regime (what is: "Communist China").
It iPad, not Ipad