Smartphones rocket past consoles for mobile game sales Two years ago, Nintendo's handheld games consoles accounted for 70 per cent of the money made selling mobile games to Americans. This year, they will account for a little over a third of the total. So says Flurry, a company that tracks sales of mobile games. The cause of Nintendo's plunging market share: Android and iOS. Back …
while developers might love this, but as a gamer I dread this. Mobile games are mostly made up of cheap through-away games, even the developer doesn't spend that much into making them. On the other hand, the gaming handheld can give us 'proper' games with 'proper' controllers that are worth the 30+ quids we pay for them*.
you really can't compare the upcoming Uncharted on the Vita to Angry Bird! One is a game that will take you hours to finish, and will (hopefully) leave you satisfied. The other is a game that you are meant to spend the maximum of 5 minutes with while wait for the bus or someone.
I really do dread a future where the only handheld game you could play is Angry Bird... or the like!
* I import some Japanese games for my PSP, which means that I pay around US$90 per-game.
P.S. Forgive my EngRish
Angry Birds isn't the only phone game around, you know. There are many that can match a good handheld console title, though not the best DS or PSP titles, I'll grant you.
Thing is though, the fact punters are voting with their wallets and buying the phone games shows phones are delivering the games they want to play.
The quality of Android gaming is dire, to say the least, as indicated by a distinct lack of Android game reviews on here.
Of course there are going to be more mobile phone game sales than PSP/DS game sales, ***because there are more mobile phones than PSP/DSes***. You cannot expect to qualify statements like "Sony's PlayStation Portable has lost out too" & "a decline of 36 per cent" *when smartphones and PSP/DS are two gaming systems*.
Basically, PSP & DS compete for market share because they are both standalone game systems, with similarly priced games. If you compare 1 million PSPs vs 1 million DSes vs 100 million smartphones, which one do you *think* is going to have the greater market share in games?
Fail.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you Mr Smith. A good handheld title has many aspects to it that a mobile phone can never hope to obtain.
A dedicated control system is of course the big fall back that everyone goes for, although in fairness and impartiality, some games on the DS that focus on stylus use could be replicated on the mobiles but in turn the price would be more than 99p (Rune Factory for instance).
Mobile phones can offer a mediocre experience, I wouldn't want to lay on my bed and play some Japanese H game on an iPhone, although, again, to be impartial, the iPhone doesn't suffer from sticky keys *grin* Actually the iPhone and Android would be a good market for H games, touch controls... umm... umm.. yep, I've just had a business idea that'll make me richer than that dude who brought out minecraft (though I'm 100% sure it'll never get past the Apple censors).
The thing with consoles is that you can't replicate the experience on a phone, unless it's a game which requires time and patience to play, games which require some element of twitch skillz cannot translate over, you don't have the bumpers to pull or the buttons to prod.
My favourite game on my PSP is Harvest Moon : Innocent Life (sounds like a H game farming simulator, though in most harvest moon series the girls put out if you give them a turnip every day....) there is just too much going on to give it a decent play without decent controls, and whilst the iPhone 4.1 could probably play Wipeout at 30fps, could you honestly say you could play it with the same sort of skill you could on a hand held console?
Folk have phones that can play these games, because they buy the phones anyway. Then the games are one or two taps away in the respective App store/Market.
I don't believe this market will die off any time soon, but I believe the novelty will wear off and the numbers being sold will decline.
As for any declines in Nintendo/PSP game sales, I doubt mobile games are the main cause. I haven't bought a 3DS because there aren't really any games for it that appeal to me, I'm blind in one eye (making the key feature worthless to me), and the battery life isn't good enough. I'm sure two of those three things have prevented a lot of people buying 3ds games, as well as general hard times.
I recall reading an El Reg article some time back about a game developer warning that smartphones would be the end of the hand held console (PSP / Nintendo DS) as well as possibly posing a threat to consoles.
Four years back I regularly saw gamers playing with their PSPs and DSs on the tube and buses, but nowadays they mainly play on phones.
Of course no smartpjone compares to an XBox or PS3 but games developed for Android, OSX and the like give gamers the freedom to play whilst on the move, on-line and against their buddies with a single device.
This comes as no surprise to me as many of the old and current favourites are being ported to the Phone/Tablet OS, so it's just a question of convenience..
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