Wait, are we still doing this? Treating "the smartphone market" as a serious competitor to dedicated gaming consoles? IMO the categorization of mobile gaming as something "to kill time while...
One of the biggest things that Sony had misread was the impact that smartphones had on the gaming industry. Internally, Sony considered smartphone gaming as “just good enough for gameplay,” and scoffingly referred to it as just something to kill time while waiting for your coffee or at the airport. Philips notes that this attitude was very pervasive in the gaming industry back then. “Tablets were really what we looked at when it came to what is now known as mobile games,” he adds. “We felt like that was a more direct head-to-head potential competitor, because they had the processing power. They had the screen acreage and all of that touch functionality.”
Wait, are we still doing this? Treating "the smartphone market" as a serious competitor to dedicated gaming consoles?
IMO the categorization of mobile gaming as something "to kill time while waiting for your coffee or at the airport" is largely correct. The Switch proved once and for all that the smartphone market isn't this force that conquers all mobile gaming. It's a casual timewaster industry that's only profitable because anti-gambling legislation hasn't caught up with their business model. Meanwhile the Switch is shaping up to be one of the (if not the) most successful console of all time. With lackluster online support and a $60 price tag on 5 year old games. What more proof do we need: It's all in the quality of the games on the platform, everything else is fluff.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised anyone ever made this argument when the 3DS was moving over five times the units in the same generation, it really just seemed like a flimsy excuse for a failure that...
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised anyone ever made this argument when the 3DS was moving over five times the units in the same generation, it really just seemed like a flimsy excuse for a failure that was largely due to Sony's mismanagement and poor first party support.
On a tangent, it really is disappointing, and somewhat surprising after almost fifteen years, that smartphone gaming hasn't been able to make more of itself. It's an entire platform of shovelware, gambling and gimmicks, with just about the only things worth playing being ports from better platforms.
I read the article and don't even get what that paragraph lead up to. It seems to set up an argument that the Vita was killed by the smartphone market, but that never made sense back then and has...
I read the article and don't even get what that paragraph lead up to. It seems to set up an argument that the Vita was killed by the smartphone market, but that never made sense back then and has been completely disproved with the Switch.
It reads like one of these postmortems for really bad games where they go on how the marketing was poorly timed and they didn't get enough social media exposure. Alright, but were the games any good? People look back at the Vita with rose tinted glasses and it had some niche gems and indies but where were its BotW, Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 or Smash Ultimate? Why are "great games" never considered in these business analyses?
Yeah, the only exclusive game I can think of that had system moving potential was Persona 4 Golden, and that was before the Persona series had really made it big in the west. And even then that...
Yeah, the only exclusive game I can think of that had system moving potential was Persona 4 Golden, and that was before the Persona series had really made it big in the west. And even then that was just an enhanced port of a PS2 title, not an original game. The Vita had a solid indie scene, but all of those games were both available and more supported on other platforms, so they weren't that compelling a reason for purchase.
Unfortunately I have no data to back this up, but I am positive that from a pure profit perspective, mobile has absolutely surpassed single-purchase video games. They cost very little to develop...
Unfortunately I have no data to back this up, but I am positive that from a pure profit perspective, mobile has absolutely surpassed single-purchase video games. They cost very little to develop and thanks to being addictive they pull in lots of money from people with poor self-control or addictive personality.
Oh I don't doubt it, it's just that I think it's a different niche than the people interested in portable consoles. What crossover there is, call it casual gamers, I would actually expect...
Oh I don't doubt it, it's just that I think it's a different niche than the people interested in portable consoles. What crossover there is, call it casual gamers, I would actually expect smartphone competition to hit Nintendo harder, but obviously they did much better that generation.
Absolutely true, but a lot of discussion about "the game industry" as a monolithic thing leads to apples-to-oranges comparisons. AAA games and F2P smartphone games are about as comparable as a...
Absolutely true, but a lot of discussion about "the game industry" as a monolithic thing leads to apples-to-oranges comparisons. AAA games and F2P smartphone games are about as comparable as a blockbuster feature movie and a reality TV show. Both run on screens but that's about where similarities stop.
For example, I don't think Nintendo's expertise helps them compete with King in the mobile space (Super Mario Run was a flop). Meanwhile, Nintendo can completely conquer the handheld console market. You don't see Christopher Nolan do reality tv shows (although that might be hilarious), so why do we see Miyamoto advertise F2P mobile games? It never made sense.
Wait, are we still doing this? Treating "the smartphone market" as a serious competitor to dedicated gaming consoles?
IMO the categorization of mobile gaming as something "to kill time while waiting for your coffee or at the airport" is largely correct. The Switch proved once and for all that the smartphone market isn't this force that conquers all mobile gaming. It's a casual timewaster industry that's only profitable because anti-gambling legislation hasn't caught up with their business model. Meanwhile the Switch is shaping up to be one of the (if not the) most successful console of all time. With lackluster online support and a $60 price tag on 5 year old games. What more proof do we need: It's all in the quality of the games on the platform, everything else is fluff.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised anyone ever made this argument when the 3DS was moving over five times the units in the same generation, it really just seemed like a flimsy excuse for a failure that was largely due to Sony's mismanagement and poor first party support.
On a tangent, it really is disappointing, and somewhat surprising after almost fifteen years, that smartphone gaming hasn't been able to make more of itself. It's an entire platform of shovelware, gambling and gimmicks, with just about the only things worth playing being ports from better platforms.
I read the article and don't even get what that paragraph lead up to. It seems to set up an argument that the Vita was killed by the smartphone market, but that never made sense back then and has been completely disproved with the Switch.
It reads like one of these postmortems for really bad games where they go on how the marketing was poorly timed and they didn't get enough social media exposure. Alright, but were the games any good? People look back at the Vita with rose tinted glasses and it had some niche gems and indies but where were its BotW, Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 or Smash Ultimate? Why are "great games" never considered in these business analyses?
Yeah, the only exclusive game I can think of that had system moving potential was Persona 4 Golden, and that was before the Persona series had really made it big in the west. And even then that was just an enhanced port of a PS2 title, not an original game. The Vita had a solid indie scene, but all of those games were both available and more supported on other platforms, so they weren't that compelling a reason for purchase.
Unfortunately I have no data to back this up, but I am positive that from a pure profit perspective, mobile has absolutely surpassed single-purchase video games. They cost very little to develop and thanks to being addictive they pull in lots of money from people with poor self-control or addictive personality.
Oh I don't doubt it, it's just that I think it's a different niche than the people interested in portable consoles. What crossover there is, call it casual gamers, I would actually expect smartphone competition to hit Nintendo harder, but obviously they did much better that generation.
Absolutely true, but a lot of discussion about "the game industry" as a monolithic thing leads to apples-to-oranges comparisons. AAA games and F2P smartphone games are about as comparable as a blockbuster feature movie and a reality TV show. Both run on screens but that's about where similarities stop.
For example, I don't think Nintendo's expertise helps them compete with King in the mobile space (Super Mario Run was a flop). Meanwhile, Nintendo can completely conquer the handheld console market. You don't see Christopher Nolan do reality tv shows (although that might be hilarious), so why do we see Miyamoto advertise F2P mobile games? It never made sense.