Nolan Bushnell Issues Nintendo Warning

[Dos_Box]

It seems that Nolan Bushnell (the Atari founder) has said that Nintendo could be 'On the road to irrelevance' in an interview with the BBC here: BBC News - Nintendo faces 'path to irrelevance', says Atari founder

He's a man who know what he's talking about too, and given the way that Atari lost it's way back in the 80's I think they should listen to him.

Still, it'll be interesting to see just how much you can pick up a Wii U for in the new year sales after Christmas!

[CAM]

I don't think hand-helds will go just yet, although Nintendo are putting their head in the sand at the moment regarding social media and other services that we use on consoles. I still wonder why a Twitter/FB client hasn't been released for the 3DS/WiiU yet, they are too keen on preserving their online safety record at the cost of older gamers. :/

[tmcd35]

If we we're to go on Nolan's experience his advice to Nintendo would be "don't sell out to Warner Bros"

 

Actually though, I do agree with him. All my necies and nephews use smartphones instead of dedicated hand-helds. 2-3 years ago they all add DS's. My smartphone has replaced a very long list of seperate portable gadgetry.

 

Not sure what canbe done about Nintendo to be honest. They seem to be beating the ranch on the next Mario or Zelda and I can't see that paying off for them any more. They need to get back to basics and offer a gaming experience the others can't compete with.

 

"With most motion sickness you can build up immunity - and I believe that will represent a brand new, really powerful gaming system."

As someone who suffers from motion sickness, I really can't agree with this. Probably the biggest reason I don't play FPS's.

[Dos_Box]

All good points. It seems to me that to make a long lasting brand and system, that a manufacturer should grow with their audience, not just abandon them at a certain age point and say 'you're irrelevant to us now'. This type of behavior - now that the original gaming generations have children of their own - may make parents think again about investing in a system that will only have a limited lifespan and game genre range.

[Arthur]

It looks like Nintendo (and Sony) have gone past the point of no return with their handheld gaming systems.

 

The graphs below combine both Nintendo portable/consoles and Sony portable/console sales. Note the similarity in patterns of growth. It’s one thing to suggest that Nintendo consoles have “failed”, it’s another to show that Nintendo consoles and portables have failed, and yet another to show that two competitors in the games business seem to be failing in unison across all their product lines. The cyclicality is also over a long period of time: The peak for the combined Sony/Nintendo was in 2008, five years ago.

 

The implications are that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are beyond the point of no return in this industry. Gaming, as a business, cannot be sustained as a platform independent of a general purpose computer. Like other “applications” that used to have systems built around them conforming to their needs the dedicated-purpose solutions came to be absorbed into the general-purpose platforms. And the modern general purpose computer is the smartphone.

 

Source: www.asymco.com/2013/09/09/game-over/

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/1Zj6wGc.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/RvMvFoj.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/r1jTvuO.png

[tmcd35]

Ouch!

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-09-09-sony-announces-playstation-vita-tv-device

 

Looks like Sony are leaving nowhere for Nintendo to go!

[Arthur]

I reckon most people are going to buy the Vita TV for the PS4 Remote Play feature, rather than to play Vita games on their TVs.

 

Why the Vita TV and other “microconsoles” are destined to fail « Ars Technica

[tmcd35]

I disagree, that's an over-hyped party trick. As soon as you realise that only 1 device can play PS4 games at a time you kinda wonder what all the fuss is about. But then asking two devices to play at once (unless it's the same game) might be a bit taxing on the PS4 hardware.

 

No the "killer app" is GaiKai. Once you can stream PS1/2/3/4/PSP/Vita games to it then you have a cheap entry into console gaming with the upsell to PS4 when you get tired of buffering. This is what hurts Nintendo as it's effectively the Wii-U's price point and Virtual Console market.

[CyberNerd]

I reckon a Nokia Xbox phone would take the entire handheld market overnight.

[CAM]

But they need to vastly improve phone battery life. Your typical smartphone just gets through the day without adding the power consumption of full-on gaming to it. Plus I'd rather see full featured games instead of casual on the tube tapping.

[tmcd35]

Xperia Play + 4G + Gaikai?