DRAFT 1 CS

Just putting this here for now. 

BA5. Platform and Distribution.

Killvebee

 When I was younger, I was gifted with my first personal gaming device; A Nintendo Game Boy. While I was among millions of other children with such a product, I was one of only few that decided that they wanted to not just play games, but design them. But, my career choice to work in hand held gaming companies may be under threat. In recent years, traditional hand held gaming looks to be on the decline; with more simple phone games becoming the next big thing. Are hand held devices made solely for games a thing of the past? Will the Nintendo Game Boy and its evolutions go the way of the Dodo? And if this is true for handheld consoles, will the home based larger consoles also suffer the same fate in the future?

 Nintendo are the company at my 8-bit heart, while other games on the Xbox and the PC do attract me, the small convenient hand held console is still my most beloved. As such, when hearing news that in 2012 “the company reported a net loss of 43.2bn yen ($533m; £329m) for the year, compared with net income of 77.6bn yen the year before”, I was frightened for their sake, as for the life of my Nintendo DS stuffed into my back pocket. While this isn’t all down to the financial turmoil in Japan being that “the Kyoto-based company had expected losses of 65bn yen as the strong yen made exports dearer”. But rather, a new more deadly threat; “increasing competition from casual gamers playing on their Smartphone’s instead.” (Kelion, 2012)  
So what of phones then? What has changed? Well as detailed in an interview with Peter Parmenter he explains that “in the past, mobile devices used to have limited processing power and weren't able to emulate the same level of game play that our consumers were used to. The result was that the experience was disconnected. With the proliferation of screens and with constant advancement of technology, we are seeing consumers wanting – or better, demanding – more consistency in their experiences.” The power of these phones is the true gaming consoles undoing. People carry their phones around to keep in contact with their friends mostly and as such find it easy to access for gaming pleasure as I have seen with my friends, sitting, doggedly playing through a level on Angry birds...“Smartphone owners average 46 minutes a day playing games. By comparison, they spend an average of 15 minutes a day actually talking on the phone. Mobile is the fastest growing segment of the interactive games business right now” (Parmenter, 2012). This new audience of casual phone gamers seems to quickly becoming the only type of gamer there is.

And it isn’t just limited to Nintendo’s game boy. PSP sales have also duck down in recent times under the new threat as well. "The games console market is declining altogether because mobile phone devices are allowing casual gamers to play much more easily wherever they happen to be," said Stuart Miles, head of Pocket-lint, confirming my suspicions that it is not just my mate Kristy from the Train stop that is stuck to her phone like this, when I prefer to bring my DS along with me as well as my mobile.  (Miles, 2012)








I can report as well, without much surprise, that the games she plays are all on an iphone, produced by Apple. And she is not alone, nearly all my friends have iphones buried in the skinny jeans. With this graph of the sales of Nintendo products vs. Apple’s mobile, it is clear to me that the raging popularity of these iphones is effecting their own sales. Apple is in fact taking over Nintendo’s habitat, and Nintendo know full well what has happened too. “It’s clear that Nintendo feels the specialized handheld gaming market may be on life support. And they weren’t coy about fingering Apple’s iphone as the main culprit”. This is not to say Apple is the full executioner of their products; “we imagine that Android users are wondering why they don’t get some share of the blame – and of course people who purchase games for Android devices probably only add to the problem. But game sales were long ahead on Apple’s mobile platform, where the ease of developing for a single hero device makes it easier on game development” (Scott, 2012)
The loses Nintendo experience recently was the worst in three decades. Far lower than the company had rightfully expected. It seemed like it was the drop in revenue due to competition rather then solely the cost increasing to produce its products (though of course, this was also a big problem).
After the tragedy in Japan, the yen became very strong and as such making markets outside like in America (one of their biggest markets) more expensive.
They also price cut their hand held systems to compete with the competition from Sonys PSP, which, while creating a huge loss now. They hope will pay off when everyone starts getting them and making them popular. The Wii also suffered a similar fate and received price cuts with the Xbox and PlayStation consoles becoming more popular with their new invasions like Kinect (another movement reader) and Wonderbook (games based for younger audiences around a digital book).
This was all done t keep a grasp on their audience, but will it work when faced with the dreaded iphone?
“The biggest problem seems to be that the type of customers Nintendo was able to win over with the DS and Wii are the very people who are now more likely to splash a few bucks on Smartphones and tablets rather than pay higher prices for console games, let alone buy new hardware” (Almos, 2012) This suggests, that something new and innovative must be produced by Nintendo in order to keep a hold on its standing within the Gaming world.
Even more worryingly; Nintendo took a bit of a wrong trying to combat these new enfold of smart phones and tablets by bringing out their own Tablet like device; The Wii-U. Which honestly, fell flat on its face within our countries which we can see well from “the results, which came after the end of trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, provide mixed signals for stock analysts,”  being that the WiiU still provided a decent audience in Japan.
“The apparent failure so far of the Wii-U to take off versus competition from tablet and smart phone game applications may bode ill for the company's long-term growth prospects” (Flanders, 2012)
In terms of the competition with smart phones and these tablets “software is another major issue for Nintendo. The company's Wii software unit sales dropped to 89 million worldwide last year, down from the 150 million units it sold in 2010.” Says Don Reisinger of Cnet.
“The single silver lining during the nine-month period was 3DS sales. After getting off to a rough start, the portable was able to tally 11.4 million worldwide unit sales during the period. Nintendo said earlier this month that the 3DS' strong sales outpaced the Wii’s during its first nine months of American Store shelves. “ (Reisinger, 2012)

So, could the 3D software be the ticket out of Nintendos problems?
It is true that when the original DS system came out, it utterly blew away all the competition because of the huge array of games it had to fit the new innovative duel screen system. Yes, back in the 2008 “It wasn't a question of whether or not Nintendo was going to sweep retail sales in December, it was a question of how commanding the win would be.” (Kuchera, 2009)









So 3D seems like it could be utilised (once it has a great selection of games) as the new winning formula for Nintendo. iphones and tablets have nothing in terms of 3D hand held gaming, while Nintendo are now thankfully bringing out brand new feature games for the 3DS soon! Already, with the new heralded Pokémon game coming out exclusively for the 3Ds, sales have changed in favour. Even I am saving my pocket money earnestly to buy a new 3Ds console so I can indulge in further Pokémon stories.
Nintendo created a huge amount of games for the Nintendo DS, and its popularity was sprung forth from the choice people had. With the 3DS, the choice was more limited, and only recently has had more games developed exclusively for it than the previous DS console.
Now that the 3DS is getting some high rise titles of its own to put to its name, Nintendo could make an extraordinary come back.  

However, despite this, it wouldn’t be a big shove for their larger consoles to be left by the way side by the new systems appearing on other consoles. The new Immersive game created by Microsoft for the Xbox “envisages transforming the players' room into an immersive gaming environment”  (Barton, 2012)

It seems all other game companies are also grabbing at new features in order to keep their core gamer audience sat with them. This may be pushing Nintendo completely out of its casual gaming consoles and further down the path of handheld gaming.

But what can Nintendo do to keep a grip on its name and well known gaming titles like Mario and Zelda? Well, Scott from PhoneArena seems to have an answer for that; “When Sega lost in the gaming console market to Sony, they reinvented themselves as a software gaming company. Nintendo has lots of incredibly popular IP, so if they are unable to reinvigorate sales of their portable devices then sooner or later it will make sense to transfer all of that rich game-making experience to the mobile devices market, even if they don’t want to admit it right now.”(Scott, 2012) So, could Nintendo become a sole Game designer and one that does not great it’s own consoles with which people can play their games on? This to me seems like one of their best options, rather, much more attractive then saying farewell to Pikachu, Mario and friends forever.

But is this really the best option? Craig Grannell of ReverttoSaved thinks not; “I’m not of the opinion Nintendo should throw in its lot with Apple and other third parties, effectively becoming another Sega—yet. This is because Nintendo still has the potential to out-Apple Apple in the gaming space, through making games and hardware” being that Nintendo currently make all its own hardware and software components. Whereas “Apple proponents rightly say what sets Apple apart from much of the competition; it makes devices and operating systems, and so can mesh those things together far better than other companies. But Apple doesn’t do this in gaming”.
This gives hope to Nintendo to continue to develop in its own way, taking advantage of the holes in the market Apple will leave behind in pursuit of an audience based around casual SmartPhone compatibly- not around the core gaming mechanics or features, like the 3D systems discussed earlier. However “what Apple does do in gaming, however, is provide a number of lessons that I still believe Nintendo must learn from”.

I agree fully with this, that Nintendo are making small mistakes along the way that are losing them customers to Apple products. These deal in the linking to the wider world through non-gaming apps; Such things as Social media sites like facebook, video systems for things like Youtube and General Internet browsing with Google. Also a more cooperative system for working with Independent ‘Bedroom Coder’ who “are encouraged to bring further innovation to the platform.” (Granell, 201) But most importantly a firm grasp on digital downloads of games that can be done instantly, easily and for a better value of money then going out and buying a whole game cartridge like it is currently.

What I can say is that, while Nintendo may have said a lot about realising the market has changed out of their favour; it isn’t about that anymore. It is about responding, and quickly, to their new market of this generation. If not, then they will have to sell themselves up to a larger company like Apple and allow them to dabble in their huge resource bank. While the idea of having Pokemon games brought out faster than ever and on a brand new spanky iPhone 17 G.HD Googletron, which would no doubt

Peter Parmenter, (2012) EA Mobile, Interviewed by Chris Smith of the Gaurdian  http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/2012/nov/15/ea-mobile-gaming-peter-parmenter

Stuart Miles, (2012) Pocket-Lint, From BBC News

Leo Kelion, (2012) Technology reporter, from BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17852137

Scott H, (2012) Tech’ Analyst, from Phone Arena http://www.phonearena.com/news/Nintendo-claims-the-iPhone-killed-the-handheld-game-console_id29533

Almos R, (2012) Financial reporter, from Interview with GeeksareSexy http://www.geeksaresexy.net/?s=Nintendo

Stephanie Flanders, (2012) Economics Editor, from BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21257536

Don Reisigner, (2012) Technology Columnist, from Cnet http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57366544-17/nintendos-huge-losses-continue-when-will-the-bleeding-stop/

Ben Kuchera, (2009) Gaming Editor, from Ars Technia http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/01/king-of-the-hill-nintendo-dominates-final-2008-sales-charts/

Ed Barton (2012) Director Strategy Analytics, from BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19568451

Craig Granell, 2012) Games Editor TAP! Magazine, from Revert to Saved http://reverttosaved.com/2012/08/22/nintendo-versus-apple-for-the-future-of-handheld-gaming/