You have to wonder whether those at Apple are annoyed or amused at Nintendo's continued insistence that the giant represents no threat to its gaming business. Despite analysts such as Michael Pachter claiming Apple is becoming a major player in the industry, Nintendo still believes it need not worry about either the iPhone or iPod Touch.
The house that Mario built remains forever buoyant regarding its own fortunes and dismissive of its rivals. Nintendo of America's VP of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway told VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi that the supposed danger offered by Apple has simply failed to materialize.
"It is interesting that for all of the talk of competition from Apple last year, here in the U.S. we had our best year ever, selling 11.2 million [Nintendo DS] units," she claimed.
"That has never been done by any game platform ever. Consumers are still finding fun with our products, and there is a lot of room to grow. If you look at the penetration of the market, the DS franchise here in the U.S. has a long way to go. In Japan, one in two consumers has a DS. Here, it is one in four. So we have room to grow."
Naturally, Nintendo is right to feel confident regarding its continued domination of the handheld market, as estimates suggest more than 125 million DS units currently reside in homes around the globe. However, the iPhone is comparatively fresh format on the scene, and predictions suggest its userbase could reach 80 million by 2012-- and that doesn't even account for the continued strong performance of the iPod Touch.
With the App Store growing, it's surely not long before Nintendo acknowledges, and then reacts to, Apple's growing gaming presence, most likely in the form of the Nintendo DS2. What's the betting it focuses more heavily on digital downloads and tilt control?
[Via VentureBeat]
7 Comments
"What's the betting it focuses more heavily on digital downloads and tilt control?"
All games costing $9.99 or less would be a bigger feature.
Meanwhile my nephew has not touched his DS since getting an iPod Touch for his birthday.
Actually I have not touched my DS either in over 6 month.
I think Nintendo needs to be worried. Very worried. They need to make game submissions easier and the platform easier to develop for.
I agree. Nintendo is talking out of both sides of its mouth, and frankly, it looks really bad. They should stay quiet and get working on a next-gen platform that can compete with what Apple's got cooking.
I think nintendo should siginficantly revamp the DS or its ales wont beat ipod touch. for example the musit add good graphics and biger screen(3.5/3.7" amoled wvga screen), Bluetooth, 3G, Better UI(something that will beat the ipod touch), better multimedia( play videos at good graphics), Better camera(Improved with flash, 5mp, Better lenses adding a'GREEN ROOM, that senses the person/peoples bodies and what theyre holding', video record at good graphics), 4 or 6 gig memory and game cards that can hold 800MB, acceleromter, top of the class motion sensoring, good sunlight legibility,1GHZ snapdragon and an improved application store and a music store. Wow all this would make nintendo think to add more to their newer update, i hate it when they just put very little upgrades like the DSi and the DSi XL. The things ive hoped for should kick apple out of the portable gaming competition.
I think nintendo should siginficantly revamp the DS or its ales wont beat ipod touch. for example the musit add good graphics and biger screen(3.5/3.7" amoled wvga screen), Bluetooth, 3G, Better UI(something that will beat the ipod touch), better multimedia( play videos at good graphics), Better camera(Improved with flash, 5mp, Better lenses adding a'GREEN ROOM, that senses the person/peoples bodies and what theyre holding', video record at good graphics), 4 or 6 gig memory and game cards that can hold 800MB, acceleromter, top of the class motion sensoring, good sunlight legibility,1GHZ snapdragon and an improved application store and a music store. Wow all this would make nintendo think to add more to their newer update, i hate it when they just put very little upgrades like the DSi and the DSi XL. The things ive hoped for should kick apple out of the portable gaming competition.
I hardly play my DS anymore, and I've also bought about 15 games for my iPod Touch since my last DS purchase. Granted, I have preordered Pokemon SoulSilver, but after that I may never buy another DS game. Why go out and spend $30 on a game when you can stay at home and spend $10 or less on games like N.O.V.A., Real Racing, Inotia 2, etc. that are better than just about anything on the DS?
I hardly play my DS anymore, and I've also bought about 15 games for my iPod Touch since my last DS purchase. Granted, I have preordered Pokemon SoulSilver, but after that I may never buy another DS game. Why go out and spend $30 on a game when you can stay at home and spend $10 or less on games like N.O.V.A., Real Racing, Inotia 2, etc. that are better than just about anything on the DS?
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