When I was a lot younger and a lot less inclined to look at charts, I borrowed a friend’s Gameboy for a week when I was going to be taking a long car journey. I spent many hours playing Tennis and Super Mario Land while sitting in the passenger seat of my Dad’s car. I decided to myself, without any hard data, surveys or pie charts, that portable gaming was the future.
Various other flirtations with iterations of Gameboy, Sega’s battery munching Game Gear and even very brief dalliances with the mammoth Atari Lynx all confirmed my hastily made judgement. More recently, I’ve enjoyed portable gaming on the PSP, DS and now 3DS. I also have an iPhone and iPad.
Shortly after getting my 3DS, I was looking for something to play on it. While perusing the shelves of my local Game store, I spotted Plants Vs Zombies for the DS. It was £25. I’d recently played it on my iPhone, buying it from the AppStore for, I think, around £2. At that moment, I was struck at how obviously endangered the traditional giants of portable gaming were.
Here was a cartridge for a standalone gaming system that cost more than ten times the price of the App for an iOS device (iPod Touches are probably the most relevant here). How could that sales model possibly last when the world was suddenly going App mad?
The short answer, of course, is that it can’t last. At least, it can’t last in isolation. I should point out that this is purely my opinion, although it is backed up by every relevant study done on the subject in the last two years.
The simple fact of the portable gaming matter is that while Sony and Nintendo jostled for position in the past, Apple has created the future. That’s not to say that things are all rosy in the world of AppStore development – and especially not in AppStore marketing but, in recent years, that’s where the money has been going.
Late last night, I was shown a series of three charts which were created by Flurry using data from the North American charting organisation, the NPD. The figures these charts originate from are certainly not perfect, there is currently no way of precisely tracking software sales in North America. It’s also tricky to accurately track revenue from AppStore purchases so figures have a little swinging room. But this data is the best we’ve got and with the margins involved, even with a healthy margin of error, they’re pretty damning.
It’s also important to note that some estimation for total revenue in 2010 and 2011 was used and that figures for the last two months of this year have been calculated based on their ratios in previous years.
Either way, these charts give one of the best representations of how the portable gaming market is slicing up and it doesn’t look pretty for Sony or Nintendo.
Of course, some would rightly point out that this period counts the Apple operating system at the top of its popularity while Nintendo has an ageing machine that has just been replaced with one that is slow getting quality software support (although consider the reasons for that). You might also note that these figures are counted against Sony’s PSP at the very worst possible time to count them. Sales of software for it will be well down as a successor is expected.
There are some who are crying that this is the end of the road for Nintendo and Sony in the portable market. I certainly think it vindicates the suspicions I’ve had for a while and demonstrates a massive shift in how people enjoy their portable gaming.
But I’m not ready to count out the old guard just yet.
Nintendo’s 3DS has had a disappointing start to its life. Nobody would argue against that, although sales figures are not as dire as many would insist. The confusing nomenclature, reliance on an unpopular gimmick and lack of quality software were all, I believe, contributing factors in a slow beginning for Nintendo’s latest contender. Mario is on his way, though, and the recent price drop has seen sales of the hardware rocket. Counting out Nintendo before Christmas would be very naive.
[drop]What about Sony? Well, the PSP is all but dead now and there won’t be too many that mourn its demise for too long. The Vita is just over the horizon and Sony has made some very interesting decisions with that hardware, clearly based on Apple’s successes, which I think might just save the day.The Vita is all about the touchscreen. As much as you or I, we seasoned gamers, will insist that buttons are needed for a really engaging game experience, the masses want a touchscreen. My four year old nephew is better at Angry Birds than I am but he couldn’t even reach all of the controls on a PSP. That’s where the battleground has moved to and that’s where the lion’s share of the revenue stream will come from.
Did you think Sony added touch controls to the Vita so you could stroke it sensually to make Drake climb up vines? No way, that’s an added gimmick (which will probably not be popular). The touchscreen is there so that there’s an intuitive control scheme for the tiny little downloadable games which will, hopefully, appear on the PSN as soon as the Vita is launched.
It seems that the argument over the AppStore’s impact on the portable gaming market is now pointless. The question now is: How well are the traditional giants of portable gaming set up to exploit the new growth? The 3DS might have missed a trick so far but the Vita is most certainly being aimed, at least partially, at the AppStore loving casual purchasers. And that might just make the Vita the best thing to happen to my portable gaming future since that long car trip and my generous friend.
JoshHood
Plants vs Zombies is a perfect example. It’s about £7 on PSN if I remember rightly, and only a couple quid on phones and PC. I think more than the problem being with handheld gaming, it’s the traditional media developer/publisher/retailer price split that’s the problem. PopCap could easily have put PvZ for a few pounds on DSiWare, but there’s no market there. On top of that, of course, DS game prices traditionally maintain high levels, unlike other platforms.
But the inevitable conclusion is, of course, that Sony *really* needs a good range of cheap games for Vita if it wants to compete. Things like the PopCap classics, and iOS classics, need to be on there early on, and for no more than a couple of quid.
jimmy-google
I got it for free through ps+.
Tuffcub
Having lost my Ipod six weeks ago I’ve ben carrying my PSP around and it’s so much better I’ve decided not to replace my iPod. It does much better games(and i have tonnes of free minis thanks to PS+), it does music, it does podcasts, and it does movies.
jimmy-google
It’s even better when you compare the prices. I think you can get a PSP for £50 and the cheapest itouch is around the £190 mark. The Vita looks even more impressive when you compare it to the price of itouch/iphone. Add PS+ into the mix and you hardly ever have to buy a games expect for the big blockbusters.
Deathbrin
Of course. A decent phone is always more expensive, if not double or even triple the price, of a portable console.
Sympozium
The PSP has been very low but I wonder if the DS would be the same if it had just the type of core games but obvisouly more, like Pokemon, rpgs. So the casual haved simply jumped to a new platform.
jimmy-google
I haven’t taken to these app games at all. I don’t get why we are now paying for games I used to play for free on sites like mousebreaker when I was at school. Even games like Angry birds have only given me 20 minutes of game time total. I’m not completely convinced that this is the way handheld games will go especially when you can play some or the more popular games fro free on facebook or through Chrome. A few years ago all the money was going into Wii games, people had their fun and have moved on now. The games on the appstore (and the like) came along as the ds and psp were already fading so this didn’t take sales away from those handhelds, the PSP hasn’t really had anything to buy for it for a few years now. The games on things like the iphone rely more on the “casual” market but that market is fickle. When the next big thing comes along they’ll be off. They’ll reach a saturation point where they don’t need any more games.
If there is one reason the Vita will be more of a success than the PSP it is probably trophies and then having a second analogue stick. The vita isn’t aimed at people who spend most of their time playing angry birds but it does fit the Playstation statergy of “it only does everything”. The killer game for it will be COD on a 3G Vita.
teflon
Pricing, pricing, pricing.
The single worst thing that happened to games pricing is when over zealous iOS developers rushed down to the $1 mark. Yes this helped them jump up and up to the top 10 ladder, but it hasn’t really helped in the long run. Do they actually bring in more profits? Nope, not really. If it did, then the pricing to the iPad versions of apps and games would be the same as the iPod/Phone versions.
So that’s that problem. It’s not as though Sony can’t match it. Apple takes a 30% cut of all things on their store, and that’s not so dissimilar to the cut that console manufacturers have taken all this time anyway. Sony and Nintendo need to push developers and publishers to try and match iPad pricing of their games on their new stores. They cannot possibly justify not doing so.
Oh, and Freemium is apparently a big hit too. Get that on there.
3shirts
It would help if Sony weren’t so mental with their online pricing too. BlOps was £48 on PSN yesterday! It’s £25 on Amazon and that’s just the first place I looked!
JohnnyBoy
Exactly.
Sony aren’t doing themselves any favours by ridiculous online pricing.
Hope this changes for the PSVita, but can’t see it happening
3shirts
I tend to agree with this but it’s more down to my own circumstances. I used to work in London and get the train for 45 minutes each way every day. My PSP was my constant companion during those two years. Now I work close to home and drive to work, I never have a need for mobile gaming other than a five minute here and there. Android gaming perfectly fills that need so I am not drawn to either my PSP or a DS or Vita.
haxel
Current technology development seems to be aiming to have everything (including portable gaming) available on one portable “cool” device – even if one, or more, of the functions are done less well than on individual dedicated devices. Whether all the functions can ever be improved to the standard everyone would like at a reasonable cost remains to be seen – maybe there will be a hardware or coding breakthrough which will solve the problem!
3shirts
I think the Xperia Play had a shot at being something great in this regard but the hardware was just too poor. Average camera, last gen processor, too little RAM and an average screen.
All it needed to be was a Galaxy S 2 with Playstation controls and I would have had one in a snap!
InternationalGamer
Yeah, the smartphone market is becoming much popular over portable gaming devices. I guess it’s their much casual use.
bacon_nuts
the thing that really pisses me off, and was touched upon, is plants vs zombies. £2 on iOS, £4/5 on iPad, and $6.99 on pc&mac, and apparently £stupid on DS. WHY? it seems stupid and unnecessary. I sure as hell aren’t going to buy it now.
redmik71
I had an ipad for a bit and although at first it seemed ‘the future’, I rapidly became bored with it. The games are OK for a bit then just become boring, they are just too samey. A lot are quick cash-in me too games ‘Slighty Annoyed Panda Throwing’ etc.
My overiding feeling when playing these games and generally swiping was – I should be playing something proper on my 3DS or PS3 instead of wasting my time swishing about or unable to control my NBA Jam players properly.
It would be a massive shame if superb games like Mario 3D Land were overlooked mainly on a price basis.
My main feeling of the iPad (I have got rid now), was an expensive, underpowered toy I didnt really need.
I truly hope traditional handhelds will survive this wave of gimmicky hardware.