Some interesting thoughts:
* Some of the most successful game companies are indeed pure-play, such as EA, Activision, THQ, Take-Two and Nintendo, though non-pureplays like Sony, Microsoft, Vivendi do well, they are certainly in the minority. Nintendo has certainly been in the forefront of really getting into the head of gamers (not just hard-core gamers, but all types of gamers) and has produced some innovative game ideas and technologies that have stretched our existing scope and augmented the known dimensions of "fun" experiences. An oft sited example is the revolutionary motion-sensitive controller on the Wii.
* This expertise also extends to the software: Nintendo itself makes a number of the top-selling games on their own DS platform, which further emphasizes their understanding of the portable game mindset
* Many argue that the mobile game market will not replace the dedicated game console market, but if the article is accurate, casual games are themselves becoming a larger part of the DS ecosystem... However, casual games are precisely what dominate the cell phones market. If fundamental issues in the mobile game market are solved (i.e. better interfaces, better portals to find and easily download games, more power to support simple 3D games, ...) I wonder if the barriers that currently keep cell phones from substituting for "casual game functionality" in dedicated portable consoles will be swept away by the tide of advancing "good-enough" technology.
Perhaps the majority of the people playing casual games on dedicated portable game machines like the DS and PSP are, in fact, serious or hard-core gamers playing casual games. If so, will cell phones sweep the casual game market for casual gamers, once the fundamental issues are addressed?
So I question the assessment:
"There is clearly something to be said for devices dedicated to a single task over multipurpose devices. This is especially true for those consumer types that have more than a casual interest in the product. In other words, a dedicated device is most attractive to the type of consumer that is willing to pay actual money for a product. A cell phone or basic PC can be great for playing free games, but if you want to spend money on an activity, to most consumers it makes sense to invest in the proper tools. A Swiss army knife is a handy little gadget, but would you use it to cut steak or chop firewood?"
I don't agree with this. There does come a point (and we're not there yet) when "good enough" substitutes for all the bells and whistles of a dedicated device, and perhaps that's when device convergence starts to occur. Furthermore, "good enough" happens much sooner for gamers who only play casual games.
This isn't rocket science, but I also think the idea of "how much a person will pay for" is not primarily related to the device that people possess , but is more related to the idea of the amount of visible effort put into developing a game (although price ranges for a game is correlated to the amount of computational power in the device, since computational power seems to serve as a proxy for game complexity). As an example, a lot of mobile games for the cell phone are easily produced, and the price point may be Free and ad-supported, or it may be $2.99 for a Tetris or simple card game... However, EA Mobile is probably justified in charging $6.99 for their Sims Pets game -- the graphics and game complexity all attest to the effort that was put behind game development. I don't own a DS, but I would expect Tetris on the DS should be pretty inexpensive as well.
Any case, going back to Nintendo, I mentioned the Wii earlier. The console has been remarkably successful due to its motion-sensor capabilities. This functionality has made playing games on the Wii so fun that it has attracted so many non-traditional gamers. Mobile game industry insiders have been looking to replicate this idea. Here's an interesting experiment in Japan by NTT DoCoMo... They have added a similar motion-enabled technology on their phones for mobile gaming: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/23/HNgamingcellphones_1.html
The idea might be there, but I would hesitate introducing a technology prematurely, particularly if people who use it don't find it "fun" due to bugs and other flaws. The may dismiss the idea completely. It certainly makes it more difficult to re-introduce the idea once we've improved the technology... But I guess its success will all depend on whether NTT DoCoMo's lead users still find the new controls "fun" despite the immaturity of the technology.
Hope so, but I wonder if Nintendo, with their focused game-experience perspective would have released the product were they placed in a similar situation.
