Check out what Apple said:
“Games are expensive — $25-35 per title. Worse isn’t the price, it’s the buying experience, going to a store is just not a lot of fun. Built into every iPod touch is the App Store… you’ll see a big difference.”
Someone does not understand gamers. $25-35 is not considered expensive, not by hardcore standards, not by Expanded Market standards. $50-60 might be considered expensive. But $25-35? No way.
But he is referring to, of course, handheld games. Check this out:
“It’s a great portable game player as well. … when the PSP and DS came out, they seemed so cool. But once you play on the iPod touch, they don’t stack up anymore!”
Now, what’s wrong here? What is wrong is that Apple isn’t using sales numbers. Using number of software isn’t impressive because DS and PSP are largely closed systems. If I was a Microsoft Marketer, I could just add a fourth bar on that chart that read “PC” and showed 3454398693 software.
I’ve told you before I’ve gotten into heated arguments with a very well known Apple blogger. He was convinced that the iPod Touch meant that the DS was dead solely because Touch was ‘better’ in that it had better graphics and multi-touch screen. I told him he didn’t know a damn thing about games or gamers and should realize that the gaming market is nothing like the computer market. Apple is not in the entertainment business even though they make computers that do play entertainment. Apple does not create its own games as Nintendo or Sony owned companies do. And the strategy Nintendo uses inoculates it from traditional competition.
DS is not dying. The DS is still thriving. The Apple guys are frustrated to hell over this. After all, the DS is just a game player. Shouldn’t the iPod Touch kill the DS (and PSP) just like how Apple music players killed portable music players? Why isn’t it working?
So I can only sit back and laugh. The game business is very, very different from other entertainment mediums. You can tell that the people at Apple do not know gaming. People say the video game market is very tricky and notorious for its twists and turns. But this is said only by people who do not take the video game market seriously as a market but as some mutated offshoot from movies and music. Music and movies are really nothing compared to games which is why games will end up becoming the dominant medium within time. I suspect, a century looking forward, that music and ‘movies’ will be cannibalized by games.
Apple is wasting their time making the iPhone or iPod Touch attempt to compete with the DS and PSP. A much better angle would be to greatly expand the iPhone and iPod Touch’s PC functionality. We need to get that mobile PC revolution underway. I want to be able to carry my computer in my pocket no matter where I go. And then we can just plug it in to monitors and keyboards sitting around.
The big reason why games are not like music and movies is the difference between players and instruments. Music is only played on players such as CD, cassette, MP3, vinyl, whatever. No one cares how it is played. However, music is ‘innovated’ with new instruments. A CD player is not an instrument. An iPod is not an instrument. A tuba is an instrument as is a clarinet.
The DS and PSP and all are not just video-game players. They are video-game instruments. Each game system has new features, be it new interfaces or even greater processors and graphics, that make games play differently.
Apple cannot possibly understand this because Apple does not create games. Video game creators, such as Nintendo, understand this very well: the hardware does not just ‘play’ games, the hardware ‘innovates’ games. The hardware becomes a new instrument to allow new types of gaming.
To put forth my instrument and player analogy further, you could say that the Wii is an instrument that allows Wii games, such as Wii Sports, to be made. But the Virtual Console or the Gamecube mode is little more than a player. The original NES would be the 8-bit instrument while the Virtual Console or emulation would be the players.
And just like real music, it is one thing to hear it from a player. It is an entirely different thing to hear it from instruments.
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