Nintendo refuses to compete against $1 cellphone games

Hideki Konno , the creator of the Nintendo 3DS , has told gaming publication Gamasutra that they aren’t concerned by cheap priced cellphone games and they have no plans to lower it’s pricing strategy anytime soon.

We’re not going to try to match that,” he insisted, addressing the issue of rock-bottom priced smartphone titles. “We’re just going to continually strive to not just maintain, but increase, the quality of the entertainment that we’re providing, and let it sort itself out. Again, we’re not worried about competing at a price point level. “Now of course as a customer, if somebody said to me, ‘Hey, we’ve got Call of Duty on your portable device and it’s only going to cost you 100 yen,’ yeah, I’d be super stoked, really excited about that.” “And I’d be really excited to see a great game at a really cheap price, but I just don’t think that you could make a game that’s immersive and as big as, let’s say Call of Duty, or any other large title, and sell it at that price point; it’s just not possible. “The only way that you’re going to get a game at that price point is if it’s a limited version with limited levels or something. They’re going to have to reduce it to sell at that price. So that other game – because the content is valuable – it’s still going to be a viable product at a higher price point. “If we went out and created one of our titles – a big title for Nintendo – and we decided to sell it at, like, say 100 yen,” he continued, “how many do we have to sell to get back our investment? That number’s insane. It’s just incredible, right? “As a game developer I’ve put my heart into what I create, and I’m hoping that what I’m putting out there is something that people will be engaged by and entertained by. And as a consumer, I want the same thing. If I go and I see a game that interests me and I think I want to play it, I don’t mind the fact that I have to pay a reasonable price for it.

“I’m not trying to say that I think games on cell phones are a bad thing; I’m not trying to say that they’re worthless, or have no value at all. I’m just saying that they’re just different. -Hideki Konno , Nintendo I agree with him , it’s really makes sense to what he is saying , cellphone games aren’t extreme quality titles , since they don’t have a big budget behind them , sure they can play well and be fun for a while , but won’t keep you coming back for more. But hey , it’s my opinion , leave what you think on the Nintendo vs Cellphone games debate.

Source: Gamersleak.com

Adhesive Games latest game in development

As an observer in the games industry, I’m really all for supporting new developers entering the market but rarely do I encounter a gem in the making. This gem I’m referring to is Adhesive Games. I was scouring around the net and then I came across an article on regarding Hawken. Adhesive Games according to their website is apparently a small but independent game studio based in Los Angeles CA. And their first step into the market begins with their latest game, Hawken which is currently under development.

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33% of US and UK Adults are Mobile Gamers

A new survey from PoCap, the makers of Plants vs Zombies, Bejeweled 3, and Feeding Frenzy, shows an incredible percentage of adults from U.K. and U.S. are strongly into mobile gaming. Due to the recent growth of Android and iOS, over 31% of Americans own a smartphone. In the US research 52% of 2,425 respondents, have stated that they have played a mobile game on their friends or own device. The survey gathered 2,425 respondents, of those 73% were from U.K. and 44% from U.S. The most engaging part of the survey was that 83% of smartphone-owners said they had played at least one mobile game in the past week. Unlike the console market, where the male gamers are dominant over females, there is no much of a gap between mobile female and male gamers. The survey mentions that smartphone users spend $25.57  a year, compared to $15.70 from feature phone owners. Check out the other stats from the press release:

* 84% of all mobile phone gamers, and 97% of avid mobile phone gamers say they play games on their phone at least once a week; 92% of smartphone owners who play mobile games say they play at least once a week, and 45% say they play daily (compared to 35% of all mobile phone gamers). In the 2009 survey, only 13% of mobile phone gamers said they played daily, and 40% said they played weekly or more often. * Among all mobile phone gamers, 50% said that the amount of time they spend playing games on their handset has increased over the past year, and among smartphone owners the figure climbs to 63%; in the 2009 survey, only 20% of mobile gamers indicated their consumption of mobile games had increased. * Among all mobile phone gamers, 78% indicated that playing mobile phone games had become a regular part of their weekly activities, and more than half (59%) indicated that they saw such games as a regular part of their daily activities; for smartphone owners the figures were 84% and 68%, respectively. * When asked which gaming-capable device they play games on most often, 44% of mobile phone gamers chose their phones, catapulting handsets past video game consoles (21%) and computers (30%) to the top of the list. 51% of avid mobile gamers and 55% of those mobile gamers who own smartphones indicated they played games most often on their phones. This compares to just 17% of mobile gamers who chose their handset as their most frequently used gaming device in the 2009 survey. * 43% of all mobile gamers, and 49% of smartphone gamers, said they had upgraded a free trial game to the full (paid) version in the past year; more than a quarter (27%) of all mobile gamers, and a third (34%) of smartphone gamers, said they had paid for additional content for an originally free game in the past year. * Among mobile phone gamers, the average smartphone owner purchased nearly twice as many games as those with other types of phones (5.4 games vs. 2.9 games) in 2010, and spent almost $10 more ($25.57 vs. $15.70) on phone games. * 19% of all mobile phone gamers said they played one or more social networking games via their phone daily, and more than a third (37%) said they play a social networking game via their phone at least once a week. * Among all mobile phone gamers, 23% of all mobile phone device usage time (excluding phone calls) is spent playing games.

Bottom Line: With these encouraging stats, mobile gaming development will be growing rapidly in the next few years. Kind of like gaming consoles, i feel that in the future we will have exclusive games for different mobile software devices. For example, Apple paying Rovio to create Angry Birds for only iOS devices.

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