Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, is reportedly an Apple fan who uses an iPhone and Mac laptop. He also denied that there is a rivalry between his company and Apple, noting that attempts to create one makes him “uncomfortable.” But Iwata also allegedly sees the iPhone as enough of a threat that Nintendo must work to stand out from it and devices like it.
“If we can’t make clear why customers pay a lot of money to play games on Nintendo hardware and Nintendo software and differentiate ourselves from games on the mobile phone or iPhone, then our future is dark” .
Now, I’m quite curious to know how Nintendo will move. I’m a fan of Nintendo since 15 years, I have almost every Nintendo console ever released, but this time I’m very skeptical about the future.
How are they gonna explain to their customers that they should play $40 for a game when they can have a game on the iPhone at $5? Well, hardcore gamers know the difference between a full featured console game and an AppStore.
But casual gamers, those who bought the Nintendo DS and Wii like bread 2 years ago, are slowly switching to Apple’s iPhone as their mobile gaming platform. Nintendo is in a very difficult position: should they start a new marketing campaign aimed at casual gamers and explain them why consoles are different from mobile devices, or should they finally release products for hardcore gamers? But again, the problem is that many hardcore gamers switched to Microsoft’s Xbox years ago, and I don’t believe they’d like to change console again.
This is a big mess Nintendo. When we told you shouldn’t only think about casual users, this is what we were talking about.
