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Nintendo development plans

M

Michael CM1

macrumors 603
Original poster
Feb 4, 2008
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Anybody know if Nintendo has any plans to develop games? After seeing a few screenshots of Cro Mag Racing and the Crash racing thing, it seems obvious that a version of Mario Kart could be made for iPhone.

Only problem I see is, well, they make the DS. I don't think it would cannibalize it (not until buttons exist on an iPhone) but they don't seem to develop anything for other hardware.
 
Michael CM1 said:
Anybody know if Nintendo has any plans to develop games? After seeing a few screenshots of Cro Mag Racing and the Crash racing thing, it seems obvious that a version of Mario Kart could be made for iPhone.

Only problem I see is, well, they make the DS. I don't think it would cannibalize it (not until buttons exist on an iPhone) but they don't seem to develop anything for other hardware.
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I doubt since they have the DS to worry about
 
i don't see this happening in the near future especially since the iPhone and DS are similar and the sales would possibly affect the DS but iPhone games is basically like a combination of Wii and DS so it shouldn't be hard for them to port
 
Michael CM1 said:
Anybody know if Nintendo has any plans to develop games? After seeing a few screenshots of Cro Mag Racing and the Crash racing thing, it seems obvious that a version of Mario Kart could be made for iPhone.

Only problem I see is, well, they make the DS. I don't think it would cannibalize it (not until buttons exist on an iPhone) but they don't seem to develop anything for other hardware.
Click to expand...

Forget it. Nintendo never licenses their franchises. If you want Nintendo games you have to buy Nintendo hardware. Reminds us of another company maybe...?
 
It seems unlikely but it really depends on how profitable such a move would be. Take TomTom for example they are developing software for the iphone that will compete with their own hardware (in a sense) but profit margins are clearly going to be greater with selling applications on the app store than selling their own hardware and it will allow them to dominate GPS software on the iphone which in it self is a market.

As a business nintendo will almost certainly consider such a move, along with all other game developers, if the sales numbers for current games on the iphone are good, developers will be tripping over them selves to get a protion of the sales, Nintendo if they entered the market could easily dominate but it depends on how it will affect the DS. It really depends on the protion of iphone/ipod touch user who own a DS if it is very low (which i doubt) then they could start developing games for the iphone without fear of cannibalising their other products.
 
greenmymac said:
There is nothing wrong with that by the way!
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Absolutely agree. Nintendo hardware is especially designed for Nintendo software. Nintendo couldn't release the same quality if they had to work on other platforms. There are many interviews with Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto that emphasize this.

Which is why I also believe that the best iPhone games will never be as good as the best DS games. iPhone developers can make use of the innovations that trickle down from Nintendo though.
 
bobx2001 said:
They have the Zune and windows moble, just because neither are very good doesn't they don't exist.
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I mean gaming. The Zune has a half-baked game engine in development, but is far off, and will suck. Also, by the way, the Zune is a very viable alternative to an iPod.... the software, on the other side, sucks.
 
reverie said:
Absolutely agree. Nintendo hardware is especially designed for Nintendo software. Nintendo couldn't release the same quality if they had to work on other platforms. There are many interviews with Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto that emphasize this.

Which is why I also believe that the best iPhone games will never be as good as the best DS games. iPhone developers can make use of the innovations that trickle down from Nintendo though.
Click to expand...

I don't really blame Nintendo for this at all. I saw how well Zelda: Twilight Princess was at the Wii launch. It's similar to OS X working well on Macs because there are fewer things not developed under your roof.

I would agree with the iPhone/DS comparison. First of all, the iPhone wasn't really meant to play games. If a game attachment was developed that fit around the iPhone and gave it a few buttons, then we're talking. But right now it's just stuff that you can tap and move with the accelerometer. The DS was made to play games, and it does that pretty well. Here's to hoping that the next DS does away with the stylus. :)
 
Nintendo wouldn't ever support a competitor, no matter how much that competitor made. And the iPhone is now competing with the DS, albeit on a small scale. And there's plenty of proof to back that up - Nintendo could have made a fortune releasing Zelda on the PS2, as the PS2 had over 100 million owners. Or even handheld, sure the PSP isn't selling as well as the DS, but it's still got more than any of the current consoles, any game Nintendo sold on that would make them bank. But they refuse.

Nintendo doesn't see themselves as a software company but a hardware company, and they've said in the past they will never go all software.
 
...and the DS saw 185 million game sales in 2007, that's 15 million games per month. At $40 bucks average, not $8 average like on the iPhone. Seems to me that the DS game market is still a hundred times bigger than the iPhone games market.
 
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