The issue is less whether Nintendo could make money on smartphones - although with the market being what it is, I think it's far from a given that even a new Mario game could sell 20 million copies at that price point - but whether the money they'd make would offset the potential cost to their hardware business.
Oh, was the premise of the question that they would shut down their hardware business and go competely 3rd party? I was just speaking about them making a couple of specific IP's as multiplat. Like a spin off Mario series, with all the appropriate bells and whistles, but build for touch screens. I don't know how I'd feel about them shutting down entirely and going 3rd party. I'd have to think on that a bit more than I feel like doing at the moment.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
So about 3 years ago? (also, that came bundled over the holidays, but whatever)
And before that? The point here was that it's a rare feat, but one Nintendo could produce over and over again if they decided to tap into that iOS audience. I don't see how anyone could disagree with that. What name carries more weight in the gaming world than Nintendo? And with so many iOS gamers being casual gamers, they'd fit into a lot of what Nintendo is trying to do perfectly, no?
Mario or not, I doubt many people would drop $15-$20 for an iOS game.
Then we fundamentally disagree on the nature and potential of the market.
You think there is only a small market for expensive games because there are no expensive games (or, because almost all other games have been cheap and short games). I think a sizable market exists that hasn't been tapped because there have been no games made that are expansive and deep enough to justify a $15-$20 price. I believe that they most certainly can be made...and that if they come, so will the money. That's why I like the Republique project so much. It's pushing forward into the Undiscovered Country.
Again, if 5% bought in...20 million copies+ get sold. You can make a lot of fair arguments, but not one that suggests that 5% of the iOS market would NOT buy a high-quality Mario game at a $15-$20 price. I don't accept the notion. If you do, then we can agree to disagree.
Find the most successful Mobile devlopers and pull their earnings sheets. Find a breakdown of how many iOS games sell at what price and what percentage of the market is held by games priced at 10$ or higher, find out whats the highest sold game (not ad supported, but paid) and lets use all that information to try and put a best case scenario.
Sorry, but I don't accept this premise.
There is no developer like Nintendo. There are no full-fledged DS/Vita/PSP/3DS-caliber games on iOS yet. You can't compare someone like Ngmoco (I assume one of the most successful mobile developers) to fucking Nintendo Corporation. If someone like Nintendo--with the mindshare, mascots, and IPs--decided they wanted to make a series of high-quality, full-length touch screen-only games, they would/could create a new market for AAA gaming software. What little projects that have been done in the past won't matter, as they'll be charting the future.
Personally, I think all the games and developers we've seen on iOS are bunch of small fish and small fish projects in a big pond waiting for a bigass shark to come in and wreck shit. Whether that's Nintendo or someone else (like Camoflaj) doesn't matter to me.
Of course, they would not do any of this and I don't really think any of this will happen. Just furthering the discussion and chuckling at the premise that NINTENDO couldn't make games worthy of a $20 price...and that a large enough portion wouldn't want to buy them. I think that's laughable. But I've seen this vein of logic over and over again that more expensive iOS games *wont'* sell. When we see a AAA game (in both quality and length) get made for iOS and it fails to sell, then that logic will have something to point to. Until then, it's just a pessimistic argument and one I simply disagree with.
Some see a desolate world for touch screen gaming; others see fertile ground.
