One device, one pocket
Near the bottom of a New York Times article on how iPhone owners love gaming lie two remarkable quotes:
But even though [Sony] is responding to trends that iPhone is driving, Mr. de Leon said the company is not worried that Apple’s device will take over their core audience. “At the end of the day, you buy the iPhone to make calls,” he said. “And you buy the PSP to play games.”
Cammie Dunaway, vice president for sales and marketing for Nintendo, echoed similar sentiments about the company’s lineup of portable hand-held gaming devices. “No one can match our years of experience in the hand-held market and the subscriber base we’ve built up over the last 20 years,” she said. — Yet Another Vogue for the iPhone: Video Games, New York Times, June 28, 2009
These two quotes are remarkable because they’re so similar to Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s remarks about Apple’s then-rumored iPhone prospects:
Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” — Response to question at Churchill Club breakfast by New York Times correspondent John Markoff, San Jose Mercury News, November 2006
We know how that worked out.
Sony and Nintendo appear to miss the fact that Apple is creating a new casual gaming market: customers who wouldn’t have purchased a traditional hand-held gaming system, much less carried it around town, think nothing of whipping out their iPhone for a little gameplay, in part because they can also whip out their iPhone for directions, news, e-mail, and any number of other things.
The iPhone doesn’t have to be better than a PSP or a DS. It just has to good enough that you wouldn’t lug that second device around.
Sony’s comment that you buy the iPhone to make calls and the PSP to play games overlooks a simple fact that consumers won’t: with the iPhone, you can do both.
“Sony’s comment that you buy the iPhone to make calls and the PSP to play games overlooks a simple fact that consumers won’t…”
Well… some will, just as some people also carry a dedicated camera or video camera. The real question is: how many?
Just as embedded camera phones have sliced into the P&S camera market, so will iPhone/Pre/whatever phones into the dedicated electronic game market.
And I’m one of those people. I have at least a dozen games on my iPhone, but I would NEVER have bought a Gameboy.
Amen. In the year that I’ve owned mine (and I have never even thought to buy a handheld game device), I have come to realize just how much of a tool it is. Handling urgent emails in the doctor’s office – check. Lost in Paris and looking for a metro – check. Where’s the closest gas station – check. Splitting a check with friends – check. On the spot comparison price shopping – check. Gaming diversion in the doctor’s office – check.
I think the most telling point about the iPhone experience is the evangelism… both Steve and I are always showing people what they can do with it beyond the seduction of the pretty games. And he and I have both seen people opt for other smartphones and then comes back and say they picked the wrong horse, but have to ride it for the next two years.
It really isn’t a phone… it’s becoming a tricorder…
We had a Vii before we got our iPhones. Now it is sitting by the TV, unused. Our iPhones have taken over our times pretty much so. We can play our games anywhere we want to, instead of having to use our game console in front of a dedicated screen. It is a totally new and flexible way of using our phone/play/computer gadget.
I would tend to agree.
Nintendo is right about the realm of personal gaming. Those people who love Nintendo games will continue to buy them. But much like the Wii brought video games to a bunch of people who normally wouldn’t play them, an attraction of the iPhone would be “casual gaming”–the kind of game I can briefly play while waiting for something else to occur.
Personally, I have no interest in the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP because I don’t play that much for games. But if I already have an iPhone and there’s a race car game for it, I’ll try it out.
Tricorder + Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy = iPhone
Dedicated gaming devices will never go away, but their sales will never grow beyond the group of gamers that have bought them since the 1970s.
Their numbers will not shrink, but their percentage of the market will become insignificant as the do-it-all pocket computer becomes ubiquitous and the gaming market grows.
“Sony’s comment that you buy the iPhone to make calls and the PSP to play games overlooks a simple fact that consumers won’t: with the iPhone, you can do both.”
Absolutely right. And everyone needs a phone.
-systemsboy