Via Daring Fireball, Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core:

That’s right, Amazon gave away 101,491 copies of our app! At this point, we had a few seconds of excitement as well, had we mis-read the email and really earned $54,800 in one day? We would have done if our public agreement was in place, but we can now confirm that thanks to Amazon’s secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day. That’s right, over 100,000 apps given away, $0 made. Did the exposure count for much in the days afterwards? That’s also a big no, the day after saw a blip in sales, followed by things going back to exactly where we started, selling a few apps a day. In fact Amazon decided to rub salt in the wounds a little further by discounting our app to 99 cents for a few days after the free promotion.

Classy. Apple has got a lot of things wrong with its App Store and how it treats devs, but it never pulls shit like this.

When you started up a Mac in the reasonably distant past, you got a smiling Mac face once the BONNNGGGG had faded. It was like being greeted by a friend, albeit one who’d end up keeling over time and time again, whenever you had the audacity to launch Internet Explorer.

In Mac OS X, Apple went a bit more corporate, with its logo ousting the wee Happy Mac, who was, presumably, shot in the head, as is the Cupertino way. Now, according to MacRumors, our chum is back, albeit in the shape of iCloud’s error messages, thereby proving one of two things:

1. Apple did indeed shoot Happy Mac to death and he’s now in digital heaven, but, shockingly, still under contract. *SADFACE*
2. Apple merely beat Happy Mac into the shape of a cloud, and now even forces him to wear stupid glasses and smile for the camera. FOR SHAME, STEVE JOBS!

In case you’re not keeping up regarding Nintendo, things aren’t looking good. From dominating the handheld space a few short years ago, it’s now found itself in the position of finding its older handheld (the DS) outselling its newer model (the 3DS) by nearly two-to-one, and the new console having its price slashed, in an attempt to boost poor sales across the entire range. The company’s CEO has taken a 50 per cent pay cut, and Nintendo doesn’t seem to have any big answers to Apple’s iOS and even Sony, matching Apple in making genuinely multifunctional devices.

To my mind, Nintendo has the following options:

• Dig in. Nintendo has said it believes that dedicated gaming units are still the way forward. It could produce a follow-up to the 3DS (perhaps the Game Boy 2, to leverage that still-loved brand), but this would be a high-risk strategy. It’s increasingly common for kids to be armed with iPods, and once they have one, dedicated units look limited by comparison (especially those largely utilising physical media).
• Follow the crowd. Nintendo could fight back against Apple and Sony by nicking their best ideas. Have the next Nintendo console, at the very least, be fantastic online (for browsing, not just multiplayer games), work well as a media player, and have a top-notch games and apps list, which are largely available via download and for a more affordable price than existing Nintendo games. This has less risk in the sense of future-proofing, but Nintendo would have to take great care to differentiate.
• Do something entirely different. Apple—the company, remember, in part responsible for the Apple Pippin—largely blindsided Nintendo in handheld gaming. Apple didn’t design the iPod as a gaming unit, but it did design iOS devices as something different to what existed at the time. A combination of factors then led to devs and gamers flocking to the platform. Is Nintendo capable of creating something so awe-inspiring, new and innovative (rather than welding a 3D gimmick to an existing console) that it could go for this option? I’d like to think so, because while it’s also high-risk, it offers plenty of rewards if the Japanese giant got it right. And it’s not like Nintendo’s been bereft of new and exciting ideas in the past.

Whichever path Nintendo chooses, I think it’s got one more shot at this, before it finds itself in the same position as Sega around the time of the Dreamcast. If that ever happens, the company ends up with option four, which I’m sure it would never want to do:

• Be like Sega. Nintendo could give up on hardware entirely and go software-only in the handheld space, either with lucrative exclusive deals with a single platform, or by casting the net wide. Imagine if Super Mario Bros., MarioKart and other famous Nintendo brands were to officially exist for iOS. Angry Birds would be ousted from the number-one spot for good—those birds and pigs would never know what hit them. But this would come at a price—the ability to control the hardware and software, and to innovate when it comes to making new hardware. That said, given how regularly Nintendo recycles its famous IP, this wouldn’t necessarily be a poor option, especially for gamers.

What’s that, Informa? You chucked a dart at a giant calendar and hit 2016, and so are now claiming Google tablet sales will overtake the iPad in five years? What, you’re all insulted by me suggesting you made this up? Really? You mean you actually have some kind of analysis tools for this kind of bullshit and don’t just pull it out of your arse at random? You really think you can predict the future patterns of this kind of technology, when the entire market didn’t even fucking exist five years ago? And you know that the market is going to trend towards Android, because, what? Because you think it will? Because Google has pimped its OS to any company with a credit card? Because that’s more or less (ish) what happened with Windows and the Mac, and Apple never learns because it’s closed and BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH?

What about the iPod, dickheads? Didn’t Apple retain the lion’s share of the market in that sector throughout? What about new disruptive technology that doesn’t exist yet, which may or may not be designed and released by Apple? What about the fact that right now, no bugger nor his dog can match Apple on price and build quality and experience? What about the simple, plain fact that Android tablets aren’t selling well, to the point companies making them only reveal how many have shipped?

Maybe you could try answering some of those questions next time, analysts, rather than shitting out yet another random point in time when you think the iPad will be ‘inevitably’ overtaken by Android.

TechRadar reports that the Nintendo 3DS is selling poorly compared to expectations, with the company now being bolstered by the Wii U. Nintendo blames the games:

During the three months ended June 2011, for the Nintendo 3DS The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was launched and favourably received, but Nintendo had few other hit titles

Big fucking surprise there, then. This is what has always happens with Nintendo handhelds. A few hit titles are rolled out, but the games releases rapidly trend towards Pony Game 7 and Pointless Dolly Dress-Up Bullshit 4. The difference this time round though is that Nintendo has massive competition from Apple. Instead of rushing out to buy a Nintendo DS with 3D, kids can for roughly the same price buy an iPod that:

• shoots HD video;
• connects to the internet, for Facebook, web browsing, and so on;
• stores and plays music, and;
• offers a staggeringly large games catalogue, with each title costing less than its 3DS equivalent.

On that last point, it’s still commonplace for Nintendo fans to claim the App Store is full of shitty games, and that happens to be absolutely true. But the App Store also has about 40,000 games at the time of writing. If only one in a hundred is worth playing, that still leaves you with 400 games. In my experience writing for Tap!, I’d say that ratio’s out anyway, because I find something new and exciting to play—often costing nothing or priced under a few quid—every single day. I own a ton of fantastic games across all genres, and many of these games have appeared since the 3DS arrived.

Nintendo isn’t doomed. Writing off the company would be ridiculous, since it is generally pretty smart and the closest thing to Apple in gaming, daring to innovate. But it dropped the ball on this generation’s handhelds, trying to eke out another round from an old idea while Apple blazed past with something new. Apple should perhaps be wary now, because, historically speaking, leaders in the games industry have tended to get complacent, allowing rivals to steam ahead. This appears to be the case with Nintendo now, so perhaps it can fight back next time round. If not, it’ll be increasingly reliant on its TV consoles, and if they go belly-up, it’ll be the latest Sega.