Engadget reports on Nintendo’s rather poor quarter:

The company posted profits of ¥40.9 billion (about $631.6 million) for the October – December period, representing a 61 percent quarterly drop. That’s especially disappointing, considering that this period has traditionally been strong for Nintendo, which had previously forecast an operating profit of ¥1 billion (around $12.9 million). Those forecasts have since changed, however, with the manufacturer now predicting a ¥45 billion ($580 million) operating loss for the full year, ending March 31st. Nintendo blames the poor showing to sagging 3DS sales, which have forced it to slash prices.

Despite my gaming now almost entirely being on iOS, and my belief that iOS has heavily impacted on Nintendo (through people gaming on smartphones and iPods, and through parents buying children iOS devices over Nintendo handhelds with expensive, easy-to-lose cartridges), I was fairly positive about the company a year ago:

It remains to be seen if the 3DS sales slump is a temporary glitch, and even if the console isn’t a massive hit, that certainly doesn’t mean Nintendo is in any way doomed. Like Apple, it’s managed to be profitable at almost every point during its history, even when one of its consoles only had a minority share of the market. But Nintendo could for the first time find itself ousted as the default company synonymous with handheld gaming—and that would be a pretty major shake-up for the entire industry.

I still think Nintendo is probably the company most people think of as synonymous with handheld gaming; the thing is, that’s clearly no longer enough for it to remain profitable. And since that was Nintendo’s trump card—an Apple-like profitability regardless of its market position, that is a major concern for the company.

When the 3DS appeared, I didn’t think it was enough. It felt like a relic, with a gimmick—an echo of a bygone age, where dedicated handheld gaming devices still mattered. It continued Nintendo’s line of thinking that had worked so well since the original Game Boy: technologically middling but accessible and portable hardware; reliance on high-quality first-party IP that’s drip-fed over many months to an eager audience; software sold on expensive cartridges; an honest focus on the purity of gaming; a level of accessibility that the likes of Sony can only dream of.

These ideals were once precisely what the industry needed, but now Nintendo has to face the harsh reality that it’s veering dangerously close to becoming another Sega. If it cannot halt the decline with the Wii U, whatever it brings out next in the handheld space (and I’ll be surprised if the DS brand isn’t retired, enabling the Game Boy to—potentially—triumphantly return) will have to be nothing short of amazing—a device that will wrench people away from smartphones and iPods, back to Nintendo. But if Nintendo continues to stubbornly follow the same path, will that be enough? It wasn’t for the 3DS. So will the company bite the bullet and go with the flow, with a system that works with cheaper downloads rather than expensive cartridges, and that at the very least recognises some manner of an app ecosystem (with stronger options regarding web browsing, social networking, reading, movies, music, and so on)?

I hope so. Despite what raging Nintendo fan-boys think whenever I criticise the company (my record to date: a drop of 50 Twitter followers from one short string of comments some months back), I do not want Nintendo to fail. Although over-reliant on refreshing certain aspects of its catalogue a little too often, it’s also been a company of innovation. The original DS was a brave move, as was the Wii. Both made gaming more accessible and open, wrenching it from the claw-like grips of so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers. For a long time, I considered Nintendo the Apple of gaming—a company that cared about the details and about the right things (fun, excitement, enjoyment). Nintendo’s problem these days is that Apple is now the Apple of gaming—and the Japanese veteran needs to fight back, perhaps borrowing some of the tricks used by the plucky American upstart.

Late last year, it was revealed that Vector Tanks and Vector Tanks Extreme had been pulled from the App Store. The games were reasonably close tributes to Atari’s classic arcade game Battlezone, but did not use the original game’s IP. Ed Rotberg, creator of Battlezone, told me during an interview that he was impressed by Vector Tanks; Atari, unsurprisingly, was less so, and has of late gone on something of a rampage of destruction on the App Store, taking down as many apps that resemble its properties as possible.

After days of silence, Atari issued a statement to Joystiq:

For companies like Atari, our intellectual property portfolio is our most valued asset. While we have great respect for the indie developer community and greatly appreciate the enthusiasm that they have for our renowned properties, we need to vigorously protect our intellectual property and ensure that it is represented in highly innovative games. We have been actively engaging with numerous established and up and coming developers to help us re-imagine our iconic franchises, and outside app developers have already helped us produce two top 10 mobile game successes in Asteroids: Gunner and Breakout: Boost. We look forward to further developing strong relationships with the indie app development community through additional games that we will be releasing in the future.

Responses to Atari’s actions varied. Some argued it was unfairly throwing its weight around; others, such as Jared Newman at Technologizer, argued that Atari was perfectly within its rights, since Vector Tanks

rips off plenty of the Battlezone aesthetic, including the green wireframe tanks, the square- and triangle-shaped obstacles, and the wireframe mountains in the distance set against a black backdrop.

And while Vector Tanks Extreme adds more features,

it’s built on the same cloned foundation.

I find the case more troubling. There’s no doubt Vector Tanks was heavily inspired by Battlezone, but if that’s an argument, Atari needs to realise that the vast majority of its own IP was based heavily on other properties, too, judging by interviews I’ve done with the developers of many of its classic games. Very few games were truly original, even in the early 1980s. And even in today’s litigious society, surely Atari could have taken a smarter route. It talks about outside developers helping to produce updates of old Atari games, so why not just rebrand Vector Tanks as an iOS Battlezone series? Instead of killing the games, bring them sort-of in-house. That way, everyone’s happy.

Today, however, we see the Atari/Vector Tanks situation in reverse. Zynga has released Dream Heights, a game that appears perilously close to indie hit Tiny Towers by NimbleBit. Curiously, one NimbleBit developer said on Twitter that Zynga

did go the honest route and try to acquire us first.

The developer has since written a snarky open letter to Zynga, starkly highlighting the similarities between the games, and noting the difference in size between Zynga (2789 employees) and NimbleBit (three). What links this to the Vector Tanks spat is there’s as much Tiny Tower in Dream Heights as Battlezone in Vector Tanks, but I wonder what would happen if NimbleBit issued a similar take-down request to Apple. Would Apple comply? Possibly. But would the long-term results be the same? My guess: not at all. Zynga would simply unleash its legal team and NimbleBit would have no way to fight back.

This is the imbalance in the App Store. The same legal issues ultimately exist for the Vector Tanks developer, too. There is legal precedent that videogame mechanics are barely possible to protect—only direct IP (trademarks and so on) are; however, the small developer has no chance in fighting the big guns, regardless of whether it’s the one being inspired or the one providing the inspiration. On a gaming ecosystem that’s done more to level the playing field than any other since the days of 8-bit computers, this is a huge pity. Here’s hoping that Tiny Tower being first to market enables it to continue being a success, and that the Vector Tanks developers continue to produce great games that don’t resemble Atari’s IP enough for them to be the target of legal smackdowns.

ION Audio has unveiled the next iterations of its iCade system (MacRumors). I reviewed the iCade in May last year, and was later dumbfounded by Taito and Atari churning out its own equivalents. A recent iCade fire-sale in the UK led to me finally buying a unit of my own (my review having been done on a loaner from ION), and, in hindsight, companies knocking anything up to 50 per cent off of the iCade should have been an indicator a new model was due. However, ION unveiled three.

First, there’s the iCade Core. This is essentially the iCade without the cabinet—you just get the plastic base with a joystick and eight buttons. It’s hard to tell from the photography on offer, but assuming the iPad can rest in landscape as well as portrait, I think this is a smart move on ION’s part. The cabinet version is cute and quirky, but it’s also a space-hog and very much geared at old farts like me. The iCade Core looks more like a standard games controller, which means less character but wider appeal. Bar more support from developers, the price will be the biggest factor in its success. I was happy paying 40 quid for my iCade, but there’s no way I’d have paid double that.

Next up, there’s iCade Mobile. This makes an iOS device like an iPhone or iPod touch resemble a PSP. You get a D-pad, four face buttons and four shoulder buttons. There are two clever pieces of engineering that put this above other controllers I’ve so far seen: the device sits very snugly in the controller’s rubber enclosure, and it can be rotated 90 degrees, enabling you to use iCade Mobile for portrait games. Again, support and pricing could be a problem: $79.99 seems a bit high.

Finally, there’s iCade Jr, which is on the wrong side of mental. It’s a miniaturised version of the original iCade, designed for the iPhone and iPod touch. I know I should hold judgment until actually using the unit, but it just seems bonkers. The original iCade is just about big enough for what it’s trying to do and be: a home arcade. iCade Jr looks like it will be extremely fiddly, and unless it has a brick in the base, it won’t have the weight to hold your device steady while you play. (If you’ve used an iCade, you’ll know that’s not a problem with the original unit.) Also, putting four of the buttons on the back of the controller seems like a recipe for usability nightmares.

Still, two out of three isn’t bad. I’m still not a huge fan of additional controllers for iOS, and I strongly believe that even most ‘traditional’ games (racers, platformers, and so on) can work fine with touch controls if the developer is careful. However, if there are going to be more typical controllers for iOS, I’d hope they’d be of a high quality and, crucially, designed specifically for the system. The iCade Mobile certainly seems like it nails the latter of those things, and I’m looking forward to checking out the former when I can get my hands on a review model.

Angry Chickens is blasting its way to the top of the App Store charts, proving once again that one path to iOS gaming riches is:

• Create run-of-the-mill game with plenty of pay-off
• Include birds
• Make birds cute
• Polish game until it squeaks

Whether or not you bother with the fourth of those will depend on whether you want your game to be dismissed immediately or bob about in the charts for months.

But Angry Chickens has drawn ire, because it’s such a rip-off of Angry Birds, except, you know, it isn’t. Yes, it involves irritating cartoon birds and also has a title quite clearly designed to confuse people. And, yes, it has physics-oriented destruction-based gameplay. But Angry Chickens is actually a rip-off of Siege Hero, which is a 3D version of Angry Birds, which is a clone of Crush the Castle, an artillery game by the Siege Hero guys, which itself is effectively an online (now also iOS) and advanced take on ancient Apple II game Artillery, which was probably based on a BASIC game also called Artillery.

Clear?

Pocket Gamer:

The latest update to developer HotGen’s Pocket Gamer Bronze Award-winning iPhone and iPad title To-Fu: The Trials of Chi has caused a bit of a stir.

[Despite] the update making the rock-solid platformer—and all of its in-app purchases—available for free, it introduces pesky ads that flash up at the bottom of your device’s screen as you play. This has upset some of the players that bought the title for 69p / 99c.

The iPad version is also affected, and that initially cost £1.99/$2.99. One recent review on the App Store states:

Now I always have an advert which I don’t usually mind but this time they actually affect the gameplay, it makes the game screen smaller, you can accidentally touch the advert and it is a bit distracting.

And that’s one of the more constructive of the recent slew of one-star reviews.

I find HotGen’s stance very odd, since it appears to show disrespect for those who already paid for To-Fu. If I’ve spent money on a game, the last thing I want is for the developer to suddenly make it free and shove adverts in my face. It also makes me concerned about other HotGen products. Will To-Fu 2 be next? What about Spacelings? (Note that I this morning asked for a comment from the company’s PR as to why this decision was made, and will update this article should I receive a reply.)

HotGen’s hardly alone. I’ve seen plenty of iOS games integrating house ads (sometimes in the form of ‘news announcements’), and I find such things irksome at best. But it’s pretty rare to see a paid-for title switch to free and have banners welded to it, compromising the experience for all and angering people who originally paid for it.