Wired:

Nintendo was caught unawares by surprisingly slow sales of the 3DS, the company said Tuesday.

“Nintendo 3DS has not been selling as expected since the second week [of availability in the United States and Europe], and this is not just in the Japanese market but also in the United States and Europe,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said during an investor briefing in Tokyo. “Therefore, we recognize that we are in a situation where we need to step up our efforts to further promote the spread of Nintendo 3DS.”

I used to swear by Nintendo handhelds. In the particularly bleak period of gaming from the late 1990s and into the early 2000s (when the Dreamcast died, taking fun with it), everything had to be 3D with as many polygons as you could fit in. Too many games had to conform to pre-defined genres, and as budgets escalated, risk and innovation all but disappeared.

Nintendo’s handhelds were the last place where the kind of excitement and drive of early 1980s arcade and home gaming thrived. Lower budgets meant you got crazy little games like WarioWare that just weren’t—at the time—feasible on TV consoles. But Nintendo’s handhelds—like all its consoles—always suffered from the same problems:

• A launch line-up weaker than everyone was expecting;
• A surprisingly short period of A-list games—releases soon turn into churn garbage for children;
• Expensive cart-based systems, which make each purchase a risk.

It took a while, but iOS eventually obliterated these issues. Since the platform regularly evolves, there’s no launch line-up, but there is a constant stream of titles. Most of them are utter crap (much like on any other system, ever), but I find something new I’d be interested in playing every single day. And because the system uses digital distribution, prices are lower and risk for the consumer is reduced. This also knocks budgets, forcing developers to innovate and rely more on gameplay than gloss.

These are the things that got me hooked on iOS gaming, to the point that I’m now the guy who deals with Tap! magazine’s games section, but anecdotal evidence beyond my own experiences made me wonder if a wider pattern was emerging regarding a transition away from Nintendo and towards Apple in the handheld space. I first became aware of a shift on interviewing an ex-Atari developer a couple of years ago. He told me his home was full of gaming kit—his children had access to every console available; but since iOS arrived, his daughters and their friends pretty much only ever played with Apple kit. “The DS,” he told me, “is dead”. The reason was that an iPod touch provided access to similar quickfire games to those they’d played on Nintendo consoles, a few titles with depth, but also offered internet access, enabling kids to mess around on Facebook.

As time moved on, more people told me that their kids were becoming fascinated by iOS, playing games on iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices, all but ignoring handheld Nintendo kit from that point on. With youngsters, the intuitive nature of a touchscreen beat the relatively complex buttons of a traditional handheld; for older kids, the range of cheap games made some of their parents keen to embrace iOS, rather than paying 30 quid for a piece of plastic that could get discarded within minutes; and for teens, the importance of access to content other than games was increasingly of paramount importance. And with an entry-level iPod touch being anything up to 30 quid cheaper than the 3DS and having games that cost a fraction of the price, I wondered how Nintendo would fare this time round.

Perhaps things will change for the 3DS in the same way that they did for iOS. According to Wired, Iwata argues that it’s a

challenge to get users to understand the appeal of the [3D] screen even when they get their hands on a unit.

This was certainly the case with iOS. Many gamers I know considered iOS devices useless for gaming, right up until they experienced them. (Hell, back in 2008, I wrote—with an amusing lack of prescience—Why iPod touch will never be a major gaming platform for Cult of Mac, an article I subsequently countered when I had a year’s experience of the platform.)

That said, some people I know with a 3DS rarely use the 3D component, because they find it painful. And it’s also interesting to note that the majority of 3DS owners I know are also so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers. During the last-generation handheld scrap, Nintendo’s presence went across the board, from pensioners to children, from gaming newbies to dedicated fanatics. Sony fans would yell from the sidelines about Nintendo kit not being for ‘proper’ games, but Nintendo fans would smugly note that they actually had a range of titles and the best of everything. Right now, Sony’s almost irrelevant in the handheld space, and Nintendo appears to have taken its slot. Whenever I question Apple’s surprising rise in gaming and suggest it’s at the expense of Nintendo, the response is identical to the one Sony fans argued years ago. Nintendo, they say, is now the preserve of ‘proper’ games, unlike those ‘throwaway’ and ‘casual’ titles on iOS—the ones Nintendo in part used to thrive on, and that attracted the audience outside of core gamers that gave Nintendo so many DS and GBA sales.

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.

A nice piece by Stu Dredge over at The Guardian, on Amazon’s Appstore terms. The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is warning devs about Amazon’s pricing fluctuation, which will enable it to pay developers either 70% of the purchase price for their game, or 20% of the developer’s List Price, whichever is greater. The IGDA’s concerned, because:

Some developers will probably win in this scenario, but some developers – most likely, those near the bottom of the list – will lose, not gaining enough sales to offset the loss in revenue per sale.

And Amazon also reserves the right to make a game free that’s selling well, to which the IGDA responds:

This sort of promotional activity may attract consumers away from competing markets and into Amazon’s arms. But it might actually represent a net loss for the developer, which was already doing quite well and didn’t need to firesale its game at that moment in time.

Yeah, well, tough. This is how things are in Amazon-land. I know of a couple of book publishers who ended up going under because Amazon kept discounting products to the point that they effectively lost money, but Amazon’s not fussed, because it knows there are a lot of other publishers—and customers also flock to where things are cheapest. It won’t be any different for Android games and apps.

From a personal standpoint, I’m not terribly keen on Amazon’s terms, though. The rush-to-the-bottom on Apple’s App Store is bad enough, with games discounted within days of going on sale. While Apple’s managed to ‘train’ iOS users to buy stuff, they’ve also set an expectation that games should be dirt-cheap (something not entirely helped by giant publishers like EA and Gameloft doing regular fire-sales); and while I like games being more affordable (rather than being 30-quid cartridges), they don’t really need to be just 59p. But at least on the App Store the dev has a choice—Amazon’s terms are a little off in that regard.

Still, Amazon’s the one company that could really give Apple strong competition in the app/tablet/smartthing space, and so despite its iffy terms, I’m excited to see where it takes things.

As you might have noticed, this blog’s gone into one of its quieter patches, mostly because I’m currently drowning in iOS games for my Tap! magazine duties. The good is that I get to play and write about cracking* iOS games. The bad is that I don’t really have time to do anything else for a few days. However, this also gives me a nice excuse to mention the spiffy new website for the publication, www.tapmag.co.uk, which will carry reviews, posts from editor Christopher Phin (and maybe some of us other contributors if he gives us the magic key), and handy links so you can subscribe.

Anyway, back to Dungeon Raid and Liqua Pop.

* As in “Cracking cheese, Gromit!”, not dodgy app piracy.

Oh, stunning. Over on Develop, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has spewed shit from his mouth in the form of words, splattering them all over the internet. He says Nintendo will embrace the independent developer, but “draws the line” with less-established garage outfits:

[Nintendo will] separate out the true independent developer versus the hobbyist.

Where we’ve drawn the line is we are not looking to do business today with the garage developer. In our view, that’s not a business we want to pursue.

Fuck you, Reggie. If ever I needed proof that Nintendo had utterly lost it regarding gaming, this is it. ‘Garage’ indies are the lifeblood of the industry—they always were. Hell, when the industry first started, tiny indies were pretty much it—those single coders who created innovative, exciting new product again and again.

In the modern age, there is a hell of a lot of crap on iOS, but to tar all hobbyists with the same brush is pretty much like saying “but we want to continue sucking up to majors, because they all do wonderful games, every time”. In other words, it’s bullshit.

Some home coders create the most wonderful games imaginable, free from the fury of focus groups. They are one person’s vision, not one person’s vision smashed to pieces by the so-called realities of modern videogame production, which forces games into neat little pre-packaged boxes. On iOS, many of the very best games have been created by home coders—hobbyists—holding down other jobs. Some of these guys have then gone on to become what our chum Reggie would call a “true independent developer”, but they’ve only been able to do so due to the App Store not drawing arbitrary lines in the sand of the kind Nintendo’s enforcing.

Still, you keep on going, Nintendo. Keep on releasing a new console every few years, supporting it with loads of great games for a few months, then reverting to getting people to buy new hardware (Look! This one’s ORANGE! And this one vaguely resembles the packaging of a game we put out in 1987!) rather than concentrating on games. You eschew the smaller indies that could make your hardware great. You continue on your downward slope, because, despite being a huge Nintendo fan for years, your attitude towards ‘garage’ developers makes me sick.

This afternoon’s slice of MAKE CRAIG ANGRY comes courtesy of Wired, whose article In depth: How Rovio made Angry Birds a winner (and what’s next) should probably have been called Fap Fap Fap Rovioooooohhhh.

There’s something of a cult that’s built up around the Finnish developer’s massive iOS hit (since ported to practically every other platform in existence—I hear there’s a VIC-20 version on the way), and more than a little bullshit.

Before a million Angry Birds fans descend, I’m not suggesting the game is rubbish, nor am I saying Rovio doesn’t deserve some of its success. Angry Birds is a fairly good iOS game, and it’s immediate, usable, polished and cute. The perfect game? Not in a million years—it’s too random (requiring quickfire grind play rather than strategising) and has an irksome linear level structure (which was ‘fixed’ via a 59p in-app purchase rather than enabling users to skip levels they couldn’t solve). But it’s not bad.

What is bad is the reporting that continually goes on about Rovio’s magic formula. Ultimately, Rovio got lucky. They put out a game that users could feel they were good at very quickly (even if they weren’t) and with little effort, and built it around a level and reward structure that worked nicely with the quickfire nature of mobile gaming. Rovio then did some cunning marketing, driving word-of-mouth in smaller territories, before partnering with publisher Chillingo in larger countries. But there’s little innovation in the game (it’s a variant on Crush the Castle, a genre that can be traced all the way back to Artillery on the Apple II) and Rovio ‘Mighty Eagle’ Peter Vesterbacka’s saying the company’s “building an integrated entertainment franchise where merchandising, games, movies, TV, cartoons and comics all come together, like Disney 2.0.” is a pretty bold and odd comparison, for one key reason: Rovio is currently a one-hit wonder, with Angry Birds as its sole hit.

There’s no doubting Angry Birds is phenomenally popular. There’s no doubting many people like the game. But right now Rovio is doing little more than milking the brand until it screams: a tie-in with Rio, a self-published ‘seasons’ version to double-up iOS sales and avoid cutting in Chillingo as much as possible, soft toys, possible board games and animations… The list is growing by the month. What’s not on the list though is Rovio’s Next Big Game and The One After That, the products that would prove it has a magic formula for success. At least Wired recognises this in its article:

Rovio needs to evolve from a studio with strong intellectual property (IP), to being a publisher that isn’t over-reliant on a single hit game. There’s the rub: it took Rovio 52 games to get its first hit. To create a fully fledged entertainment empire, it will need more.

Show me another half-dozen megahits and I’ll file Rovio alongside early-1980s Atari and admit that, yes, these guys do have some kind of formula. For now, though, there are dozens of iOS devs out there offering superior and more varied gaming experiences, and that have to balls to do something different every six months or so. Here’s hoping iOS consumers start seeking them out, rather than assuming gaming ends once they’ve three-starred the latest set of levels in Rovio’s game.