A quick look at Angry Birds Go! on Metacritic shows that reviews of Rovio’s latest game—essentially MarioKart with Angry Birds characters—has been broadly positively received. Only Pocket Gamer was really critical, ‘awarding’ the game 5/10.

I didn’t go into the game in a particularly positive frame of mind. Reports had suggested the IAP underpinnings weren’t too bad, but I’ve played relatively few titles where that’s the case, and only a tiny handful where IAP and micro-transactions have worked to the product’s favour. I was skeptical that a fast-paced kart-racer wouldn’t be undone by a freemium model. However, I truly love kart racers, and so I nonetheless wanted to like this game.

Initially, all appears well with Angry Birds Go!, and it gets two things very right. First, it looks fantastic on the iPhone. The courses are nicely cartoonish and organic, and the karts themselves are amusingly ramshackle. Secondly, it handles very nicely indeed. There’s little of the floaty physics evident in iOS kart racers—everything feels pleasingly solid, if still arcadey. It’s only when you play on for an extended period of time that you realise the game is a grindy, boring mess.

The problems with Angry Birds Go! are down to structure and greed. In terms of structure, you’re essentially forced to race over and over on the same small slice of track until you’ve ‘earned’ the right to progress to the next one. But the best kart racers (indeed, the best racers) thrive on variety. This is perhaps why the similarly IAP-infused Asphalt 8 doesn’t rub me up the wrong way—it’s still fun when you’re working your way through the game, because it regularly flings different tracks at you.

But greed is the bigger problem. Angry Birds Go! has a cooldown system for the racers—the conceit being that the birds doing the driving get tired. Naturally, they can be revived by spending one of the game’s two in-game currencies. Infuriatingly, the game also spams Notification Center when the birds are awake:

Your racers just needed some sleep! They’re now feeling fully charged and desperate to take the wheel!

Here’s a better idea, Rovio: how about you don’t place arbitrary barriers such as this in your game, and let me play for however long I want to? That way, I don’t have to make the choice of paying to continue or leaving your app, and you don’t need to spam my notifications!

Additionally, there are the usual walls racers of this ilk tend to throw up: races that need a certain type of vehicle upgrade; painfully obvious catch-up mechanisms; the requirement to have certain vehicles to race certain races; and stupidly expensive karts that you can only buy using real money. Furthermore, power-ups can only be used once per race unless you pay, and they’re also, astonishingly, ad-sponsored. A smaller number of these pungent ingredients wouldn’t have run Angry Birds Go! off of the road, but the combination makes for a truly grind-oriented trudge. And, of course, Angry Birds Go! will make a mint, thereby further justifying this business model, and validating it in the eyes of not only Rovio but also its competitors.

What could have been a minor iOS classic has therefore been reduced to a joyless slog through a business model, an accountant’s leer lurking underneath every angry bird’s feather.

This entirely scientific post is inspired by recent App Store reviews I’ve seen, summing up how people respond to mobile games.

Free game with IAP: This is a total rip-off! I hate the developer! It’s totally unfair that they want to make money from this game that I’ve nonetheless played for hours on my shiny, expensive iPhone!

Paid-for game with IAP: This is a total rip-off on top of a rip-off! I will ignore the many hours of fun that the game gave me, and wish the developer accidentally falls down a canyon for having the sheer audacity to provide the means to pay for extra content and/or a means to progress more rapidly through the game.

A game with no IAP but in-app currency: This is a total rip-off, because I don’t understand what ‘in-app purchase’ actually means! Also, I’m really annoyed that I can’t just buy loads of extra currency to speed through the game, although I hate in-app purchases. Therefore, this developer’s supposed generosity has also denied me the opportunity to complain about IAP and also made me look stupid in an App Store review! I hope they get kidnapped by a giant eagle and dropped in the ocean, so they’re torn to pieces by sharks who also hate IAP!

A game with no IAP but generous in-app currency that enables rapid progression: I finished this game too quickly. This is a total rip-off!

A totally free game with no IAP and generous in-app currency that enables rapid progression, but that also, miraculously, lasts for ages, through new level packs being issued almost daily: Man, this game’s getting boring now. Why hasn’t the developer done something new, the lazy git?

Daring Fireball responds to Garrett Murray’s thoughts on the 2DS:

The biggest WTF aspect is the price — it’s only $40 cheaper than the regular 3DS.

Yeah, WTF? No other company would create very obvious upsell positioning for its products!

A pity Daring Fireball and various others seem to have decided balance is a bad thing regarding Nintendo, given Lukas Mathis’s Nintendo piece continuing to grow with more insight and facts. If you missed it, I also chimed in yesterday on why Nintendo should not start making iOS games—yet.

Update: For anyone arguing that the gap is bigger—the iPod touch upsell is $70, not $40—do bear in mind the iPod touch costs almost twice as much as Nintendo’s console.

Nintendo has unveiled the 2DS. The console is essentially a cheap version of the 3DS, lacking the 3D capabilities and the hinge. From a design perspective, it’s not the prettiest device in the world (the screen alignment is particularly grim), and the clamshell was one of the best things about the DS hardware, protecting the screen and also making it more portable. By contrast, the 2DS looks unwieldy.

That said, I find it curious people are using the 2DS as some kind of proof Nintendo is doomed. Apple pundit John Gruber said on his blog:

It’s $129. I say they should just give in and start making iOS games. They’re not going to win this battle.

This is a nonsensical argument, especially from someone who has a habit of publicly slamming people who’d say anything remotely similar about Apple. I might think the 2DS is ugly and might not be that nice to hold, but that doesn’t make it a dumb idea. It’s cheap and very obviously positioned for holiday sales. It’s $100 cheaper than the cheapest iPod touch (i.e. about half the price), which immediately places it in a totally different market. And it’s pretty clearly a stop-gap—Nintendo doing its usual thing of wringing out the last drops of income from a hardware line before a refresh. We saw the same thing with the Game Boy Advance—although I’d argue the Micro was a smarter-looking device than the 2DS.

After presumably getting some stick online, Gruber elaborated further:

“Isn’t this like telling Apple to give up on hardware and license Mac OS to other PC makers?” numerous readers have asked. Maybe a little, but it’s a bad comparison. The main thing is it never seemed to me — never — that Apple was incapable of producing excellent industry-leading hardware. They just needed focus and better execution. Nintendo, to me, looks incapable of producing handheld hardware that can compete with the iPhone or iPod Touch.

The question is whether Nintendo wants to compete and whether it needs to. Anecdotally, I hear an awful lot of people telling me their kids no longer bother with Nintendo hardware, and instead use iOS devices; similarly, many teen and adult gamers have ditched Nintendo handhelds for smartphones and tablets. Also, Nintendo’s financials of late haven’t looked nearly as rosy as in the past. Still, I also hear from various parties that the 3DS line has sold very well, and that Nintendo is starting to get the message regarding working with indies and pricing games more sensibly. Last year, I figured that rather than leap to iOS, Nintendo really needed to place more emphasis on digital, embrace more devs, and link with the wider world; I still believe that.

Gruber instead made a more common argument for what Nintendo should do:

I think they’re out of the game and might never get back into it. If they can do it, great — where by “do it” I mean produce a device that’s a better buy for $250 or so than an iPod Touch. But I don’t think they can do it. And if they can’t do it, their next best bet is is to expand to making iOS games. I’m not saying drop the DS line and jump to iOS in one fell swoop. But a couple of $9.99 iPhone/iPad games to test the water wouldn’t hurt.

There’s certainly a possibility that with the new iOS games controller APIs, Nintendo could create a custom controller for iOS, giving relevant iOS Nintendo titles the precision that they’d need to not end up being somewhat unplayable on the platform. I still question this as anything but an absolute last resort. For some reason, Gruber either ignores or dismisses that Nintendo is the Apple of the gaming world—it has succeeded through controlling everything, not just through the games it creates. To say Nintendo should create games for iOS is little different from suggesting a less fortunate Apple should rapidly get iLife and iWork on to other platforms. Even testing the water would be an admission of failure, which would damage the brand.

Perhaps Nintendo’s long-term future is as another Sega, crafting games for hardware that it doesn’t make itself. But the 2DS certainly doesn’t make the case this should happen now. Really, it’s what happens next that will seal Nintendo’s fate. What follows the DS line and the Wii U will be critical for the company, and although plenty (including, at times, me) have largely written off the company, Nintendo has also shown in the past how it has the ability to create something new and innovative seemingly from nowhere, thereby securing its survival and success. This sounds rather like a certain other tech company, and is why certain pundits should know better than to entirely dismiss Nintendo’s future chances.

Further reading: Nintendo, by Lukas Mathis.

Time  yesterday published Matt Peckham’s piece For iOS 7, Apple Needs More Than Game Controllers to Win Gaming. Within, he mentions the third-party controller API alluded to at WWDC 2013, but then makes claims about iOS gaming that don’t sit right with me. He makes all the usual arguments:

• Apple barely cares about gaming and treats games like any other apps that happen to be on the App Store (inferring this is a bad thing);
• iOS has interface issues that stop “major gaming franchises [being] ported over unaltered”;
• Most people “don’t buy iPhones, iPads or the iPod Touch to game foremost”;
• Apple should be more serious about gaming, notably in making it easier to “connect your iOS devices to a larger display”

Not doing these things, he argues, is a missed opportunity, and he reckons iOS games

feel stuck in 2007 with chart leaders like Angry Birds, Temple Run, Plants vs. Zombies, Fruit Ninja, Tetris, Cut the Rope, Doodle Jump and Bejeweled—not exactly arguments for design vibrancy

He concludes:

It’s a shame, in 2013, that a company known for leading in so many other ways seems content to follow here, at best dabbling in the most lucrative segment of the entertainment industry.

Regular readers will know I fundamentally disagree with this view of gaming. To take Peckham’s points in turn:

• Apple barely caring about gaming is one of the main reasons why iOS has flourished as a gaming ecosystem, especially when it comes to indies, which have crafted wildly creative, original fare for the platform;
• Not everyone wants the same titles ported over yet again, and instead hanker for a bit of innovation, even if said innovation sometimes centres around existing IP;
• Most people don’t buy iOS devices to game foremost, but that doesn’t mean iOS isn’t their primary gaming platform;
• Apple enabling you to connect your device to a TV turns it into an entirely different system, one that has a traditional controller/abstraction/screen mechanic rather than one of direct touch manipulation. It turns something intuitive, innovative and new into Yet Another Console.

My latest article for Stuff.tv explores these things. iWin: how Apple became the accidental king of mobile gaming interviews a number of leading developers, from the likes of Ste Pickford through to Sega’s European CTO, to get their take on the current state of the games industry. For the most part, the developers I spoke to also reckon Apple really opened things up, especially for indies, and that the very worst thing for Apple in this space would have been to ape Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft.

That’s not to say Apple has no problems in gaming. There are clear issues with discoverability and developers who fight hard but get nowhere. There’s also an argument Apple should care at least a bit rather than barely a jot, to create a healthier ecosystem for the indies that made it so great in the first place. However, no-one was clamouring for the Apple TV to become some kind of television console, nor for Brown And Grey Army Shooter XIV to come across in identical fashion from another format.