(10-22-2016, 09:14 PM)DrHouse64 Wrote: Why 3DS was a success in your opinion?
Wikipedia Wrote:As of December 31, 2015, Nintendo reports 57.94 million Nintendo 3DS units have been sold worldwide.
That's practically dwarfing PS Vita sales by 4 times as much according to this chart. Commercially, it's the 3DS that has been dumping the most money into Nintendo's pockets over the past few years. The 3D stuff was an unsuccessful gimmick, in my opinion; I always shut it off. It's neat for all of 2 minutes, then I'm done with it. But as a handheld, it's performing just fine on the market. A lot of people will probably point out that it's not as hot as the original DS, but then again, you can't really expect every new product to break records like that. I think, by the end of its lifetime somewhere in the next 2-3 years, it'll have a number approaching the GBA (i.e. another 20 million units sold). As long as Nintendo doesn't kill the 3DS right away, or the Switch doesn't cannibalize it too quickly.
When you contrast the 3DS and the Wii U, I think the 3DS was a success simply because it had a better library. Like I said, there were a grand total of 4 games I actually wanted on the Wii U. Contrast that with my 3DS library, which stands at 23 games so far, and there's more I plan to get during the holidays. It's all about the games. I can deal with the measly 6-hour battery life on my 3DS XL, the 400x240 topscreen resolution, and the crappy camera resolution. It just has all the games I want to play.
That's what everyone is hoping for (and excited about). Games. Nintendo and 3rd parties are finally going to start giving us games. I think you're hung up too much about the form-factor (hybrid portable) when in reality, the Switch means Nintendo can make a platform that attracts good games. Personally, I don't see how it's not going to be well supported by 3rd parties. 3rd parties have always flocked to Nintendo's portables in droves. Since this will replace the 3DS eventually, devs will move their wares from the 3DS to the Switch (hopefully, it seems like a natural progression).
DrHouse64 Wrote:Mario is going to be ported for smartphones...
I agree many mobiles games sucks, but most people don't care about quality gameplay and play anyway. For them, a Mario game is a Mario, even as basic as Mario Run.
Most of the people who don't care about quality are more interested in playing time-wasting games. Financially, that's pretty much a dead-end for companies like Nintendo. People expect to pay basically nothing ($0.99 to 2.99) for it, and even multiplied by a couple million downloads, that's not entirely profitable, at least not nearly enough to sustain Nintendo. Remember, they make a good size amount of their cash from selling systems and licensing other companies to make games on their systems.
Getting too deep into the smartphone market would be troubling because 1) they can't make licensing fees since anyone can publish on smartphones, 2) they don't sell the hardware either, not yet anyway, and 3) App stores take cuts from the sales too. I just don't see the money being there for them to do any serious business in the smartphone market. Right now they're just dipping their toes, which is probably the best move to make. Create simple games with low-budget production costs and wait for downloads. It's a cheap strategy and low-risk. Going any further, getting any more serious, and I'd expect their profits to be burned. You'd probably need several massive, sustained phenomena like Pokemon GO every year for them to jump large portions of their business in the smartphone market. It's a crapshoot for them at best, imo.