Why Apple Could Kill The Nintendo DS

[Spindel]

Why Apple Could Kill The Nintendo DS - Forbes.com

Why Apple Could Kill The Nintendo DS
Brian Caulfield, 06.05.08, 6:00 AM ET Related Quotes
BURLINGAME, CALIF - There's only one company on earth that has come back from behind to wrest a multibillion-dollar market away from Sony, beat back a grasping Microsoft and delight tens of millions of customers around the world in the process.
Sorry Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) fanboys, we're talking about Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ). The Nintendo Wii has turned the gaming world on its head, with motion-sensitive controls and family-friendly games. The Nintendo DS has had a good run, too, dominating the market for handheld gaming gizmos despite determined assaults by Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) and Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ).
You tell us: The iPhone and the iPod Touch combine the touch-sensitive screen of a Nintendo DS with the motion sensitivity of the Nintendo Wii. Now add the ability to pour fresh games into the system at the touch of a button. Will this create a problem for Nintendo in handheld gaming? Let us know in the Reader Comments section below.
Monday, however, Nintendo will likely face a new and far more dangerous foe: Apple. Steve Jobs' computer and gizmo maker will likely launch a long-promised feature, dubbed the App Store, which will let outside developers pour software into the iPhone and iPod Touch. And while it's unlikely that, say, a mobile version of Oracle's (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ) wonky database will make anyone stand up and cheer, we already know putting games on the iPhone is a pretty powerful combination.
To be sure, the Nintendo DS won't be an easy kill. First released in 2004, Nintendo freshened the design of the aging system in 2006, with the release of the thinner, lighter DS Lite. Yet developers continue to toil away on ever more sophisticated games for the aging DS, with an ambitious adaptation of "Guitar Hero" in the works and a slick adaptation of the PC strategy series "Age of Empire" already on sale, thanks to the console's sophisticated dual-screen interface. Moreover, Apple has struggled to master gaming on the Mac, with a far wider array of titles available for machines running Microsoft Windows.
Nevertheless, Apple is the first to master a pair of tricks that have made Nintendo's latest products so compelling--a touch-screen interface and the ability to pick up on motion. The key difference: Unlike Nintendo, which has created a gaming console with a motion-sensitive controller and a touch-sensitive handheld gaming system, Apple has crammed both capabilities into its iPhone and iPod Touch.
The ability to pour fresh software into the iPhone, wirelessly, at the touch of a button already has game developers interested. When Apple detailed its software developers kit for the iPhone and iPod Touch earlier this year, one of the most impressive demos was Sega's (other-otc: SEGNF.PK - news - people ) version of "Super Monkey Ball" for the iPhone. Players will be able to maneuver a monkey through a three-dimensional landscape by tilting the iPhone.
The worst sign: Sophisticated games such as Electronic Arts' (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ) ambitious new god-game, "Spore," are already slated to be released for the iPhone at the same time it goes on sale for PCs, Macs and the Nintendo DS. Travis Boatman from EA showed off a project based on Spore that the videogame giant's developers cobbled together in two weeks that took advantage of iPhone's accelerometer and touch-screen interface to guide the evolution of a hungry microorganism.
Looks like the handheld gaming business, so long dominated by Nintendo, could be about to undergo a little evolution too.
Could the next iPhone triumph over the Nintendo DS in handheld gaming? Let us know in the Reader Comments section below.

As usual only time will tell but still very interesting. Maybe Apple will do to the handheld market what it did to the MP3 player market

[E6600]

No one can kill Nintendo! Not even Apple.

Apple, though, can accomplish a lot, it is attacking with both the iPhone and iPod Touch. Both are technologically ahead of the DS Lite, offer extensive multimedia capabilities, a larger screen and the iPhone is also a phone.

If anything the iPhone and iPod Touch will be a serious competition for the PSP more than the DS Lite. Just like the PSP, they are meant as a highend portable that also does games, and there are dozens of emulators available for them, and we all know most PSP owners use the PSP as a multimedia player and emulator, the iPod Touch and iPhone can do that and more and do it better.

So,,
iPhone/iPod Touch vs DS = DS winner, no chance for Apple
iPhone/iPod Touch vs PSP = Yet to be determined, the PSP leads in game library, but most PSP owners use it for what the iPhone/iPod Touch is better at and that is multimedia, emulation and the Internet.

[Spindel]

Also remember that spec wise iPhone is more powerful than the PSP which means (in theory) that all PSP games "could" be ported to it since it can do everything PSP can do.

[E6600]

That is true, but I yet have to see a PSP emulator, that works, on a PC. There are two I know of, but they are incomplete.

[iconoclast]

Originally Posted by Spindel

Also remember that spec wise iPhone is more powerful than the PSP which means (in theory) that all PSP games "could" be ported to it since it can do everything PSP can do.

Except that the iPhone has no external media options, so size becomes more of an issue...

[E6600]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

Except that the iPhone has no external media options, so size becomes more of an issue...

That's true. Though initially 16GB should be enough, and 32GB in the highend iPod Touch should be more than enough.
Then again you can always delete what you don't want, or move to your computer.
Maybe they should of put the 160GB HDD that's in the iPod Classic, then again HDD aren't the best option for portable devices.

[iconoclast]

Originally Posted by E6600

That's true. Though initially 16GB should be enough, and 32GB in the highend iPod Touch should be more than enough.
Then again you can always delete what you don't want, or move to your computer.
Maybe they should of put the 160GB HDD that's in the iPod Classic, then again HDD aren't the best option for portable devices.

Problem is, if people are using it for music, they'll fill up a good part of it already...substantially more if they use video. Plus, there are pictures and the various other programs that are stored on the hard drive. The max capacity of a UMD is 1.8 gb (dual-layered), so 16 gb doesn't seem like it would be enough to do all the normal iPhone stuff plus have a few PSP-sized games on there. A 160 gb HDD would be better, but it's a hard drive, so that likely means you sacrifice battery life (didn't Apple cite battery life as a reason for not going with 3G on the iPhone?) and that you add bulk to the device.

Of course they could just include an external memory slot, but I don't see that happening. Makes it more difficult to lock down the device, which we know they like to do. Hell, they won't even let you replace the battery yourself.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

Problem is, if people are using it for music, they'll fill up a good part of it already...substantially more if they use video. Plus, there are pictures and the various other programs that are stored on the hard drive. The max capacity of a UMD is 1.8 gb (dual-layered), so 16 gb doesn't seem like it would be enough to do all the normal iPhone stuff plus have a few PSP-sized games on there. A 160 gb HDD would be better, but it's a hard drive, so that likely means you sacrifice battery life (didn't Apple cite battery life as a reason for not going with 3G on the iPhone?) and that you add bulk to the device.

Of course they could just include an external memory slot, but I don't see that happening. Makes it more difficult to lock down the device, which we know they like to do. Hell, they won't even let you replace the battery yourself.

True, but you don't have to carry your whole game library, just the ones you want to play that day.

[Spindel]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

Except that the iPhone has no external media options, so size becomes more of an issue...

Good point I actually didn't think of that at all.