14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has recently launched a broadside towards the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable, saying that the iPhone and the iPod are platforms better suited to mobile gaming because of their tactile driven interface and because of the huge number of videogames, most of them priced below five dollars or even offered for free. Of course, Sony and Nintendo wasted no time in fighting back but Nintendo seems to be the most pressed to offer a strategy for facing the threat of the iPhone.
Reggie Fils-Aime, who is the president of Nintendo of America, has told CNBC in an interview that “Consumers have only a limited amount of time for entertainment, so we compete with Apple. We compete with your program; we compete with books and magazines; we compete with everything people do for entertainment. From that standpoint, we're battling it out minute by minute.”
But he says that the depth of the Nintendo experience is what separates it from others, “What we do is, we provide a full meal in terms of a game you could play for hours on end - very deep very enriching - and that's why our handheld business has been doing so well all year long.”
Nintendo is stating that the DS offers titles for all types of gamers and that it allows for complexity which cannot be replicated on the Apple platforms. The official line from the company also drives home the point that while videogames themselves might be cheaper on the phone, the users incur additional costs related to data plans, which can lead to a higher price for gaming.
Fils-Aime has also told CNBC that one of the secrets behind continual innovation at Nintendo is the fact that designers like Shigeru Miyamoto are taking things from everyday life, such as weight watching and raising pets, and creating videogaming experiences around them, like Wii Fit or Nintendogs.