14 DAY TRIAL // The mobile gaming market became a lot more complicated after Apple released the iPhone line of devices. There was gaming on phones before that but no platform reached the same level of popularity and the App Store was a great distribution channel, which allowed developers to get videogames out to players quickly and for a low price.
Both the PlayStation Portable from Sony and the DS line from Nintendo have been threatened by the new device, with the DSiWare concept and the PSP Go representing partial responses to the iPhone.
The release of the iPad, the tablet that Apple recently unveiled and that is able to play the apps outed for the iPhone, could represent another disruptive moment in mobile gaming.
But at least one important person in the gaming industry is saying that the fresh Apple device is nothing inherently new. Satoru Iwata, who is the president and Chief Executive Officer at Nintendo, told AP that “There were no surprises for me. It was a bigger iPod touch.”
Nintendo's success has been based around providing gaming experiences easy to understand and control, even if the devices they were played on, like the DS handheld or the Wii gaming console, were underpowered compared to the competition.
It has helped that the company has the star power of characters like Mario or Zelda, but the success of games like Wii Fit or Wii Sports Resort can easily be attributed to the way the games teach you about their mechanics.
Nintendo recently reported that its profits for the period from April to December of 2009 went down about 9%, with the good results posted over the Christmas period failing to compensate for the poor market state in the first half of the period and for the price cut the Wii received during the period. 2010 might be a tough year if the iPad really takes off.