Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games

Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by saturdaysaint on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @09:26AM (#9217689)

I recently bought a New 3DS on a whim and have been amazed by the experience developers can create on hardware that's probably somewhere in the league of the first iPhone. I've been rooting mobile gaming on and trying out the most critically acclaimed iOS games for going on 6 years but I feel confident saying that nothing's been remotely in the league of Mario Land 3D or Monster Hunter 4. Purpose-built hardware (specifically, the nicely calibrated buttons and the new eye-tracking 3D) is a wonderful thing.

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I looked up DeNa and they look like nothing more than a competent freemium game factory. So I'm pretty much reading this as a play at spreading N's IP far and wide on the hottest mediums. It would be interesting if Nintendo found a way to actually extend gameplay to when you're not on the system, but I'm not getting my hopes up and expect more along the lines of Candy Crush clones dressed as Dr. Mario.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by vlunkr on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @10:42AM (#9218225)

It's amazing the difference real buttons make. I feel like mobile gaming will always be seriously limited by that.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by archagon on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @12:13PM (#9218948)

I'd say there's more to it than that. WarioWare Twisted, Phoenix Wright, FF Tactics, Elite Beat Agents, and many other games could have easily been developed for mobile. The problem is that nobody has the confidence to put a year into making truly standout mobile games.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by Pxtl on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @12:41PM (#9219185)

There are plenty of mobile games that measure up to that stuff, they're just not at the top of the App Stores because they don't move volume as fast as mini-games and F2P... and most of them are ports of classic titles.

For example, I played the heck out of Civilization Revolutions, Z Origins, Swords and Soldiers, and Bard's Tale on various mobile devices. Those all measure up in fun and complexity vs Nintendo's titles, although most of them are ports of older PC and console games.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by archagon on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @01:09PM (#9219438)

Well, I'm referring more to original IP. Yes, there are ports, but ports just aren't all that interesting in the grand scheme of things. There are basically zero studios on mobile making games on Nintendo's level as first-class platform citizens.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by Pxtl on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @02:38PM (#9220238)

Swords and Soldiers impressed the hell out of me, although it lacks online multiplayer. It's a very complete experience, as hand-held RTS games go. Also, I feel like "port from handheld device" isn't really too much of a port to complain about in the case of Civ Revolutions - a touch DS/PSP game is hardly a big jump to Android / iOS. That's more of a cross-platform release than a port.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by emsy on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @12:38PM (#9219157)

FFT and Phoenix Wright are at least available as ports. I think you can make money with fixed price games, it's just not so visible because they are not played by everyone.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by eridius on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @12:58PM (#9219342)

Square-Enix actually have a bunch of games on the iOS App Store. Most of them are ports, but a while back there was the Chaos Rings series which was original IP (I haven't checked if they have any other original IP for iOS). And they're not just straightforward ports either, for example the Dragon Quest games have all been adapted to play in a portrait layout (because their target customers are Japanese people playing while standing up on subway cars, where they can't do two-handed landscape gaming).

I also find it notable that Square-Enix is maintaining relatively high price points for these games (such as $15), and have done so for years, despite the iOS game market still being primarily aimed at the $1-$3 level. Of course, the fact that the games are being published by a well-known name like Square-Enix lets them do things other companies couldn't get away with, but it must be profitable enough because they keep adding more games to their iOS lineup.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by vlunkr on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @05:45PM (#9221770)

Well sure, you can do those on mobile, but you can do those and alot more on the ds with buttons. I'm not saying good games are impossible on mobile, just that their scope is limited by a lack of buttons.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by VikingCoder on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @10:21AM (#9218071)

I read John Carmack say that you could DOUBLE the performance of a game (or engine), if you had a KNOWN hardware configuration.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by saturdaysaint on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @11:23AM (#9218513)

Just as interesting to me is how well everything is optimized for power consumption. I can't imagine playing anything as simple as match 3 puzzle game on my iPhone for more than 10 minutes without taking hours of standby time off of my phone. You can really get several multi-hour play sessions out of one full charge on the N3DS. The shoddy battery life (for gaming, at least) of phones really precludes the ability to immerse yourself in an experience for an hour or two.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by maaaats on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @11:05AM (#9218368)

It's always interesting to compare games from when a console was first launched to when it's old. They can take incredible shortcuts and push things very hard when they are not just straight up porting a game.

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Re:Nintendo Opens Door to Smartphone Games by danudey on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @01:29PM (#9219628)

Last year, a friend of mine who worked for DeNA in Vancouver asked me if they were hiring for her position, which we were. And then if we were hiring from her boyfriend's position. And she was competing for the position against another of her DeNA coworkers/teammates. When I mentioned all that to one of our founders in passing, he said 'You know, we've been seeing a lot of resumes from them lately.'

I don't know much about the inner workings or much about what people hated (though I've heard some crappy stories), but, at least as far as their Vancouver office goes, it's run by idiots and can't retain talent.

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