iPhone and Android catalogue 'drives value of games down'
The rock-bottom prices of iPhone and Android apps is sending the wrong message to the games consumer, a key Nintendo executive has said.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime suggested that such apps – many of which are free or as low as £0.99 on Apple’s App Store – are skewing the impression of value in Nintendo’s own handheld games, which can cost anywhere between £19.99 and £34.99.
“I actually think that one of the biggest risks today in our industry are these inexpensive games that are candidly disposable from a consumer standpoint," Fils-Aime said in an interview published on GameTrailers.
"Angry Birds is a great piece of experience but that is one compared to thousands of other pieces of content that for one or two dollars I think actually create a mentality for the consumer that a piece of gaming content should only be two dollars.
"I actually think some of those games are overpriced at one or two dollars but that's a whole different story," Fils-Aime added, in a further act of trying to distance Nintendo’s premium titles from App Store offerings.
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Nintendo is preparing for the global launch of the 3DS, beginning this month in Japan, followed by releses in the US and Europe by March.
The new handheld’s games are expected to be priced at $39.99 and £39.99.
If Nintendo really mean this they need to stick to their guns and bring back the seal of quality. and I mean "quality". them passing shovelware onto their systems, most of which is WORSE than free app games, isn't exactly doing them many favours.
I wonder how much Angry Birds will cost on the 3DS then :P
True hard core gamers notice the differance between free or inexpensive phone apps and real quality console or pc games. Phone game apps are designed to fill in time when your on the move, quality console games are there for a true great experience that are designed and developed by genius's
If Nintendo weren't selling games for £25, that were only worth a few dollars, it wouldn't be so bad... but they are.
Paying too much for something, can make it just as worthless, as paying too little.
@3: true gamers (hardcore or not) know that a being on a console, does not always equale to a great gaming experience... Lair, Stuntman Ignition, Haze for example. There are plenty of dire, full priced console games, that are the work of these alleged "geniuses".
A quality game, is a quality game, regardless of size, platform, or development time... a real gamer would know that. Nintendo prove this on a regular basis, with their constant flow of overpriced, low quality shovelware, they throw out.
Give me an imaginative Angry Birds, over some generic FPS 6, any day of the week.
I'd very much like to know the actual cost for development of these games debuting on console or on handheld; not just the cost to develop the game and its assets, but the cost to print the game to a physical medium, ship it, stock it, etc.
I would imagine that game development costs went down on consoles as soon as they went to CD-ROMs instead of bulky carts. Then, you have digital distribution to consider; it's not free but is considerably cheaper to pay for bandwidth than for physical shelf space. But throughout all this, the cost of games has not significantly changed.
Budgets increase. Team sizes increase. But aside from higher visual fidelity and online multiplayer, are games appreciably different now than from the PSone generation? Not really.
I swear, it's like price-fixing.
