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RLLMUK's Official Sales Figures 2011

Boyatsea

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squirtle

squirtle

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I'm sure there will be (are?) great games that work with the very limited controls, but given a choice of game system to actually sit down and spend a few hours with, the vast majority of people would put the phone at the bottom of the list.

It's not archaic, it's common sense. People want to have fun, and hours of smooshing thumbs over the very screen you're playing, isn't. Phones are the de facto time killer, not the go-to choice of the gamer.

The bit in bold is the important bit. Most people just want a time killer. Most people aren't gamers, hence why the Wii and the DS with their "It's for everyone!" ethos have outsold the gamers machines that are the PSP, 360 and the PS3, and which is why the 3DS won't reach as many people as the DS as, at it's heart, it's a gamer's machine.

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futureshock

futureshock

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On the other hand, your phone is *always* there. Getting games onto it is now trivial. The games themselves cost peanuts.

These three factors are far more important than whether a dpad is required or not: and hell, the latest iPhone is graphically more powerful than any of the DS, PSP or 3DS given what's been released for each platform.

Oh I agree, phones are always there. It's their USP.

I'd be wary of 'teh awesome' phone graphics line, though. You only have to look at how much the pretty PSP suffered against the DS.

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Boyatsea

Boyatsea

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PSP suffered mainly because its line up was either PS2 tie ins or direct clones, the games were expensive (when compared to on smartphones, for instance), and it didn't offer anything new apart from UMD movies, which were a daft gamble that was never going to work out.

Sony wanted it to be a portable PS2, and it was. The problem for many was, they already has a PS2, so buying an expensive handheld that allowed them to play the same type of games wasn't a compelling purchase.

Smartphones are quite different, and as people say, are there whether you're a gamer or not.

This is why platforms like Apple TV will be a big threat to home consoles in the years to come.

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Boyatsea

Boyatsea

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Good ol' Capcom:

Taking a healthy bite directly out of the hand that feeds, Midori Yuasa, president of Capcom Interactive, the publisher's mobile gaming wing, told MCV, "The casual gamer that used to play on the PC and the hardcore gamer that used to play on a dedicated gaming portable now plays on their smartphone."

Elsewhere in an interview that's surely set to win her lots of new friends among internal teams behind the publisher's forthcoming DS and 3DS titles Okamiden, Super Street Fighter IV 3D and Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, she went on to explain that mobile gaming was set to be a big focus for the company in 2011.

"The iPhone and larger smartphone markets are extremely important to Capcom as, like no device before, smartphones have the potential to become a universal game platform.

"We have a lot of stuff on the horizon for both hardcore and casual gamers, so 2011 is shaping up to be huge on Capcom's mobile front."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-21-capcom-gamers-no-longer-use-handhelds

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futureshock

futureshock

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PSP suffered mainly because its line up was either PS2 tie ins or direct clones, the games were expensive (when compared to on smartphones, for instance), and it didn't offer anything new apart from UMD movies, which were a daft gamble that was never going to work out.

Well that, and the fact that if you used it for more than ten minutes you got arthritis. Hey, maybe there's something in this 'controls' malarkey ;)

This is why platforms like Apple TV will be a big threat to home consoles in the years to come.

Bit of a stretch, that one. I'll consider it once Apple buy Nintendo.

"The casual gamer that used to play on the PC and the hardcore gamer that used to play on a dedicated gaming portable now ALSO play on their smartphone."

You can tell English isn't his first language.

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footle

footle

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Oh I agree, phones are always there. It's their USP.

I'd be wary of 'teh awesome' phone graphics line, though. You only have to look at how much the pretty PSP suffered against the DS.

Quite, but fortunately for smartphones the graphics aren't the important part. My comment was more to highlight that unlike five years ago (or even two years ago) phones are no longer the poorer performing of the two. Hell, apple will also sell you other devices that'll play the same content without needing a phone contract. As will Samsung...

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ras el hanout

ras el hanout

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I get the feeling all the people saying the 3DS would be bigger than the DS should have waited before all the details were out first ;)

I think all the people saying it won't sell as well as the DS should kind of wait until they see what excellent new experiences Nintendo comes up with to make this thing fly off the shelves. But what we do know is that as a bit of kit - without these fanatastic games that Nintendo ALWAYS COME UP WITH - even without them it's already more desirable than the DS. IT'S 3D MAN!!

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layten

layten

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You couldn't be more wrong Futureshock.

That's an incredibly snobby and, more importantly, archaic way of thinking, and I genuinely hope Sony and Nintendo don't share it.

There are some absolutely brilliant mobile games out there that make controls their selling point, rather than a compromise.

Each to their own, though.

What about titles where the controls get in the way and hamper what could be genuinely great gaming experiences. I was just looking at the reviews for Secret of Mana. A superb game, one of the best in its genre and a stone cold classic, yet most of the reviews are complaining about the controls. iOS and other portable devices could be brilliant for a resurgence of genres we saw in the 16bit era, but being limited to touch only means we get horrible 'virtual' inputs.

I think that is why some are so against 'smart phone' gaming, a fear that it will mean a loss of certain gaming genres. New SMB has been my favourite portable game of the past ten years, a title which would be impossible on Apples iOS or Android touch interface devices.

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mushashi

mushashi

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With all this talk of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope being the popular iPhone games, it was interesting to note their relative positions in Apple's alltime top selling iPhone apps as the Appstore approaches the 10 billion download mark:

Alltime Best Selling iPhone Paid Apps:

01. Doodle Jump
02. Tap Tap Revenge 3
03. Pocket God
04. Angry Birds - 12 million+
05. Tap Tap Revenge 2.6
06. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
07. Traffic Rush
08. Tap Tap Revenge Classic
09. AppBox Pro Alarm
10. Flight Control

Tap Tap is the Guitar Hero of portable music games :D

Only 1 game makes the free download alltime top ten, Paper Toss at #9, with a reported 22 million+ downloads.

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Stolly

Stolly

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I think all the people saying it won't sell as well as the DS should kind of wait until they see what excellent new experiences Nintendo comes up with to make this thing fly off the shelves. But what we do know is that as a bit of kit - without these fanatastic games that Nintendo ALWAYS COME UP WITH - even without them it's already more desirable than the DS. IT'S 3D MAN!!

All the same, alongside Nintendos obvious successes, the gamecube and the N64 also had great games remember... but without the hardware 'flying off the shelves'. I think Squirtle's explanation a few pages back of the wii's success, achieved by grabbing the imagination and being the right idea, in the right place at the right time, zeitgeist and all that, is pretty bang on and, even if the 3DS is everything its cooked up to be, translating that into massive success is far from a shoe in. I'm not buying rubber johnny's and boyatseas arguments that smart phone gaming will seriously impact on it - it could just be that the DS contiues to sell well for a couple of years and, what with the price an' all, the take up of 3DS suffers. The DS's success more than anything is a lot to do with its price; it has become an easy birthday/Christmas present for little Johnny and little Jenny. Suddenly a 3DS though is the same price as a PS3 and the same price of a 360 (admittedly the 4GB one) with kinect thrown in!

Having said all that the 3DS is number 3 (black) and number 5 (acqua blue) in the Amazon UK bestsellers and number 1 and 2 respectively on Amazon.com :D

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Xevious

Xevious

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Wahwah has it really. Beyond any initial 'ooh let's see how it looks' purchases, people aren't going to use their 3DS to watch movies, generally speaking.

I am going to continually buy and watch films on my 3DS just to prove Keith wrong.

It's also a pretty shoddy effect. I'm convinced someone will come along and nail this tech at some point, because as things stand, it's just various layers like one of those 3D paper collages kids make at school. It looks good in some shots, but in others you can see it's just a series of flat shapes - one closer than the other.

Sounds like you saw a post-converted film. Try to see one that's actually filmed in 3D.

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Boyatsea

Boyatsea

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All the same, alongside Nintendos obvious successes, the gamecube and the N64 also had great games remember... but without the hardware 'flying off the shelves'. I think Squirtle's explanation a few pages back of the wii's success, achieved by grabbing the imagination and being the right idea, in the right place at the right time, zeitgeist and all that, is pretty bang on and, even if the 3DS is everything its cooked up to be, translating that into massive success is far from a shoe in. I'm not buying rubber johnny's and boyatseas arguments that smart phone gaming will seriously impact on it - it could just be that the DS contiues to sell well for a couple of years and, what with the price an' all, the take up of 3DS suffers. The DS's success more than anything is a lot to do with its price; it has become an easy birthday/Christmas present for little Johnny and little Jenny. Suddenly a 3DS though is the same price as a PS3 and the same price of a 360 (admittedly the 4GB one) with kinect thrown in!

Having said all that the 3DS is number 3 (black) and number 5 (acqua blue) in the Amazon UK bestsellers and number 1 and 2 respectively on Amazon.com :D

Oh, it's going to storm away in 2011. It's going to sell shitloads at launch, and be sold out everywhere for months - that's a given.

Even if I'm right and sales are down over the course of its life, it's still going to sell a good 80 million - which is where Wii is heading - which means hardware sales aren't going to be sluggish.

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Boyatsea

Boyatsea

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Moving on from massive cocks (aha), Wired.com touches base with some of the points raised in this thread about 3DS:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/nintendo-3ds-analysis/

Choice quotes:

It is inarguable that digital distribution is the direction in which videogames are swiftly moving. You can't find an industry pundit who doesn’t believe that Nintendo’s biggest threat is Apple, not Sony. In a New York Times article earlier this year, analysts agreed that the cheaper iPhone was "killing" the market for Nintendo DS, but disagreed sharply on whether the 3DS’ 3-D screen would prove sufficiently amazing to distract players from more convenient, less expensive iPhone and Android gaming.

Nintendo says its more robust platforms are the only place to get substantial games like those in the Legend of Zelda series. Roughly speaking, this is true. But even players like me who love big-budget gaming are dropping more and more of our (completely inelastic) free time into iPhone play. Just because you like Nintendo’s lineup doesn’t mean you can’t be seduced by the cheap, frictionless allure of smartphone gaming.

What Apple is doing to Nintendo is in great part what Nintendo did to Sony — finding some surprise hits with low-budget games on a cheaper platform built around disruptive technology. I don’t expect Nintendo to throw open the doors of its eShop to every weekend tinkerer, but I did expect the 3DS to launch with it.

Ever since the cautionary tale of the PSP, I’ve been skeptical whenever game industry watchers line up in universal praise of anything. It’s not that I have a contrarian streak. It’s because when everybody seems to be on board with a new product, that means it is too understandable to them: It’s exactly like what is popular now, but better, therefore it could not possibly fail.

But that’s not what succeeds in a fast-changing industry like videogames. Disruptive products succeed. And nobody sees them coming, because they’re so different that the establishment doesn’t understand their appeal. This is the lesson of the “blue ocean” that Nintendo kept hammering back when it was the plucky underdog. Now, Nintendo is the establishment. With 3DS, I don’t know if the company is looking to open up more blue ocean or just defend the great big one it’s already got, which is starting to turn a little pinkish if not blood red.

What is all but certain is that Nintendo’s momentum coming off the ridiculous success of DS, coupled with the wonderful novelty of the 3DS display and the handheld’s strong software lineup, will cause the 3DS to fly off shelves at launch, spread like wildfire this year and be the hottest Christmas present of 2011.

But what happens then? Where will 3DS sales figures be trending in two or three years, once Apple and other smartphone makers have introduced their own hardware innovations and come up with new ways of siphoning gamers’ cash and attention, a few dollars and a few minutes at a time?

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Sng

Sng

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What proportion of people bought a HDTV for HD rather than as a big, cheap and thin CRT replacement? My suspicion is most HDTVs aren't even connected to an HD signal.

Blatently, there aren't m/any easy/cheap ways to get HD signals yet. But that's not my point. There were loads of people a year or two ago saying HDTVs would never sell but they seemed to completely not realise that when buying a new TV that's pretty much your only option.

Same with Blu-ray, people would say they'd never sell but it's much harder to find a DVD player these days than a Blu-ray player.

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Boyatsea

Boyatsea

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I like how you throw out little tidbits for people to get annoyed with.

It's pretty representative of what he said though, no? :)

Choice quotes indeed.

BTW, I never knew HTC outsold the iPhone by so much last year - 16m vs 25m. Well, this is awkward.

What is?

HTC is the biggest seller of Android phones worldwide. Samsung second, and catching fast.

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Halo

Halo

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Android phones overtook the iPhone in terms of total units sold a few weeks ago, despite the iPhone having an 18 month headstart.

That excludes the iPod Touch and the iPad, but it does provide some food for thought.

Edit: I can't find a reference for it, but I swear that I read it. Maybe I'm imagining things.

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