Stagnating PSP and DS' losing market to iPhone/iPad

[wraggster]

The rapid rise of mobile gaming, particularly on Apple's iOS devices, is stealing "significant" market share from the DS and PSP, which are beginning to "stagnate".

That's according to Courtney Johnson, research and analysis manager at industry research firm Interpret, speaking on the results of a recent US survey.


"Devices which satisfy a variety of entertainment and utility are fast outstripping single-function devices as consumer favorites," said Johnson, based on the responses of 9000 poled.

He acknowledges that gaming as a whole is on a "meteoric rise", while "Sony PSP and Nintendo DS stagnate".

Another recent survey conducted by research firm Neilson concluded that the iPad is the most wanted technology product among US kids aged 6-12.

And earlier this year Epic VP Mark Rein said the smartphones and tablets like iPad and iPhone "are the consoles of the future", seemingly optimistic over the devices' download-only systems and cheaper software price points.

"I'd rather sell 10 million games at $25 and have a chance to sell DLC than 5 million at $50 on a disc that gets traded around," he said.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS

[Fonixx]

I'm not a fan of Apple's unmitigating greed with the iPhone but it just shows that people expect their phone to do everything now and the dedicated gaming handheld hasn't got long to live. But happily people are quickly waking up to the fact that Android is where the future's at and Apple's quickly losing ground to it, and then we should get some decent gaming phones that don't massively compromise on features like Apple does on everything they make.

[finaldarien]

Unfounded prejudices aside, as someone developing for both iPhone and Android, Android needs to raise the App size limit so we can get some decent Apps made.

I had to strip a 50mb game down to 16-20mb just to put it on the Android Marketplace. In addition to this, my experience with their developer support has been pretty poor. If you send in for support, they don't even read the e-mails, they just send information based on keywords. There's also issues with inconsistency of screen proportions on different devices and the piracy rate that just comes natural from the target audience that believes open is free.

If Android wants more developer support, they need to act like they actually care about us getting our Apps made.