Harrison criticises Iwata's social gaming stance

[wraggster]

Nintendo president Iwata was wrong to characterise social and mobile games as a case of quantity over quality, or of lowering the value of games, says ex-Sony Worldwide Studios boss Phil Harrison.
"Iwata-san has done an incredible job rebuilding Nintendo over the last few years. He is a great leader of that company, but in this particular case he is wrong. He is mistaken if [he thinks] this is some kind of fad that will go away. Social networks, as a way of powering our game and entertainment choices, is here to stay," said Harrison to IndustryGamers (http://www.industrygamers.com/news/nintendos-iwata-wrong-on-social-and-mobile-says-harrison/).
"I thought it was fascinating that pretty much simultaneously with Iwata-san talking about Nintendo, in a hall across the street Steve Jobs is talking about the iPad 2, which got massive pickup and global coverage.
"Some people are talking about 50 to 80 million 'smartpads' being sold a year for the foreseeable future. It's going to create an enormous market, dwarfing every other market," he added.
Social networks, as a way of powering our game and entertainment choices, is here to stay.

Phil Harrison, London Venture Partners.

Iwata's keynote speech (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-03-02-iwata-outlines-concerns-over-high-value-game-future-article) at the recently concluded Game Developers Conference saw him outline three concerns over the future of game development. The most important of these was the future of "high value" games, by which he meant traditional retail products, in the face of social network and mobile games.
"These platforms have no motivation to maintain the high value of video game software - for them, content is something created by someone else," said Iwata. "Their goal is just to gather as much software as possible, because quantity is what makes the money flow - the value of videogame software does not matter to them."
Harrison isn't the only developer to criticise Nintendo's stance - last week (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-03-07-frima-big-business-threats-are-our-huge-opportunities) Frima Studio toldGamesIndustry.biz that "if you aren't able to offer it for a compelling price point, then your competitor will."
As co-founder of London Venture Partners, Harrison is now specialising in funding online and mobile gaming start-ups. In October last year he predicted (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-10-01-harrison-transition-to-digital-could-dethrone-market-leaders) that traditional video game market leaders could be dethroned in the move to a digital market.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-03-15-harrison-criticises-iwatas-social-gaming-keynote

[LDAsh]

Video games used to be just for gamers. A picky bunch you couldn't just throw any old crap at. These days, all kinds of people are buying the $2 knick-knacks to put on their cellphones and iWhatevers, communication devices primarily and which are hardly ever actually even designed for decent gaming. Move left, move right. Perform said action when game tells you to perform said action. Good monkey.

Coupled with people's tendency to still judge a book by its cover, these knick-knacks sell. Looks awesome on the box or the little splash title you see when you're buying the thing. Might only have 3 levels and look worse than something from the SEGA Genesis (Megadrive) days, but still, it sold, it brought them the money and that's all that matters. Their "market".

Nintendo need to make sure, piracy or not, that they stick by their claim as being the ones who bring gamers the substantial hardcore well-developed bug-free polished games they promise, otherwise we might as well buy iPads to play those knick-knacks. Good games, the developers that make them and the platforms they belong to will always get supported by "gamers" (not just "people"), whether it has anything to do with social gaming or not.