Dragonbums said:
I'm not a tech head, so I don't know about the whole iOS security thing. All though it wouldn't surprise me if it was garbage.
Depends on the iOS you're using. But you can generally keep kids out of things if you know what you're doing. For example, I just set up a friend's home office that they're going to use for homeschooling their four kids (their school was doing very badly and was getting them involved in illicit drugs). I was able to filter out all websites that are not known kid-friendly sites right from the get-go. Then I was able to directly state specific school related sites for them to be able go to.
You can do pretty much all the same stuff on handheld devices, especially if they're windows 8 devices.
I just don't think that the iOS is going to kill handhelds.
It will just never really be as high as it used to. And at the rate the 3DS is going it will be just as popular as the original line.
iOS game development is a relatively new thing. Right now you still have a bunch of ad-ridden crap that can't come close to the likes of Nintendo IPs. However, in-time, I would expect to see titles that are much more involved IPs being custom made for the iOS as long as the market is willing to pay more for premium titles (like I did for minecraft on my phone, for example). I expect the landscape of the iOS market to be drastically different in five years than it is now. Think about this, five years ago smart phone useage was only just arriving with the iPhone that blew the doors right open starting in 2007 but only sold 3.3 million units that year but reached nearly 12 million by the end of 2008. The first android OS to be used on a phone was 2008. Blackberries were around earlier but it was really Apple's app store that made them what we think of them today.
To give you perspective on how rapidly things changed since then, in 2009 the total combined market of App store revenue was $828 Million (Apple accounted for $769 million of that) and then in 2010 the revenue was $2,155 million. That's a 260% increase in one year.
I don't know how old you are. But if you're in your mid-20's at least then you'll even remember a childhood where cell phones weren't even common. Yes, the major players have emerged but there's still a lot that can happen.
It's like I said in an earlier post- consoles didn't die because PC's existed. They ended up co-existing with each other quite well. Because while more people have PC's- the a much smaller amount use it for gaming. Yet alone professional/high tech gaming.
Smartphones are
not to handhelds as pc's are to consoles. There are some similarities but every smart phone is a console in that they have known components/qualities. What's more, mobile apps are currently downloaded or upgraded based on what type of phone you have. For example, I have a samsung Galaxy S. My wife has the newest one. We both enjoy Jetpack Joyride. A patch came out a few months back that added content to the game and altered the environment. However, the game is pretty different according to which of our phones we're playing on. The new one has additional areas and more animation, mine isn't nearly so much.
This is important because PC's all all Frankenstein's monsters. Cobbled together by various parts with no hardware standard. As such, consumers are just giving the requirements and expected to meet it themselves. It's easy to get a computer that lets you browse the internet, stream media, do word processing and file storage. It takes a lot of money or a lot of computer expertise to create a legitimate gaming rig. Even then, pc's aren't generally living room friendly and consoles are still considered excellent party machines, AAA gaming devices, and media machines at a relatively low cost. I mean, $400 bluray/gaming/media out of the box powerful machine that is gaurunteed to be compatible with games put out on it during its life span? That's great and something pcs just don't offer.
One major thing you're forgetting about cell phones is that they're no longer considered a luxury. More people own cell phone than own toilets. That's not even a made up number: 6 out of 7 billion people have a cell phone, but only 4.5 billion have access to a flushable toilet. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/23/more-people-have-mobile-phones-than-toilets/] This means that everyone is carrying one of these devices around and more than half of those in the US are smart phones (estimated to be 80% by 2016). As such, this is already a cost that people have incurred and iOS developers have standards to develop towards. Their apps are made for these various standards and roll out efficiently in a way pc developers can't or don't do.
This means that cell phones are handheld consoles too whereas a pc is not a console where consoles are defined as standard hardware configurations. Now that they're going into the gaming market, that's only going to increase as the market share grows larger and the capabilities of these devices improve. To ignore the danger of handheld devices overtaking gaming consoles would be a mistake for Nintendo to make. At least Sony made their device a capable media device that functions like a really small but powerful tablet.
I think Nintendo is a safer option for children. I think the curated kid-friendly environment they provide in a durable device that isn't the adult's precious phone has its own value. But we should all be concerned that their market share is certainly in danger. While "relevance" isn't the right word to use for this thread, "prominence" would be in a question regarding whether or not they losing it in droves. Their handheld market may not be bleeding out this generation, but we could see some drastic losses come the 4DS or whatever.
