Online gaming publication Gamasutra have written an interesting piece about why Trip Hawkins is wrong about Nintendo ushering in a “feudal dark age”. Hawkins is also under the impression that Nintendo and other platform holders will eventually lose out to the web browser in the near-future. Do you believe social games that are playable via the web browser are the future of gaming?
“Look at the world wide web and how many great companies have been built on that open platform,” he said. “Nintendo is a great, amazing company, but how many companies have been built on the back of Nintendo’s platform in the past 25 years?”
He said that the games industry had been born in a golden age of open platforms, and that EA had prospered because it had ignored Nintendo and focused on the Sega Genesis, which it reverse engineered. “We fought for our freedom. We didn’t accept the feudal system.”
He added, “There is no question that there is a war going to win the hearts and minds of the developers. They will decide which feudal lord wins or loses. The days of floating your boat on one platform are over. The question is, do you as a developer, own the dirt?”
He said that platform holders “lure [developers] in with false promises of freedom” and argued that developers should “focus on the browser,” an open system.
…So, basically, this isn’t even just about Nintendo. It’s about how developers should give all consoles the middle finger and just make online games…which is kinda stupid.
You couldn’t have said it better. It was soooo confusing but that the most retarded comment I’ve seen yet. “Focus on web browsing gaming”. Plz shut up
So how’s the 3DO going for you Trip? :P
The browser is simply a different platform with different limitations on the developer’s freedom. In the mobile world of iOS and Android everybody is moving away from the browser and developing their own “App.” This even the case for things that were traditionally browser based such as newspapers, and blogs. If this is really about Nintendo what of the fact that the Wii is popular for the human interface and not the social gaming aspects? Did the author even consider the consumer in this diatribe?
That’s silly as hell.
’nuff said.
That would suck
loooooooooooooool
What is this I don’t even
Sooo…Mario, Metroid, and Halo will lose out to some shitty flash games and Farmville? Laugh out loud.
I play flash games on armor games and I hate the shit like farmville that forces u to depend on your friends
It won’t work until the network infrastructure of every country around the world could support it. I know that in Australia, unless you are from the shire, your fucked. America has some places where the people would be in trouble and struggling too, and these aren’t the only two places. When the infrastructure is there, I would agree with that statement. Browser based gaming, can potentially make consoles and powerful computers redundent. However, I see it being a moot point for quite a while yet.
Just my thought.
Wow, I can’t even-… sweet jeeziz, people are ignorant. :I
Before you dis a company’s platform, EA, make some good games for once and then claim that Video Game Platforms aren’t good for making video games. That is like saying that chairs are not good for sitting on.
What’s this talk of feudal lords and floating on boats?
Trip is kinda trippy.
You can’t get the same kind of satisfaction out of a flash game that you can get out of a well developed, console title.
what a stupid thing to say. casual games like a lot of flash games, or like facebook games will not replace hardcore games. it’s stupid to even think so. wanna know why? because not everyone plays only those types of games. people want hardcore games. in fact, isn’t that one of the complaints people had with the wii? few hardcore games? are you gonna ignore that? yes? ok fine
using EA as an example is a bad idea. they thrive on releasing the same sports games year after year for full retail price with changing very little. occasionally you’ll see good games coming out of EA but they love re releasing sports games for full retail price every year.
not all game companies release the same game every year. some game companies make decent hardcore games that people want. that’s who you should use as an example
and besides, hardcore games will never fit on flash. can you imagine god of war or infamous or uncharted or halo on flash? they’d be rendered simple, casual games because flash just isn’t as powerful as consoles so you wouldn’t see games like god of war or infamous or uncharted or halo
“How many companies have been built on the back of Nintendo’s platform in the past 25 years?”
To answer your question Mr. Hawkins, I can tell you that Game Freak and HAL Labs have been greatly boosted by their release and continued support by Nintendo.
Maybe if more companies came out with well-thought out IP for the Wii, there would have been better software sales. Here’s to hoping the Wii U fixes the problem!
This is the worst ting I’ve ever heard
Bitter old man becomes doomsday prophet. Nintendo – “we are proud to announce our new baby will be born next year! ” Trip – “your baby will be unsuccessful. I’m very sorry!”
as ever, people b*tching about nintendo, this time saying they have lost out to mobile gaming and web browsers. i wish these articles never appeared on this site because it just evokes negative reactions from the nintendo fan community.
There’s a huge problem with mobile and smartphone gaming, anyone who denies that is ridiculous. I agree that most mobile games are quite crappy, and Angry Birds is overrated to an extent I can’t even begin to describe, and I agree that they can’t compare to nintendo games, but there are a lot of reasons for someone to buy smartphone games instead.
E.g. if i’m an average consumer, I probably already have a smart phone, I just need to be convinced to get a free or £0.59 game.
If i’m an average consumer, I probably don’t have a games console, and even then, there’s the chances of me having the specific games console I need to play your games. I need to be convinced to buy a £200 console, and then continuously buy £30 games.
Basically, it’s a lot harder to get sales with a games console, and even though i’m a nintendo fan, I know i’ve played a lot more games on my iPod touch, the free to play model means I can download lots without thinking, and the £0.59 price tag means i’m more likely to just buy it on impulse.
One potential positive outcome for nintendo from the boom in mobile gaming is that it could get people who aren’t interested in games and would never consider paying £200 for a Nintendo system more interested in gaming. And if mobile gaming was able to make someone a lot more interested in games, and make them play games a lot more, they might then consider getting a dedicated gaming system, and this could work in nintendo’s favour.
It also means it’s probably better for nintendo if mobile gaming becomes more popular, assuming it could eventually make “casual” gamers “hardcore”.
Oh Hell, developers just need to work hard.
reason with mobile gameing is because it doesn’t matter what phone you have you still play the same game as other people example is angry birds on android,iPhone etc not to mention it’s a dollar which makes it dirt cheap,at a standpoint though the quality of these types of games are far less compared to consoles,but they bring in a large sum in cash due to availibilty and affordability.quality over quantity,would you want a shit game that’s cheap or awsome game that is expensive(unless it’s nintendo) ice-cream cake or a muffin.in all this guy is an idiot an sounds like a doom sayer. “the nigh of console gameing will subcumb into darkness” something like that
“the nigh of console gameing will subcumb into darkness”
You used “nigh” wrong just then.
When Flash reaches the point at which it doesn’t slow down from loading too much data even on an i7, you can come talk to me about browser games.
Web gaming? Seriously? Yep, let’s see Firefox or Chrome handle running Crysis 2. That’ll be a sweet .2 frames-per-second of flash/actionscript fail. Does this guy even know anything about the tech behind browsers?
Have you guys ever seen http://www.interstellarmarines.com/ ? It’s flash and has pretty descent 3d graphics. And in my opinion I think flash games are only gonna beat out iphone games ay best lol….