Nine-year-old Oscar Auerswald Carroll’s hazel eyes widened with bewilderment when asked which game device he preferred — his Nintendo 3DS or his mother’s iPhone 4. After a long pause, the Mar Vista soon-to-be fourth-grader choose his 3DS “because it has two screens.”
His momentary struggle highlights the pitched battle between Nintendo and a new generation of smartphones and tablets for the hearts and minds of young gamers.
For now, the 3DS is holding its own. Sixteen months after launching the device, Nintendo sold 5.14 million 3DS consoles in the U.S. by the end of June, fueled in part by a 33% price cut in August. The console, which features a 3-D screen that doesn’t require players to wear special glasses, is outpacing Nintendo’s previous bestselling hand-held device, the DS, which sold 4.15 million units in 16 months after its launch in 2004.
The sales surge of 3DS has disproved critics, who pronounced it a dud after a lackluster launch.
But it’s not game over. Some question whether Nintendo can keep up the momentum amid a changing market.
“Nintendo’s price cut clearly had a positive impact on retail sales and prevented a repeat of the declines we saw last summer,” said Mitch Lasky, a partner at Benchmark Capital who has invested in a number of game companies. “But I don’t believe it will be sufficient to reverse the larger trends.”
Those trends include a shift in the way parents buy such games.
Source/ read whole article here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-nintendo-3ds-20120718,0,3773446.story
I still think that the younger generation of kid will want to buy nintendo games. Normal console games are much better than app games and last way longer, so I can’t really see app games being a huge challenge to the 3ds.
Your thoughts on this?
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