NEWS ANALYSIS: THE BREWING APP WAR
Iwata’s anti-app rant and Jobs’ rival rhetoric exposes fractured industry
The most powerful electronic entertainment firms in the world couldn’t be more different, if you go by their contrasting, back-to-back GDC-week keynotes. But the battlelines between Nintendo and Apple are being drawn more closer and aggressively than ever, says Michael French
TWO OF the most powerful men in games were stood just metres apart at GDC last week, delivering back- to-back keynotes. Yet their ideologies are worlds apart, and couldn’t more accurately convey the creative crossroad the games industry faces. On one stage at the Moscone Centre, San Francisco: Nintendo boss Saturo Iwata, delivering his fourth GDC keynote. In the Yerba Buena building next door: Apple CEO Steve Jobs, revealing iPad 2 at a press event coincidentally timed to begin as the Nintendo boss left the stage. Iwata’s talk culminated in a call for developers to turn away from creating low- value iPhone and Facebook apps, saying it threatened their long-term livelihoods. Jobs opened by revealing Apple has paid $2bn in revenues to app developers since the App Store arrived two and a half years ago. Iwata’s talk recounted
games’ first 25 years and the medium’s eventual blossoming into the likes of World of Warcraft. Jobs barely mentioned our
8 March 11th 2011
industry, even though – with a faster processor, HDMI out, cameras and gyroscope – Apple’s new device is built with games in mind. But while a lot has since been written about the former’s attack on app- culture, or Apple’s quick cut to gaming’s core, the real story isn’t what they said – it’s what they didn’t say. And, in the end, although many see them radically opposing – one a gaming dinosaur, the other an emerging colossus, said one pundit – it’s that both have very similar, aggressive intentions for the video games industry.
OLD GUARD FIGHTS BACK You could tell Iwata’s keynote was going to be more downbeat – usually, for the GDC crowd, he busts out the shiny blazer. Last week it was a sombre suit. But his words said it best, confessing that his biggest fear is that games are ‘drowning’ in a sea of apps. “Our business is dividing in a way that threatens the continued employment for many of us that create games for a living,” he said.
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“The objective of mobile and social network platforms, and the reasons these vehicles were created, are nothing like ours. These platforms have no motivation to maintain the high value of video games software. For them content is something created by someone else. Their goal is to gather as much software as possible
The value of video games software does not matter to mobile and social game platforms. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo
because quantity is how they make money, quantity is how they profit. The value of video games software does not matter to them.” He called the gulf
between Nintendo versus the smartphone and social games worlds “two distinct sides of the games business”. But take his warning another way: Nintendo fears
being left behind. A mass migration to cheap games on non-games platforms is contrary to its business. It sells hardware to justify software made by its studios and third parties. And the backdrop: it is now the last remaining Japanese games company to resist the digital revolution. Capcom, Konami, Sega and others are embracing downloads wholeheartedly – through PC, social networks, 360, PS3, mobile… not Wii or DS. “The fact is, what we produced has value and we should protect that value,” said Iwata, as much a point about content generally as specifically boxed product like £39.99 3DS games. “All is not lost. Games as diverse as Just Dance, Wii Fit, uDraw, Wii Sports, and Art Academyhave all found audiences on Nintendo consoles. There are similar stories on other platforms.” But what would someone like Unreal Engine creator
Epic Games have to say about that? It is best friends with EA, Microsoft and every other third party, while turning tricks on iPhone with Infinity Blade, which costs a fiver. Yet its technology has ignored Nintendo platforms three times over this generation, while adopted in spades across next-gen and mobile. Says a lot. Says that not every third party succeeds the way Iwata thinks. But Iwata’s worries aren’t without merit – he is acknowledging a fast- developing, and increasingly disparate two-tier industry. One which features only luxurious, boxed and usually triple-A games – and another of cheaper, disposable software. This isn’t a new view. Pundits, analysts and publishers have forewarned it for some time. We saw the first sign with premium priced Modern Warfare 2in 2009. However Iwata’s comments
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