A Look at Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo in a New Era of Mobile Gaming

  • Just a few years ago, game console manufacturers were competing against one another to grab the dominant portion of the market. Today, these big names have a new competitor: the smartphone.
  • When it was released in 2006, Nintendo’s Wii console saw a strong surge in buyers, giving the company an edge on its top rivals, Microsoft and Sony. Unfortunately for Nintendo, adoption dropped off after a few years, especially with the success of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox.
  • On a different front, Sony and Nintendo vied for consumer dollars with their handheld gaming devices. Both Sony’s PlayStation Portable and Nintendo’s Game Boy and DS saw strong sales. The companies have since updated their devices, but haven’t been able to recreate the same adoption.
  • “Smartphones and tablets are becoming more popular and their components more powerful,” reports Fortune. “Meanwhile, major game publishers, like Electronic Arts, are realizing that gamers increasingly prefer to use those devices to play titles.”
  • “And why not?” asks the article. “Smartphones and tablets today deliver high-quality visuals at every turn. And the sheer convenience of being able to switch from a phone call or text message to a video game is too appealing to pass up.”
  • “We believe that consumer preferences may be switching decisively to mobile games, given that game quality is similar, if not better, and mobile games have the added advantage of being playable at any time, anywhere,” writes Cowen analyst Doug Creutz.
  • The gaming business is now much less about the games and much more about the new features. For consoles, this means tools like Internet streaming and motion capture could split the difference between the top three.

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