Nintendo Profits Fall As Apple Makes Gaming Inroads

10:13 am, October 29th, 2009, Ed Sutherland

dsi-ll-wine

It’s no fun being a game console competing with Apple. That seems to be the lesson gaming giant Nintendo is learning as the iPod touch and iPhone become increasingly popular game platforms. Nintendo announced its last quarterly profits fell 52 percent, a $702 million drop from 133 billion yen to 64 billion yen.

Although the Japanese company did not specifically mention the iPhone or iPod touch, the company’s handheld DS platform “faces increasing competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone, which has become a popular platform for handheld games,” according to Reuters.

Such competition may be the reason for Nintendo unveiling an updated DS machine. The DSi LL features two 4.2-inch screens that are 93 percent larger than the previous 3.25-inch displays, larger pens and more colors (dark brown and wine red) in addition to the standard white. The DSi LL carries a larger price, too: $222 and will be available Nov. 21 in Japan and early 2010 in Europe and the United States.

Apple is making a point of positioning the iPod touch as a gaming machine. Along with company execs calling the machine “the funnest iPod ever,” the touch is benefitting from hardware upgrades making the iPod 50 percent faster. In September, the company also highlighted a number of well-known game titles for the touch, including Madden NFL. Likewise, game publishers such as Electronic Arts are discovering the iPhone and iPod touch as a platform.

The DS isn’t the only front on which Nintendo might be worried about Apple competing. Reports continue that Apple wants a piece of the game console market. While these reports have been around for years, the Wall Street Journal has become the latest to suggest such as move. The report comes as Nintendo sees Wii sales slowing.

[Via AppleInsider and Gadget Lab]

Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article

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About the author

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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7 comments

Woah, seriously Nintendo? Another DS? When it comes to Nintendo hand-helds, I like to own the latest system… but I just bought the DSi in April.

ambienteternity, on October 29th, 2009 at 11:44 am

Sloppy journalism. Nintendo has sold far more DS systems than Apple has sold iPhones or iPod Touches. They are different platforms for a different market. Gaming on the DS brings in much more revenue than the iphone/ipod touch. We’re going to see a huge bubble of monies invested into app development and with no real profit brought it.

Sloppy work.

Ken Johnson, on October 29th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

UM its hard being anything or company competeing against apple

king garrett, on October 29th, 2009 at 8:28 pm

@king gerrett:

Of course, i mean look at microsoft, they’ve almost disappeared of the face of the earth :/

Any way, the iphone and itouch are always going to have the trouble of not actually being a recognized as a gaming device by most people.
Most think of them as a phone or an ipod. Where as a DS is a recognized gaming device and developers can make more money out of it as games are priced higher.

george, on October 30th, 2009 at 9:17 am

lol one should be a real idiot even thinking ipod and iphone’s basic premative mini games can compete with ds/psp games.don’t get me wront I LOVE apple,but I love them for what they do best which is MAC and MAC OS.not ipod’s gimmicky mini games.

hannes, on October 30th, 2009 at 10:32 am

“one should be a real idiot even thinking ipod and iphone’s basic premative mini games can compete with ds/psp games”
That’s true. Well, apart from the fact iPod games aren’t primitive and, in many cases, are at least as good as DS/PSP games. Certain things are holding back the platform for gaming—a lack of battery life, no back-ups of game progress, control issues with certain genres—but something that’s not holding back the platform is the actual games.

Craig Grannell, on October 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am

You know what, if Apple just put on REAL gaming controls onto the iphone and touch(as a build to order option) the psp,pspgo and the gameboy would get their tails kicked. As for Nintendo’s falling numbers, blame over saturation. All Nintendo does is crank out the same gaming device with some tweeks here and there and maybe a new function. But it is still the same thing.

t, on October 31st, 2009 at 11:31 pm