It’s all fun and games until someone pokes their eye out with a pencil – or Apple focuses on the portable gaming market. That could be Sony and Nintendo’s thinking amid news that the iPhone and the iPod touch now have 19 percent of the market. Even worse for the gaming veterans: Apple saw 500 percent growth in gaming software revenue during an otherwise down market.
Apple had five percent of the revenue from U.S. video game software sales in 2009. While 5 percent doesn’t sound like much, its a 500 percent jump when compared to the one percent the Cupertino, Calif. company held in 2008.
Such a jump in a relatively short period of time was deemed “significant” by Flurry Analytics, which released the figures. The numbers were even more stark when compared to the overall U.S. video game software industry, which slipped to $9.9 billion in 2009 versus $11 billion in 2008.
Peter Farango, Flurry’s vice president of marketing, said console games lost ground to portable devices, including the iPhone. But the good news for Apple doesn’t stop there.
If you exclude the big-three gaming consoles: the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, games sold in 2009 via iPhone’s App Store grew to 19 percent of the U.S. portable gaming market, up from 5 percent in 2008.
The rise of the iPhone and iPod touch in gaming meant the market share owned by Sony’s PSP line was cut in half, while Nintendo’s top-dog status fell from 75 percent down to 70 percent, according to Flurry. In late 2009, Nintendo announced corporate profits fell 52 percent, or a $702 million loss. Some reports suggested the increased competition by the iPhone and iPod touch was a factor in the lower profits.
Nintendo isn’t standing still amid this new threat. Earlier this week it introduced a 3D version of its popular Nintendo DS platform reportedly to be called Nintendo DS3.
Apple is also making more blatant efforts to capture the gaming sector. In 2009, Apple released new version of the iPod touch with beefier graphics capabilities. In November 2009, the Cupertino, Calif. company began a search for an AAA game developer. A month later began seeking a video game artist for the company’s iPhone Gaming Group.
[via AppleInsider]
