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Nintendo and Apple have ruined gaming!

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MarioKnife

This generation, Nintendo and Apple have each made disgusting sums of money from gaming. Apple’s iOS store sells millions of copies of cheaply priced, throwaway games, while Nintendo’s struck it big with the casual approachability of the WII and their handheld DS.

There’s no mistaking that both companies have made a mark on the video game industry. According to some developers, they’ve also ruined it.

“They have over-encouraged supply,” Said EA founder Trip Hawkins on Apple’s business method. “Four thousand (US dollars in profit, for the developer) per application: Do you see a problem with that?” he asked the audience. “That doesn’t even pay for a really good foosball table.”

“If we can’t figure out how to make it a healthy ecosystem, it’s not going to be a great business for developers to be able to remain employed in,” he said.

Nintendo? they’ve been killing video games since the 80’s apparently. Decades ago, the Japanese gaming behemoth instituted licencing , whereby game developers would have to pay Nintendo heaps of money to be able to develop for their consoles, something that keeps smaller developers away from console coding.

“We used to have a free and open game business,” Hawkins said. “And then Nintendo came along and introduced a thing called a licensing agreement.”

Personally, I think Nintendo’s licencing was a good thing for the industry, although not necessarily good for smaller developers. Prior to that, just about anybody could make whatever they wanted for pre-NES Atari systems – leading to an oversaturation of low-quality games, and the video game crash of 1983 that nearly killed the industry off for good.

Source : CNN

Last Updated: March 7, 2011

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