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Somewhere on Keith Boesky's games industry analysis blog ( http://boesky.blogspot.com/ http://boesky.blogspot.com/ ) he draws a parallel between Nintendo's and

Somewhere on Keith Boesky's games industry analysis blog ( http://boesky.blogspot.com/ http://boesky.blogspot.com/ ) he draws a parallel between Nintendo's and Apple's "slightly open" marketplaces. During the games industry crash in the 80s ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash... ) there were a glut of low-quality products, causing consumers to turn away from video games. Nintendo entered the scene with a restrictive game approval process - remember the Nintendo Seal of Quality? - reducing the number of games while increasing their quality. In effect, he argues a "slightly open" marketplace rebuilt consumer confidence and raised the Nintendo platform's value. If you look at the App Store today, there is a closed loop between the iPhone consumer marketplace, app developers, and the App Store platform. Apple's permeable nozzle on app submission increases the value of the platform while leaving most of a free market in place. This draws consumers, increasing the value to app developers. In short, a slightly-restricted platform can be good for everyone. I wish I could find the specific article. Keith Boesky is a little tl;dr but quite insightful. I'd love to hear counterarguments too.

wvenable 17y ago
I wish they still had the Nintendo Seal of Quality -- there is a flood of crappy games available for the Wii (and similarly the Gamecube before it). Those seriously hurt Nintendo's brand. The worst part of Apple's approval process is that it does very little to improve the quality of the apps. The crap still gets approved if it satisfies Apple's limited criteria. It's pretty clear the benefit for the approval is for Apple and not the consumer.
_delirium 17y ago
Does Apple's approval process actually have that effect, though? The feedback I'm hearing from game devs is the exact opposite of that with Nintendo: Apple lets basically anything through, so long as it doesn't run afoul of a few specific criteria (no porn, no embedded scripting, etc.), regardless of quality. That makes the marketplace as a whole sort of a sludge of junk where it's hard to differentiate yourself--- in contrast to Nintendo's WiiWare, which only releases games that Nintendo considers good enough.
oweni 17y ago
One such article is Technological Leapfrogging: Lessons from the U.S.Video Game Console Industry By Melissa Schilling. I read it for a Technology Entrepreneurship class and we discussed how Atari's "Unauthorized Games" were detrimental to their long term success. Here is a pertinent quote from the paper, as I am unable to find a free version online: "In the mid-1980s, profits for video game makers began to decline; many feared that video games had reached market saturation. Compounding this, the rapid proliferation of unauthorized games (games produced for a console with- out authorization of that console’s producer) lead to a market glut of games of dubious quality, and many unhappy retailers with video game inventories they were unable to move. By 1985, many industry observers were declaring the video game industry dead. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, two new entrants from Japan entered the U.S. video game market: Nintendo, with its 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) introduced in 1985, and Sega, which launched its 8-bit Master System in the U.S. in 1986 (Sega had previously introduced an 8-bit system dubbed SG-1000 in Japan in 1983). Though Sega’s Master System appeared to be technologically superior, Nintendo spent much more on advertising and development of quality games and characters, and had more game titles available than Sega. The Master System went on to sell two million units and at times held an 11% market share. The NES sold over one million units in the first year, sold 19 million units by 1990, and could be found in more than a third of the households in America and Japan. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Brothers 3” grossed over $500 million in America in 1989, selling seven million copies in the U.S. and four million in Japan."
Tichy 17y ago
Apple doesn't really disapprove apps with low quality, though. They only aim to reject apps that are against their rules or that are malware. Recently one of my web sites was cloned badly for an iPhone app, and it was just bad. As in ugly - sure, it had the functionality, but nothing else. Certainly not Apple standards. Also, the video game crash might have had all sorts of reasons, among them a lot of competition. You don't need an "app store" to establish a brand that is recognized for quality. Isn't the Nintendo Seal of Quality a good example? You can just invent such a seal and let the rest of the competition get by without the seal. There are certainly a lot of crap games for the Wii around, is my impression. (Never had a game console before the Wii, so can't say how it used to be).

wvenable 17y ago

I wish they still had the Nintendo Seal of Quality -- there is a flood of crappy games available for the Wii (and similarly the Gamecube before it). Those seriously hurt Nintendo's brand. The worst part of Apple's approval process is that it does very little to improve the quality of the apps. The crap still gets approved if it satisfies Apple's limited criteria. It's pretty clear the benefit for the approval is for Apple and not the consumer.

_delirium 17y ago

Does Apple's approval process actually have that effect, though? The feedback I'm hearing from game devs is the exact opposite of that with Nintendo: Apple lets basically anything through, so long as it doesn't run afoul of a few specific criteria (no porn, no embedded scripting, etc.), regardless of quality. That makes the marketplace as a whole sort of a sludge of junk where it's hard to differentiate yourself--- in contrast to Nintendo's WiiWare, which only releases games that Nintendo considers good enough.

oweni 17y ago

One such article is Technological Leapfrogging: Lessons from the U.S.Video Game Console Industry By Melissa Schilling. I read it for a Technology Entrepreneurship class and we discussed how Atari's "Unauthorized Games" were detrimental to their long term success. Here is a pertinent quote from the paper, as I am unable to find a free version online: "In the mid-1980s, profits for video game makers began to decline; many feared that video games had reached market saturation. Compounding this, the rapid proliferation of unauthorized games (games produced for a console with- out authorization of that console’s producer) lead to a market glut of games of dubious quality, and many unhappy retailers with video game inventories they were unable to move. By 1985, many industry observers were declaring the video game industry dead. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, two new entrants from Japan entered the U.S. video game market: Nintendo, with its 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) introduced in 1985, and Sega, which launched its 8-bit Master System in the U.S. in 1986 (Sega had previously introduced an 8-bit system dubbed SG-1000 in Japan in 1983). Though Sega’s Master System appeared to be technologically superior, Nintendo spent much more on advertising and development of quality games and characters, and had more game titles available than Sega. The Master System went on to sell two million units and at times held an 11% market share. The NES sold over one million units in the first year, sold 19 million units by 1990, and could be found in more than a third of the households in America and Japan. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Brothers 3” grossed over $500 million in America in 1989, selling seven million copies in the U.S. and four million in Japan."

Tichy 17y ago

Apple doesn't really disapprove apps with low quality, though. They only aim to reject apps that are against their rules or that are malware. Recently one of my web sites was cloned badly for an iPhone app, and it was just bad. As in ugly - sure, it had the functionality, but nothing else. Certainly not Apple standards. Also, the video game crash might have had all sorts of reasons, among them a lot of competition. You don't need an "app store" to establish a brand that is recognized for quality. Isn't the Nintendo Seal of Quality a good example? You can just invent such a seal and let the rest of the competition get by without the seal. There are certainly a lot of crap games for the Wii around, is my impression. (Never had a game console before the Wii, so can't say how it used to be).