EA veteran, Bing Gordon, fantasizes about an unlikely Apple-Nintendo pairing.
Nintendo may be the only member of the big three with a next-generation console on the way, but there’s still speculation that the company will follow in the footsteps of its old rival, Sega, and retire from the hardware business. The latest such prediction comes from former EA exec and Zynga board member, Bing Gordon.
“I think Nintendo’s already on track to become primarily a software company,” he told GamesIndustry International.
“I can imagine a day when Nintendo wonders – and maybe it’s generational change – when Nintendo wonders if they ought to take some of their best games and make them apps,” he continued.
Of course, despite recent setbacks, Nintendo has never screwed things up quite as badly as Sega managed to. Neither the N64 nor the Gamecube came anywhere close to matching the sheer marketing might of the PlayStation and PS2, but they certainly fared far better than the Sega Saturn and the Dreamcast(single tear). Considering both the Wii and DS performed exceedingly well last generation, and after a rocky start, the 3DS seems to be following suit, it seems unlikely that Nintendo will be forced out anytime soon.
Gordon also made a note of Nintendo mainstay, Shigeru Miyamoto’s, talent for eating weirdness and excreting system-sellers.
“So far, when Miyamoto makes a perfect game, in his career he makes games worth $200 – it’s worth buying a system for,” he said.
So let’s imagine for a moment that things get so bad for Nintendo that the company is forced to drop out of the hardware market. Where would the owner of Mario, Star Fox, Metroid, et al, hawk its wares? Not on iOS, according to Gordon, even if iOS users are so desperate for Nintendo products they’ll quite happily buy barely-functioning knock-offs.
“Neither Apple or Nintendo – both those companies like control – is likely to want a partnership,” he noted, “but a partnership would be stunningly cool.”
Source: Gamesindustry International
