Dollar Rule vs. Handheld Game Consoles
On Sept 9, 2009 Apple announced their video-camera iPod Nano, iTunes and a few other more minor things. A large chunk of the announcement was focused on the iPod Touch as begin a great portable game console. Apple compared the iPod Touch to the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS, using the number of game titles as proof of the iPod Touch's looming dominance: 21,178 iPod Touch/iPhone games, Sony PSP with 607 games, and the Nintendo DS with 3,680 titles.
We are big fans of the Apple products, but Apple touting "number of titles" strikes as us as fairly ironic. fter all, this is exactly the reverse of the personal computer market, where the number of Windows PC programs vastly outnumber Mac OS X titles. Yet the Mac has no problem surviving. Why? Because the relevant metric is how many good programs there are, not just how many total. Outside of the typical big-name software from Microsoft or Adobe and a very large proportion of the PC software out there by shareware or lower-tier developers is unfortunately very bad.
The other main gaming issue mentioned by Apple was the price for games. DS and PSP games tend to be in the $20-40 range, while Apple iPhone games (which the iPod Touch can play as well) are typically $0 - $10 range. We'll try to avoid doing too much game reviewing, but Apple's comparisons naturally lead us to wonder how each platform's games live up to the Dollar Rule.
In a purely academic sense, the iPhone games already won the contest, since many of the games are free. This is possible since iPhone games are distributed online and don't require physical media. With free items we already know that the Dollar Rule Ratio values is infinity.
But for the sake of analysis, let's only compare the paid games. As of this writing, EA's Madden NFL 10, is the top paid Apple App Store game, at $9.99. First question to answer is if these $10 games are Dollar-worthy and can give at least 10 person-hours of fun. We haven't played this games ourselves, but like many of these football games you have your pick of all the teams and you can play through entire seasons. So it would seem 10 hours is easily reached, assuming you like football games.
Another top iPhone game is Enigmo, by Pangea Software, which we have played. The App Store version is $2.99. Enigmo is a very interesting puzzle game, where you need to use various deflectors, bouncers, and other devices to redirect water drops, laser beams, etc. to their proper receptacles. A very cool-looking game, simple to learn/control and very fun. Is it able to capture our attention for 3 hours? You bet. Frankly, it would be easily worth a $9.99 price tag, except probably they would not sell as many copies on the App Store.
Now let's consider some Nintendo DS games. The DS was released in 2004 and has sold around 100 million units so far. One of the top selling games is New Super Mario Bros., which retails for around $27. This is several times pricier than the Madden 10 iPhone game, and 9x more expensive than Enigmo. Yet, New Super Mario Bros. easily hits DDR of 1.0. Getting 30 person-hours out of this game is easily done in just the first week of play. To finish the game might take you 60-80 hours of gameplay alone. Plus, there's some very fun mini-games that can eat up quite a few 10's hours of time just by themselves. Then couple this with the fact that you can do multi-player mode across 2 Nintendo DS's and this game easily earns it's Dollar-worthiness.
Another very popular game for the DS is Brain Age, which is around $20. Brain Age has a battery of reading and math mini-games designed to kind of test your mental reflexes. You will have to do things like memorizing placement of numbers on a grid, counting syllables, and various math exercises. You certainly won't be buying this game for the graphics. However the games are strangely addicting nevertheless. 20 hours worthy? Yes, although probably more for adult than kids. Kids tend to think it's homework "stuff" in disguise.
Unfortunately we don't have access to a Sony PSP yet, so we can't quite have a complete 3-way comparision to talk about.
Overall, I don't think you can conclusively state that any given platform is "the best" in Dollar Rule terms. While there are more complicated iPhone games, most of them are geared towards more casual gaming, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, ideally suited to standing in line at the post office. From free to $10, these games are often well worth it (and of course, no on can argue against free).
The main drawback is actually the glut of iPhone games. Finding the decent games can be a bit of a headache, given the number of titles you might have to search through. Fortunately since many are free, so you can just delete them if they suck. But many times you might have to shell out $1-3 and end up with a dud that couldn't possibly be suffered through for 1-3 minutes, let alone 1-3 hours.
The combination of cheaper but less-invovled games is kind of self-fulfilling. With games tending to be so cheap in the App Store, developers will want to keep their costs down, so that they can make sure they still make a profit. Fortunately for gamers, bigger shops like EA already have lots of sunk costs in staff and technology, so branching out existing game franchises into a new platform isn't as much of an extra risk for them.
Many Nintendo DS games, on the other hand, as many parents will attest, are often quite immersive and conducive to extended gameplay. The Pokemon games, many of the Mario Bros. franchise, even Nintendogs, can keep the kiddies entertained for hours on end. The $20-40 per title is of course out of reach for most younger wallets, but if stick with the best games out there (Gamespot.com has good top-games lists for every platform) it's always worth every penny. Of course, in our household, we simply put the desired DS games on the Amazon wishlist, and every birthday and Christmas brings in a new infusion of time-sucking (good or bad thing?) games into the mix. 5 or 6 new games easily get the 20-40hrs of game play in the months in between.
The unique advantage of DS and PSP games is that they can be borrowed. Swapping game catridges with a friend for a week or two is a very Dollar-worthy way to increase your game library manifold, and in effect lower your per game cost by as many times.
And of course, DS and PSP games can be resold as well. If you choose wisely, your games will often sell for 50% or more of their original price. For example, New Super Mario Bros. as of today retails on Amazon.com for $26.49. But if you buy it used from a reseller on Amazon, you could get it for $14.95.
The winner? Okay, we'll be kind of lame and say the winner is YOU. If you pick good games and don't waste your money on the low-quality games, we think you will find that each of these portable game consoles can be a very Dollar-worthy purchase.
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