AllThingsD, citing a report published by IDC and App Annie, says that people are spending more money on games for their smartphones and tablets than are spending games on dedicated videogame consoles like the Nintendo DS or PlayStation Vita.
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. When I covered NVIDIA’s recent announcement that they’re soon going to start taking pre-orders for the Shield, I panned that thing as being a complete waste of time and money. People don’t want dedicated devices for gaming, they want to game on the devices they already own. Spending $350 on a Shield is ludicrous when you can spend that same $350 on games for your smartphone. Just like the smartphone killed the camera, the alarm clock, the pocket mirror, the MP3 player, the book reader, and other such devices, the same thing is happening to gaming. The real question we should be asking is when will Nintendo release a smartphone? Or are they going to pull a SEGA and transform themselves into a software development house that’ll bring the world’s favorite chubby plumber to iOS and Android? The next few years, as always, will be interesting to watch.
