In an earlier post today, I suggest Nintendo could be another Sega fairly soon, offering its IP on the App Store. Tap! deputy editor Matthew Bolton (who knows more than a bit about gaming), countered on Twitter:
I’m not so sure about Mario on [the] App Store. Nintendo’s technical meticulousness in Mario is unparalleled outside of racers… the controls’ responsiveness is tuned to perfection, and touchscreens are laggy. It’s an Apple situation
I agree. Touchscreens are fantastic for certain types of gaming, but not Mario-style platformers. (That’s not to say there aren’t decent 2D platformers for iOS, but they certainly don’t match Super Mario in terms of, as Matt put it, ‘technical meticulousness’.) But there is a solution: a third-party controller.
It’s not like such a thing is without precedent: I’ve written about iOS games controllers before, and although they’re something of a niche, Nintendo has the hardware savvy to produce such a thing, and the IP clout to encourage plenty of people to buy it. Of course, the company would lose control elsewhere, notably in terms of device hardware. But if Nintendo’s forced into a Sega-like position, its games on the App Store and a Nintendo controller doesn’t seem like the worst alternative.
