If you think Apple's app store policies are ambigious, try Nintendo's | Hacker News Reader

If you think Apple's app store policies are ambigious, try Nintendo's

crockford.com

Somewhere on Keith Boesky's games industry analysis blog ( 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... ) 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.

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.

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.

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."

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).

While both are stringent and designed to protect consumers, I'm not sure there are many other parallels between the processes of Apple and Nintendo. As a developer who's gone through the process of submitting games many times to Nintendo, these are why it's a far better process than Apple have.

(Note these all apply to Sony/Microsoft too).

1) You can send Nintendo a proposed game design before starting any work and they will approve/deny it. Depending on how much detail you provide, you may only get a conditional approval, but you can submit more information or revisit later in development. If your game never stands a chance of being published, you'll have wasted nothing more than the time to create the documents.

2) If Nintendo have a problem with your game, they will tell you exactly what the issue is. There's no ambiguous reference to some clause. They will say ABC is in violation of XYZ.

3) If your game fails you can get a real live person on the phone or via email to discuss the issue and what would be an acceptable change.

4) Nintendo not only test that your game is compliant, they will test it for functionality and quality too. This is completely the opposite to Apple who will happily allow buggy pieces of crap on the store that meet their guidelines.

5) Nintendo provide comprehensive access to documents and newsgroups that contain examples of common problems and suggestions, from the staff who test the games, in how to avoid them.

There are more I can think of, but these are the big differences. Frankly trying to suggest that Apple's process is in some way better than Nintendo's is just a crock.

Some very good points, but something to keep in mind.

There is a much lower bar to creating a phone application than a console application, leading to many, many times the number of applications that Apple must look at compared to Nintendo. To provide that same level of attention and care that Nintendo gives to developers for one of it's (few) products to app developers would be impossible for a company of Apple's size.

Not that I don't think they couldn't do some of the above, and 2 should be a given.

First, the point of that is to reduce the number of applications. Second: Apple is much larger then Nintendo, so they have the resources for sure.

Anyway, the free approach of the android market is the best way, in my opinion. Oh, and also, that "free" model has worked for quite some years on PCs, Macs and every other computer, so why shouldn't it work just as fine on a mobile phone?

"First, the point of that is to reduce the number of applications"

True, quality over quantity, which I think we will see more of from Apple in the future. The goal at first was to attract as many developers as possible. Now that they have established the store, we will see more discrimination. Hence the removal of the 'cookie-cutter' applications of late. Maybe I'm wrong about that though.

"Second: Apple is much larger then Nintendo, so they have the resources for sure."

True, but they also have many more product lines including a major operating system and much more hardware to support and develop than Nintendo. I was simply pointing out the failures of the comparison.

"To provide that same level of attention and care that Nintendo gives to developers for one of it's (few) products to app developers would be impossible for a company of Apple's size."

Sure, but if they can't provide the required service, perhaps they shouldn't offer the product to begin with.

That was a fun read of an NES game submission...but to compare that with Apple's app store is out of place. Different era, different type of hardware, distribution model, etc. etc.

I've submitted games to NOA for the Gameboy Advance and Gamecube - out of the big 3 (NOA, SONY, MS), Nintendo had the most stringent requirements (not as bad as the article though).

I enjoyed the article nonetheless.

That may be true but no Nintendo console has been hailed as the future of computing. They're just game consoles.

My mother, who survived a stroke five years ago, spends an hour a day doing physical rehabilitation on her Wii. Her doctors say it has helped her balance, coordination, and confidence. It is the cheapest intervention that has produced the most improvement in her life, and by extension the lives of my whole family.

Not bad for a game console.

"It is the cheapest intervention that has produced the most improvement in her life"

Amazing. What games is she using?

My, how things have changed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFNJfDGSZp0

Yes, that character at the end gets stabbed through the skull with a sign post.

To provide an earlier example (2001):

Conker's Bad Fur Day (NWS for language, I guess): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w5neFPat1w

Pretty much anything you can find out about that game is along the same lines.

I'm not sure that's significantly more violent than MK2 which was on the SNES back in 1993.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucBGKcD78iY

I've been voicing this side of the App Store argument for a while. Nobody is as closed as game console companies have been, and they've had an absolute stranglehold on a small but complete monopoly of the game systems. And as chadaustin points out, their earlier attempts at openness screwed them over until they locked it down.

Not to say I like the App Store policies, as I plan to develop some things for it & Android, and would love to have an open-market portal somewhere. But it does make sense that it exists, and the hostility about it is fairly unbalanced in light of other similar systems.

Nintendo no doubt knew that they had to establish itself in the minds of parents as kid-friendly (though ironically, these days it seems like they're trying to shake the image of the 'kiddy console').

I wonder if a similar statement extends to Apple. Perhaps they're trying to establish themselves as being idiot-friendly, or at least clueless-user-friendly. Makes me wonder if the irony also applies and they will eventually have to go to great lengths to shake the image of being too dumbed down.

The grip Nintendo had on publishers in the US in the 80s was dreadful, as well. By demanding exclusivity with publishers for the US, they ensured that the Sega Master System would stay marginal in this market. It's a shame, because the SMS hardware was superior in every way to the NES.

Exactly; closed systems suck. There's a reason why there are only a handful of good NES games but that there are thousnads of good PC games.

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