How to beat the iPhone: allow porn?

[Xantar]

So we're now headed to a confrontation between the Nintendo DS and the iPhone (and probably the iPad, too). Apple has some massive advantages to bring to this fight: some massive consumer good will, the App store and pretty soon an Xbox Live type interface that Nintendo can't hope to match in the next few years.

One thing the iPhone will not have, however, is porn. Apple screens all apps and rejects any that contain sexual content (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/iphone-porn/). I'm not sure how much longer this can continue, but that's beside my point for the time being. What I was thinking as I read about this is it reminds me of the SNES days when there was no ESRB and Nintendo was censoring games. Sega scored a lot of points at the time for allowing the full violent content on their system.

Now it looks the shoe might be on the other foot. Nintendo itself doesn't produce many mature games, but they've become pretty relaxed about allowing violent and sexual content on their systems. The GameCube was the only console last generation which had a totally uncensored version of BMX XXX. When Manhunt 2 came out for this generation, Nintendo didn't even blink at the idea of using motion controls to enact the brutal kills.

We have no reason to believe they would censor hardcore content appearing on the DS. It's just that no developer has bothered yet. Could this be Nintendo's opportunity to gain an advantage over Apple?

[KillerGremlin]

You can view porn through Safari though, no?

And word on the street is you can run the Android OS on the iPhone now, so I guess Steve Jobs wasn't kidding when he said if people want to look at porn on his phone they can go Android. :D


Seriously though: I think Nintendo has a window of opportunity here. It beckons a larger question of where Nintendo stands vs. other portable platforms, but I don't want to derail this thread.

[magus113]

Well the thing is, hardcore content like extreme violence or nudity on the DS isn't really as marketable. There are only a handful of mature games on the Nintendo DS that I (and MobyGames) are aware of.

Dementium: The Ward (which was actually pretty creepy and gory all things considered, and I look forward to the second since they've improved a lot of the mechanics that were wrong with the first one)
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which was mostly just because of violence, and language, and the violence was more cartoony)
Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (a port of a bad looking PSX classic that just had random blood sprays everywhere that looked pretty terrible)
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (I know nothing of this, but I know the SMT series has some pretty fucked up stuff in it)
Touch the Dead (We all know)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (and of course MK3 is a given).

I think the big selling point of gore and hardcore content is how realistic (or unrealistic) it is to the person playing. I mean you would get a headshot in Gears of War and you saw pieces of things flying and a spray of blood..not exactly the easier thing to pull off on a console like the DS.

[TheSlyMoogle]

Uhm there's an iPhone App called grinder which is for gay men and women to find each other. it actually uses the GPS of the iPhone to locate others and notify you. Yeah you can't show your cock or tits, but god damn you have an app designed to get you laid.

I think that's a little worse.

[magus113]

The thing with that is that's it's more of like a social networking kind of thing. That and I thought Apple was being a little less lenient by allowing parental controls with their apps on the iPhone?

[Xantar]

Well the thing is, hardcore content like extreme violence or nudity on the DS isn't really as marketable. There are only a handful of mature games on the Nintendo DS that I (and MobyGames) are aware of.

Dementium: The Ward (which was actually pretty creepy and gory all things considered, and I look forward to the second since they've improved a lot of the mechanics that were wrong with the first one)
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which was mostly just because of violence, and language, and the violence was more cartoony)
Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (a port of a bad looking PSX classic that just had random blood sprays everywhere that looked pretty terrible)
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (I know nothing of this, but I know the SMT series has some pretty fucked up stuff in it)
Touch the Dead (We all know)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (and of course MK3 is a given).



The thing is all the games you've listed are full-featured games with decent budgets and developer teams behind them. Of course with games like that, you want a wider audience so you can get a return on your investment. The apps that are getting censored by Apple are cheap bits being sold for $2.99. If your audience is limited because there's a sex scene in there somewhere, it hurts a lot less. But the thing is Apple isn't allowing stuff like that on the iPhone at all so the audience becomes absolutely limited. With DSWare, on the other hand, I'm not aware of any reason why any such software would be banned as long as it went through the ESRB.

[TheSlyMoogle]

The thing with that is that's it's more of like a social networking kind of thing. That and I thought Apple was being a little less lenient by allowing parental controls with their apps on the iPhone?

It's free to download for anyone. Wont stop kids from getting it. And yeah guys and girls can pretty easily get your number and just send nudie pics that way.