Jaffe calls "bullsh*t" on Iwata App fears

By Johnny Minkley Published 26 April, 2011

"You can’t put a price on fun."

Outspoken Eat Sleep Play boss David Jaffe has challenged Satoru Iwata's fears over the rise of cheap mobile gaming, accusing Nintendo's president of "good old-fashioned irony" in his perceived criticisms of Apple.

"The reality is, you can't put a price on fun," said Jaffe, speaking to Eurogamer in the US earlier this month. "I don' t care if it's 99c or $150 or $1000 over the years in sub fees to an online MMO.

"Fun is fun, so I think it's an absurd concept to say, this is the criteria, these are the ingredients you [need] to make fun otherwise you can't play. That's bullsh*t, man."

In widely-reported remarks made during his GDC keynote in March, Iwata claimed that "game development is drowning", hitting out at the volume of free and low price games on "mobile or social network devices" – which was seen as a thinly-veiled swipe at Apple.

Jaffe, the man behind Twisted Metal and God of War, suggested that Iwata's remarks were particularly surprising in light of the Japanese company's own strategy.

"I'm going to get screwed, because you're going to think 'Jaffe's bashing Nintendo" and I'm not," he insisted. "I was at [Iwata's] keynote, three, four years ago. He stood on stage, had this great, powerful presentation where he was talking about disruption.

Iwata's point, said Jaffe, was that with the release of Wii Nintendo was saying: "'Come on guys, we're not even playing your game'. [Microsoft and Sony] are fighting the HD battle. We aren't even paying attention and look at the success we've made by disrupting your market'.

"I don't know if it's karma or good old fashioned irony that now he's pushing back against the very thing he was claiming was valuable in his earlier keynote, which is disruption."

Jaffe went on to say that "absolutely" Apple could become the biggest force in gaming. "I heard somebody the other day say Apple TV, which I love, they're going to start putting the App Store on Apple TV with games," he said. "I'm like 'holy shit'. So yeah, it's possible."

Apple revealed last week that it has sold over 189 million iOS devices – all capable of playing games downloaded from the App Store.

Jaffe, a former employee of Sony, currently has a three-game exclusive deal with the company, and insisted he remains "loyal to Sony", adding: "I'm not a fanboy – I'm a fanboy of good games.

"I'm so excited about NGP, but of course Apple's a player now. And that has to be respected and countered and adjusted for. "

You can hear more from Jaffe in our latest hands-on impressions of Twisted Metal.

David Jaffe vs. Eurogamer readers.

Picture of Johnny.

About Johnny Minkley

Johnny Minkley is a veteran games writer and broadcaster, former editor of Eurogamer TV, VP of gaming charity SpecialEffect, and hopeless social media addict.

Read more articles from Johnny by visiting the Johnny Minkley archive page.

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Comments (31) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • menage #1 1 year ago

    You can put a price on production cost though.

  • randompanda #2 1 year ago

    It would be awesome if they didn't put a price on fun. Free fun for all!

  • Phantom_Dynamite #3 1 year ago

    He is right, as long as games are well made, offer value for money and are fun people will buy them.

  • menage #4 1 year ago

    Well made being the keyword here.

    Atari didn't drown for nothing back in the day.

  • CallousB #5 1 year ago

    "The reality is, you can't put a price on fun," "I don' t care if it's 99c or $150 or $1000 over the years in sub fees to an online MMO"

    Er..you just put 3 prices on "fun".

  • spekkeh #6 1 year ago

    He's right about appstores being disruptive technologies. I wonder if Iwata's feeling particularly sheepish today.

  • Psychotext #7 1 year ago

    Sure you can, apparently it's about a dollar for most people.

  • trjp #8 1 year ago

    In fairness, the pricepoint for mobile games (and XBL games and other markets) is set by developers themselves - no-one forced every XBLIG game to be 80pts - no-one is forcing iOS developers to sell games for 99c

    The developers may feel pushed into a low price but it's not like they didn't realise this before they started work - and no-one is forcing them into making games...

    I developed an Android game to give away 'for free' as an exercise in trying to understand how you market such a thing and the experience was pretty grim (Android doesn't have a gaming market - basically) and I imagine I'm not alone in wondering if it's worth bothering when the markets are so immature and where pricing is automatically expected to be super low.

    e.g. I'm wondering how long it will last before the decent games start to rise in price a bit...

  • Porcupine_I #9 1 year ago

    i'll buy that for a dollar!

  • Mister-Wario #10 1 year ago

    "You can't put a price on fun"? But what about people paying £30-40 for a new release, or paying money for Xbox Live? That suggests you CAN put a price on fun, a price people are willing to pay when you factor in the actual quality of the product.

    "Jaffe went on to say that "absolutely" Apple could become the biggest force in gaming".

    Why do I find this incredibly depressing?

  • ChronoMizaki #11 1 year ago

    "The reality is, you can't put a price on fun,"

    But many people can charge a small fee for something that you can play an equivalent of on Newgrounds for free? And they are more likely to be better quality.

  • L0cky #12 1 year ago

    It's funny watching the devs grappling with this issue while for the rest of us it's really quite simple. So for the devs, here's the simple version:

    1. We expect all games to be fun.
    2. For 99p we expect a certain size, depth and polish of a game; for £39.99 we expect more.
    3. If your game doesn't meet the expectations set by the price tag, we will be disappointed.

    Before things like the app store it was fairly easy to mislead gamers into thinking that developing a game requires an inherent level of cost; regardless of the scope and depth of the game. Now that has been shown to be untrue, I think Iwata san just felt a little shown up by it.

    Side note: I was in HMV the other day picking up Portal 2, and overheard 3 separate customers passing up on 3DS games because of their ridiculous prices.

  • ubergine #13 1 year ago

    I'm terrified that cheap apps that knock off A Link To The Past will affect Nintendo's billions and billions of dollars in pure profit.

    Because I'm a dickhead.

  • grussbarbar #14 1 year ago

    Am I the only one who thinks mr. Iwata didn't actually "attack" Apple in his keynote? Somehow I only remember him giving advice to fellow developers on how to stand out and be successful in a big sea of cheap titles?

    Am I just misremembering things?

  • Gastrian #15 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 17:56:43 13-04-2012

  • abigsmurf #16 1 year ago

    Maybe I'm strange but I want more from gaming than physics based puzzle games and tower defence...

    The interesting thing is that for all of Apple bigging up their IOS sales and belittling everyone else, their IOS sales figures aren't as dominant as they make it out to be.

    The DS has sold 145million units, compared to IOS' 189 million. When you consider that there a 3 largely different product lines with dozens of revisions (compared to just 3 revisions of a single product line), IOS sales figures are less impressive. If you were to add on the Wii sales figures, it would dwarf IOS sales.

  • CaptainQuint #17 1 year ago

    I've always believed that you can't put a price on love.

  • TonyHarrison #18 1 year ago

    "The reality is, you can't put a price on fun,"

    This is essentially the same as what Iwata was saying before it was spun into some kind of vicious attack on Apple in general. Content is king, he said. In that it doesn't matter what the game is or how much it costs, but if its appealing, it will do well.

    If it was an attack on anything, then it was an attack on endless fart apps and the like, because there's no quality content to be found there, and thus developers should aim higher. They should be looking to create the next Angry Birds or the next Mario or whatever. That was the crux of Iwata's point.

    EDIT: Made this more legible.
    Edited by TonyHarrison at 26/04/11 @ 13:38

  • Olemak #19 1 year ago

    A huge chunk of the price of the big budget triple-A retail games are NOT production costs. There's distribution , retailer profit margin, marketing, licence fees to platform holders and the publisher's cut. It adds up to a pretty big percentage. If you can bypass those costs and sell well on "word of mouth" and social network buzz, then even 1 dollar games can make lots of money.

    I'm still willing to pay full price for my Battlefield 3 or InFamous 2, but my tolerance for lesser games is definitely diminished. The App Crap might be undermining the"last gen" business model of the platform holders and publishers, but to me, the really interesting development is the move away from the rotting dinosaur corpse that is specialist retail game store, AKA second hand thrift shop rip-off department. More and more good and interesting games are released as DL only, and with no fear of undercutting retail prices they can go pretty low and offer a lot of bang for the buck. That should be more scary for Iwata than the competition from the App store: the apps only competes with Nintendo dreaded DS showelware, but the quality DL games priced at 15 quid or so compete directly with the big titles like CoD. I bet Activisopn is even more worried about this trend than Iwata, but EA, Ubisoft and several others seems to embrace this new and improved business model. Interesting times.

  • Toothball #20 1 year ago

    I'm sure there is plenty of scope to have fun in a 99p sized package, but I've not encountered much in that bracket that satisfies my requirements for fun.

  • Sicho #21 1 year ago

    "The reality is, you can't put a price on fun"

    free prostitutes for everyone!

  • mingster #22 1 year ago

    59p is my limit these days. Nothing is worth more than that.

  • Byblos1 #23 1 year ago

    I think Iwata had a point in terms of the sheer volume of games. In the past you had 2 or 3 releases a week and now, across all platforms including downloadable (XBLA, PSN, WiiWare) and mobile you must have hundreds.

    The worry is that publishers start thinking about the numbers of products they can put out there rather than quality, and feel the need to be represented in the 'What's New' catagories every week. Quality will inevitably the suffer, especially when combined with the low prices that mean most people don't feel the need to make considered purchases based on reviews etc.
    Edited by Byblos1 at 26/04/11 @ 16:28

  • Kami #24 1 year ago

    Wow, people are STILL missing the point of that dev conference speech?

    Never let the truth get in the way of a good old-fashioned moan...

  • daymun #25 1 year ago

    @Gastrian - That is some very very deep shit. My head just imploded.

    To have fun, or not to have fun, at what price? That is the question.

  • levitate #26 1 year ago

    All these developers bickering with eachother starts to remind me of children in a sandbox.

  • Sevens #27 1 year ago

    Apple should stay out of gaming as much as possible. Of course it makes sense for them not to.

  • Phishfood #28 1 year ago

    you can adjust the pricing and payment options on the quality of fun

  • Agnates #29 1 year ago

    Uh what? The disruption happened and it shaped the whole market. DS and Wii have been as influential as the very foundations of the industry (which include Nintendo, of course). Obviously disruption doesn't happen over and over, it happens when the time is right. How is it ironic that Nintendo still proceeds with having a dual screen portable after the success of the original DS, while also adding what made Wii a success, which is motion controls? The NGP is basically a 3DS with a touchpad instead of a 2nd screen so once again Sony is joining Nintendo's game. How is it ironic that Nintendo are still working on unique devices like the Vitality Sensor or that they're implementing a touch screen on the controller (while retaining the valuable motion controls they coined) or that they have more unique surprises not yet revealed or leaked about their new home console? I fail to see where Jaffe thinks Nintendo is "joining" Sony's game when it's Sony that joined Nintendo's game with the short lived Move and now the NGP. Also, it was MS and Sony that tried to make it sound as if Nintendo wasn't competing with them in previous years, in order to downplay their success. Nintendo always made it clear they're in the video game market like everyone else.

    Still, how is Jaffe responding to anything Iwata said at GDC with this intentionally ignorant and incredibly arrogant rant? Did Iwata say people shouldn't be making 99c games or what? Lol? No, he didn't. He praised titles like Angry Birds, even. People comment on the speech seemingly without even listening to it. All Iwata did was empower developers and say basically what Jaffe is saying, which is that despite the dangers of flooding the market with cheap short lived experiences in the various app stores, 99c games won't bring the rest of the industry (the industry that isn't a garage developer who invests $100 in a game he then sells for 99c, but instead invests millions and so needs to sell them for much larger sums) down IF those who work in it follow the "content is king" mantra, like Nintendo strives to do and is advicing all of them to do. So yes, you can sell 99c games and sell $60 games and sell subscription based games, if they actually appear to be worthy of it when put against the 99c games. Nintendo is confident their titles can do that because of this "content is king" mantra that Iwata merely adviced other developers to follow. When an indie developer says it it's awesome and cool, when Nintendo agrees with it and promotes it further it's suddenly evil? Lol?

    So, lol @ Jaffe being outraged at Iwata while actually agreeing with Iwata and the fools that "agree" with this rage while actually also agreeing with Iwata. Oh well, it's Nintendo's fate. People have to point out how they're wrong and awful and against all that is good in gaming (which is usuaally Sony or Microsoft, lol) even when they want to express the same things as Nintendo just did. Still, I would think Eurogamer's so called journalists would at least call him out for some of this bullshit. Then again, you don't bite the hand that feeds you with exclusive coverage and trips to Hawaii for early previews in parties with high class prostitutes and porn stars or whatever else is going on in this industry, lol.
    Edited by Agnates at 27/04/11 @ 16:22

  • L0cky #30 1 year ago

    I agree with your general sentiment Agnates. The problem is that while Jaffe, Iwata, and a bunch of indie devs are essentially agreeing on much of what they say, it still makes a difference who's saying it.

    Jaffe is a developer and Nintendo is also a developer; but mainly Nintendo's business is in being a platform holder. So although they're both largely saying the same thing, they come from slightly different contexts.

    Iwata was justifying the cost of some games by the richness of their content and therefore the cost of development; which is totally agreeable; but he said nothing about the games on his own platform that are also cheaper to develop. Essentially his viewpoint is largely contradicted by most of the games on his platforms; which are proven to be cheap to make, but still have the same high price tags as the rich content games he's using as justification.

    So unlike Jaffe and other pure developers; Iwata comes off as being a hyprocrite.

    Btw, if you have any sympathy for Nintendo when people infer that they have artificially high prices; don't forget they were fined £120m for price fixing during the N64/GBC era. The same people who ran the company then, are the same people who are running it now.

  • Agnates #31 1 year ago

    "The problem is that while Jaffe, Iwata, and a bunch of indie devs are essentially agreeing on much of what they say, it still makes a difference who's saying it."

    I'm sorry but how is that a "problem" and how does it make a difference when they say the same thing? Jaffe has no business whatsoever to call Iwata's speech "bullshit" then proceed to say the same things Iwata did as if it was something new.

    "Jaffe is a developer and Nintendo is also a developer; but mainly Nintendo's business is in being a platform holder. So although they're both largely saying the same thing, they come from slightly different contexts."

    Iwata started as a developer too, and I much prefer someone like him in a position of power over one of the major video game developers than some clueless suit like Kottick. Also, this was Iwata's own speech, his opinion.

    "Iwata was justifying the cost of some games by the richness of their content"

    No, he didn't say richness of content. A game doesn't have to have a LOT of content to justify a given price, it simply has to have content that justifies that, whether it's quantity, quality, uniqueness, or all three. Just whatever will tell the consumer that he wants that and is willing to pay that price.

    "Essentially his viewpoint is largely contradicted by most of the games on his platforms; which are proven to be cheap to make, but still have the same high price tags as the rich content games he's using as justification"

    Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Metroid Prime 3, even the likes of Wii Sports Resort, don't justify their price to you? That's an opinion and clearly millions of people disagree with it. And they tend to be $10 cheaper too.

    Unless you're talking about third party shovelware type products. First, there ARE budget lines for cheaper than full price titles, it is up to the publisher to use such rather than Nintendo to force them into any situatio. And secondly, they HAVE (politely, not like I'm paraphrasing here) criticised third parties for only using their C and D teams for titles then whining that their games don't sell as much as Nintendo products do. So what do you want then? For Nintendo to attempt to regulate how third parties run THEIR business and ruin the questionable third party relations they have further, not to mention risk all sorts of fines?

    Btw, how does this differ from PS3 and 360? Most games launch at $60 regardless of their quality or who made them.

    "So unlike Jaffe and other pure developers; Iwata comes off as being a hyprocrite."

    See above, no he doesn't.

    "Btw, if you have any sympathy for Nintendo when people infer that they have artificially high prices;"

    Uh, that wasn't even Jaffe's point here so what are you on about my sympathy towards that?

    "don't forget they were fined £120m for price fixing during the N64/GBC era. The same people who ran the company then, are the same people who are running it now."

    The fines were for selling games much more expensive in certain European countries. What does that have to do with this discussion? Also, they were fined. If they're doing something so wrong now, why aren't they fined again? And do you want me to list how many times Microsoft or Sony have been fined for things completely irrelevant to this discussion? Nowhere did I say I have sympathy for any corporation, I just called Jaffe out on his own bullshit. Feel free to eat it up instead.