為何遊戲廠商不推出手機?

許多玩家好奇為何任天堂和索尼沒有跨足手機產業。主要原因是市場已經嚴重飽和，製造商已經沒有太多利潤，只能透過應用程式商店賺錢。例如，每次遊戲內購買寶物時，蘋果和安卓都能從遊戲開發商身上抽取30％的利潤，而目前蘋果拿走產業大部分的利潤。

儘管家用主機大廠擁有許多經典遊戲和喜愛的玩家族群，也很難從競爭激烈的手機市場中獲利。如果真的進行開發，就會面臨到手機的技術問題。除了搭載主機上的整套晶片組外，信號收發裝置都需要重新設計，而安卓平台的整合也是一大考驗。即使系統整合完畢，還需要重新與遊戲開發商洽談版權，議定新的銷售分成比例。版權問題相當複雜，這些收入如果無法負擔開發成本，則手機單價會變得相當昂貴。另一個問題是，若手機正式推出，是否會衝擊到本身的家用主機銷售。

如果使用現有的高通晶片推出手機，就只能透過模擬器來玩遊戲，直接影響遊戲體驗。想要像華為一樣自行開發晶片，投入的資金成本至少幾十億美元。之後還有許多專利堡壘，萬一無法成功與安卓系統整合，最終只會變成一款能玩遊戲和打電話的手機，其他軟體都無法使用。

早期的Sony Ericsson曾推出過PSP手機，可以玩PS和PSP的遊戲，但可以玩的遊戲相當少，漸漸就被市場淘汰。目前的PS5畫面清晰度直逼電影，這部分也是手機性能難以競爭。儘管當年的索尼社長平井一夫主打"One Sony"策略，企圖整合集團內的所有資源開發出更好的產品，但最終也是失敗告終。

Why don't gaming companies launch smartphones?

Many players are curious why Nintendo and Sony have not ventured into the smartphone industry. The main reason is that the market is already heavily saturated, and manufacturers have little profit margin, relying mainly on app store revenues. For example, every time a player makes an in-game purchase, Apple and Android can take a 30% profit from the game developers, with Apple currently dominating most of the industry profits.

Even though home console giants have many classic games and loyal fan bases, it is challenging to profit from the fiercely competitive smartphone market. If they were to develop smartphones, they would face technical challenges. Apart from integrating the entire chipsets from their consoles, signal transmitting and receiving devices would also need redesigning, while integrating with the Android platform would be a major challenge. Even after system integration, renegotiating copyrights with game developers to determine new sales profit-sharing ratios would be necessary. Copyright issues are complex, and if these revenues cannot cover development costs, smartphone prices would become prohibitively expensive. Another concern is whether the release of smartphones would impact the sales of their home consoles.

Using existing Qualcomm chips to launch smartphones would limit gameplay to emulators, directly affecting the gaming experience. Developing chips independently, like Huawei, would require an investment of at least several billion dollars. Additionally, there are numerous patent barriers, and if integration with the Android system fails, the result would be merely a phone capable of gaming and making calls, with other software unusable.

Sony Ericsson previously launched the PSP phone, which could play PS and PSP games, but the available game selection was limited, leading to its gradual market elimination. Currently, the PS5's graphics quality rivals that of movies, making it challenging for smartphones to compete in terms of performance. Despite Sony's former president Kazuo Hirai's "One Sony" strategy to integrate all resources within the group to develop better products, it ultimately ended in failure.

照片:DALLE3