Comments on: Apple Becoming a Gaming Power House?

By: atmtn

atmtn — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:11:59 +0000

iErik, you can laugh your *** off all day long, but it only makes you look iGnorant. To act so smug about something you clearly have no clue about is bad form, even on the internet, and frog obviously has much more of a grasp on the situation than you. In fact, I’d go as far as to say none of this is really a matter of opinion, the iPhone is simply not standing toe-to-toe with the platforms that own the handheld gaming market yet. That’s a clear-as-day fact.

Should Sony and Nintendo be worried about losing market-share? Most definitely. The iPhone is a killer device, and its growing library of games is only getting better with time. In fact, I’ve been a die-hard video game player since the Atari days, and even I am racking up far more play-time on my iPhone than my PSP or DS, strictly out of convenience. When you have an audience’s attention on lock-down like that, the rest of the market has good reason to be nervous. But that’s far from saying Apple has much of anything to compete with the top-tier titles published for the DS or PSP at this point. What the iPhone has right now is mostly a lot of accessible, casual-centric games of extremely varying quality. Massive amounts of shovelware is readily available, but the dreck is thankfully off-set by quality efforts like de Blob, Fieldrunners, Missile Command and Apple’s own Poker (even if they’re in short supply). But even the best of them can hardly dream of competing with the the likes of LocoRoco, Legend of Zelda, God of War, GTA, or Castlevania, which are a very small sampling of the must-have releases tearing it up for the “other guys”. These titles have had crazy amounts of time and money pumped into their development, by award-winning teams of seasoned industry vets, and it’s actually unfair to even put 99% of the iPhones titles up against them. It’s not just the costs of physical media that make PSP and DS games more expensive, its also the costs of developing such high quality software (which can, at times, even rival home console releases from only a generation back).

I have no doubt the iPhone will start to see a steady flow of hotly anticipated releases from publishers already firmly established in the game industry. But just because a few of them have dipped their baby-toe in the water, doesn’t mean it has happened yet.

By: iErik

iErik — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:30:13 +0000

@frog

lmao yeah sure okay (:

By: frog

frog — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:15:50 +0000

Nearly every game right now on the iPhone is crappy. Some are cute, fun for a day or so – but a million times behind a big production psp/ds game!

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:08:53 +0000

Doubt they should be, the games we see here are mostly timewasters while the DS and PSP games are essentially portable home console games for the longer jouneys etc.

The phrase "Jack of all trades, Master of nothing" springs to mind...

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:15:43 +0000

I don’t think the iPhone will become a true ‘gaming powerhouse’ until there is an external pad/button like we’ve seen being developed for jailbroken iphones. Yes some new innovative games will take advantage of the touchscreen and accelerometer and very simple games not requiring quick input will be popular. I just can’t imagine always having to cover up part of the screen with your input gestures.

By: iErik

iErik — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:30:35 +0000

@Chris

excuse me ? EA does make games for iphone, bud. why dont you pick up an iphone sometime, the quality of the games are amazing. And if its so far behind, why is it beating out psp and ds put together? yeah, thought so

By: lea

lea — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:50:27 +0000

I sold my PSP after I got my iphone. Movies, games, good internet connection, and music all in one. Who needs anything else.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:45:57 +0000

Are you nuts? There may be quantity, but there’s an astounding lack of quality. When the iPhone’s games start comeing en masse from EA, Actiblizzard, Ubisoft and other AAA budget developers, THEN we can have this discussion. Until then, the iPhone is FAR behind as a competitve gaming platform.

By: Keil Miller

Keil Miller — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:32:59 +0000

I sit in bed on my iPhone, not my MacBook. Check out Fieldrunners. It’s a perfect example of what an iPhone should be.

By: iErik

iErik — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:24:59 +0000

oh, and the iphone was created to put all your devices into one, to answer your question on why i would replace them