Mobile Revolution Comments by Rob Fahey

Hmm, the one problem (well, the MAJOR problem anyway) I can see with the equivalent of the App Store on Android or WinMo devices is the form factor isn't consistent. Up to this point at least the iPhone and iPod Touch have had one set of hardware specs with the few physical buttons remaining constant. You know that you basically program everything to use the accelerometers and touch screen.

Now look at, say, WinMo devices. They're all over the place with a massive variation in scree size, resolution, hardware controls, processor speed etc etc etc. Delivering an app store for that platform that's as simple to use as Apple's without needing to know any technical details about your device seems like quite a challenge.

It'd also be interesting to see the knock-on effect Apple's success is having with the traditional portable gaming consoles. Is it going to push both Nintendo and Sony further towards the digital download route and how well will it work on dedicated gaming devices. Not to mention what games we're going to start to see now that the iPhone has proven its worth as a platform and developers have had time to develop longer and more in-depth games.

I agree with BOFH_UK in that form factor has been one of the main reason that mobile gaming hasn't really taken off.

When you don't know up front what screen resolution you can expect your software to run on, you hit an almightly wall of confusion. Your assets need to be good looking on small, medium and large screens which means bundling them all in the same deliverable or having users select their device and delivering an app targetted for that platform. From experience, its a pain.

Also, when different devices have different input mechanisms or buttons in different places, you need to write your app with that in mind. All these considerations make mobile development a chore.

What Apple have done is bring the portable gaming sensibilities of Nintendo, Sony and Sega and created a single platform to sell. No different screen resolutions, no different input methods, just one platform. This is fine for now, but the first time they decide to upgrade their machine and include, say, a higher resolution screen and input methods to replace the woeful touchscreen, they will find that things start to get a little more complicated.

BOFH_UK: Exactly how is it any different? There are a megaton of applications and such on the market already, the only thing that an app store would do is bring them together under one roof. This is where XNA/DX could come in, a layer between hardware and software. Any input issues could be avoided by saying that any 6.5/7.0 model must have a bare minimum of specs.

I think the iphone is overrated in term of game. There is a lot of talk and article but shows me a AAA games. Where is the AAA games? I just bought a PSP for God of WAR and Monster Hunter. Man, I love the display. I have a DS to play Brain Training only. There is no game I want to play on Iphone. One note, PSP has battery problem, only last for 4 to 5 hours.. If Iphone has games like Monster Hunter, my phone will be dead and I don't want my phone dead.

Talk about competitor, I am looking forward to the next PSP.. Let wait and see

My Nokia 3330 has BANTUMI

Wii and Iphone are not in the same league. Nintendo has been doing games for 2 decades.
I consider Wii sport and Wii Fit are triple AAA titles that sell Wii. If you consider their sales volume > 15m each.

What is the best selling game for IPhone? Tower defense? I don't think there is a free games on Iphone outsold Wii Fit that cost $99 dollar per piece.. I can bet on that

The iPhone doesnt have to be a hardcore or more serious gaming device, there are PSP's, DS's and Consoles that can do that. Its not about that for the moment, its about being able to download useful and interesting apps that perhaps you can mess around with for 5 minutes or an hour without needing to take a larger handheld around with you. The iphone is perfect cause its small and its a phone :)

When i want hardcore I go on my PS3 and Xbox (I have a wii also but lets not talk about that..lol), the phone is a device i need to call people and contains apps that I can use to help me get things done better and quicker.

I suspect in the future the iphone and other phone devices will continue to get more powerful, but other phone developers have created a problem with themselves by having different specifications etc.

I am alittle peeved with myself that i didnt know there was a new phone coming out though, only just got my iphone...lol

The ipod touch really has. Its an amazing kit. the games the price almost everything. Obviously though the one thing that will prevent it from true greatness is the lack of buttons. Still I recommend it without hesitation.

Xerx3s - yes, it could be avoided by giving minimum spec levels but Microsoft hasn't shown ANY indication it's going to do so. It also goes the other way, when you have devices that go beyond the minimum spec by, for example, putting a screen in with double the resolution of the minimum it makes it more difficult to develop for.

But it's not just about developers, this market is inherently skewed towards the more 'casual' (yeuch, I hate that word) market. They're not likely to know the spec of their device so the store itself needs to filter those apps that won't work properly on their device. That's a very tricky thing to do but even if they do pull it off there's the issue of how a piece of software will run on different devices considering that WinMo devices tend to not only have different processor speeds but performance is influenced to a great degree by different skins and other functionality loaded on top of the base WinMo OS.

Don't get me wrong here, I hope that it all works out but I can just see major problems ahead for WinMo, Android and even Symbian trying to not only get their app store equivalents up and running but in making it simple to use. It's the last bit that's the key and it's where Apple's traditional approach of controlling both hardware and software pays massive dividends.

I think this whole 'AAA' thing is a red herring. Does the iPhone have a single 'must have' game? Probably not. But at anywhere from 59p to a couple of quid, it doesn't matter. There are precious few AAA titles that are that cheap, and the app store is full of really, really good games that - even if you bought the whole top 20 titles - would probably cost you less than the next Call of Duty.

Thing is, this isn't an either/or decision. I have a DSi and an iPod Touch and I use them for different styles of gaming at different times. And then downstairs I have all three consoles. Tell you what, though, the iPod gets a ton more use than the bloody Wii...

Incidentally, I bought the DSi for the download store but so far it's a huge disappointment. On that front Apple has it utterly sorted.

Just coming to say hi to the haters before reading the article. Always funny to read comments from people who have never played games on the device for any length of time.

For me the big change is that my DS now gets almost no usage. It never gets used in the house as I'd rather play games on the TV consoles when I'm there, and it never gets taken out with me as the iPhone provides plenty of little games to while away the commute; Zen Bound, Sway, Rolando, all sorts of puzzle games that are free or less than a couple of pounds. It's not that the DS doesn't have games I'd like to play, it's just that it's been bumped out of its niche and I only have so many hours a week that I can game in.

The iPhone/touch will never beat the PSP or DS when it comes to real meaty action games. It just can't control action games well enough. Touch controls are flaky and lack the necessary tactile sense of buttons under your thumbs (I tried playing Wolfenstein3D and gave up in frustration). Accelerometer control can be unique, but not always suitable. Then there is battery life to consider: if the game has good-looking 3D graphics, you'll get a 2-hour battery life.

No, the iPhone/touch is perfect for little puzzle games. You can build up a "42 All Time Classics"-like collection of word games, card games, board games and other puzzles. And Peggle. God, Peggle. Games that can make any PDA/smartphone a much more pleasurable device to carry around, but will never actually make it a true gaming platform.

I'm deeply disappointed that there's only been a couple of fuckpuppets posting utterly stupid anti-Apple idiocy in this comments thread. Very poor show.

For me the big change is that my DS now gets almost no usage. It never gets used in the house as I'd rather play games on the TV consoles when I'm there, and it never gets taken out with me as the iPhone provides plenty of little games to while away the commute;

That's exactly it. Add the convenient AppStore with its low prices where I can download a couple of games for a weekend trip without having to go to a shop and pay 40 notes , and it's not hard to see why my DS hasn't seen any use lately, either.

You don't need AAA games for a multi-media device. If you're treating the iPhone the same as you would any normal games machine then you're barking up the wrong tree.
I got mine to be my phone first and foremost, the fact that it's also an iPod was brilliant, then it became apparent with all the apps and browser that it would essentially be a mini laptop for me, and then you have a play around with the games and find some cracking cheap games.

Likewise, I don't get people's problems with the App Store that "it's hard to sift through all the crap". Well, does that mean you go into GAME and buy something due to the back of the box? Like anything it's all about recommendations, reviews, word of mouth. The App Store doesn't need to change, there needs to be better marketing by the developers/publishers rather than stick it on the store and hope for the best.

Hey, guys.. This is a gaming site not a mobile/Media device. If you want to discuss this other than games, go to Nokia smart forum or something like that.

Iphone's main selling point is not games.. The main selling point is a phone with multi-media functionality with sexy style. As a game device, I think is so-so.

BOHF_UK: Um, yeah, phones with the ability to run applications were around before the iPhone. An app store supporting more than one device would need to know the user's device and only display compatible products, and mechanisms exist to do this and have done for years. See: every operator portal. I'm thinking more about Android, J2ME, BREW, Symbian, etc. - maybe this is still an open problem for WinMo but nobody develops apps for a stagnant, dysfunctional platform with no consumer market share anyway.

The article makes some good points. Most mobile games are still sold on platforms other than the iPhone, because a sizeable chunk of the market 1.) don't have a credit card or aren't willing to link it to their phone, 2.) don't want to pay an expensive contract, 3.) live in countries where the iPhone and/or App Store aren't available or 4.) prefer a phone with non-gaming capabilities that the iPhone doesn't offer (e.g. keyboard, decent camera, swappable battery, form factor, etc.). There's always going to be some degree of device fragmentation if you want to reach the whole market.

Hendo: The App Store could be improved. If you walk into GAME (or browse Amazon or Play.com), you're being presented with games which they think have the broadest and strongest appeal (and usually which publishers have backed with marketing money). If you take out any editorial guidance from how a shop is presented and rely entirely on customers looking to external reviews, this can still work, but it is much more risky for developers. You could have a perfectly good game which just doesn't go viral, while a game with a gimmick (that has little bearing on its overall quality) might do massively better. The more that quality is consistently rewarded, the healthier the platform will be.

that air traffic control game cost me 59p and is one of the most addictive games I've played for a good while

that is all

It is not the fricking app store. It is the fact that games on other devices were unplayable and crap.

The reason Apple managed to completely dominate the portable media player market, and at the moment, the mobile gaming market, is simple: They know what the goddamn hell they're doing, and everyone else seems to be bumbling around in the dark.

Look at the mobile phone/media player output of the other major players like Sony. They seem to release a new handheld every week, only marginally different to the last one, with a catchy name like the i90986789809 Pro Media Buster, which does little except make buying a phone hard - and ensure that every single person in the world has a different handset with subtly different requirements.

So while these companies have been producing the same, marginally upgraded handsets forever - while all the tech required to make something as awesome as an iphone has been lying around untouched(haha, notice the pun?) Apple just came out and released something that, actually, was pretty good.

It's not necessarily that Apple are so great. It's just that everyone else sucks so bad.

snake was the peak

that air traffic control game cost me 59p and is one of the most addictive games I've played for a good while

Ditto. One of the best games I've played in the last years all platforms considered. Don't care whether it's AAA or not. It's amazing fun and that's all that matters.

Big budgets and long turn-around cycles are not the right business model for iPhone games. Small games which you can doodle around with 'in between' (on a subway ride, for example), priced at or around 1 to 5 bucks is the way to go. And I actually like the way the platform has given independent and small-scale developers a way to distribute their stuff (and earn some money with it). It means a lot of shovelware, but also a good range of fresh ideas and concepts.

MaxiSleep:

"It is not the fricking app store. It is the fact that games on other devices were unplayable and crap."

Erm, no they weren't. Which just goes to show it absolutely is the App Store (and the unlimited data plan) that is the differentiating factor. It greatly reduced the complexity of finding and downloading games.

Galcon, Tap Tap revenge, Air-plane landing game, Google Earth= £1.18 all-in.

I bought my ipod touch a couple of weeks ago. I own every gaming latform out there, but in the last two weeks I have spent 60% of my game time playing galcon! Novelty will wear off, but the accesibiulity of app-store, and the bargain prices are a major draw for me.

buy an extended battery if you battery life causes you issues. They are amazing. My S&L needs charging about once a week.

This article plays the cautious card quite a bit with regards to Apple's future success in this area. Not sure why, I would be amazed if a serious challenger shows up and actually eats into the Apple share with any significance.

@secombe

So you think no caution should be used in the article because Apple cannot be beaten?