NGmoco founder Neil Young, speaking at a keynote at the Game Developers Conference said of the Apple iPhone as a gaming platform, “Don’t let the haters tell you it sucks compared to the DS or the PSP. It doesn’t. It’s good. It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.”
Young believes the Apple iPhone 3G can be a better mobile gaming platform that Nintendo or Sony as its always connected, there aren’t a great deal of 1st party games to contend with and iPhoners always carry their Apple iPhone.
Now with the impending arrival of the new iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone games can be taken to the next level, as the Apple iTunes App Store can strip away a lot of the cost due to the viral nature of mobile games.
Source – informationweek
While I have no doubt that games on the iPhone can be good, it is delusional to say that it can be better than the PSP and DS.
It might sound good to inegrate a proper console into a phone, but once you do this, they start standing on each others toes.
It’s easy enough when using your psp/ds to also use your cellphone for texting and phonecalls. Once you intergrate them fully, you would need to start switching between the game and you phone functions repeatedly. This ruins the fluidity of the game and is more bothersome than taking both a phone and a gaming system. Additionally, by gaming on your cellphone, it will chew through the batteries much faster, lessening the time between recharges, which can be very bothersome if you’re on the road alot (ie. will negatively affect those who like playing games while travelling).
For better games, that can match the psp, you would need something alot more powerfull than the iPhone. This would drive prices through the roof.
A lack of first party titles on the iPhone is not a good thing. This means less people will take games on the iPhone seriously. The DS is a perfect example of how first party titles make a system.
Effectively, the games on an iPhone will never be anything but a distraction from bordeom when you’re stuck somewhere with only you phone, and any real gamer has his psp/ds with him if he goes anywhere for an extended period of time.
I dont really think iphone is quite good as PSP or nintendo when it comes to games. plus I used iphone for a while it never really satisfies any purpose to full extent. I will say its still a over rated gadget.
While apps for the iPhone have been very ingenious, I fail to see how it can bypass:
- The sheer graphical output of something like the PSP
- The playability of the Nintendo DS - two screens AND a stylus in addition to buttons and a touch screen are still something an iPhone cannot hope to touch.
The iPhone needs to remember its place - as a phone first, and as a gaming platform…maybe second, but definitely somewhere way down the line.
I think since this post was made, it can now be seen that the pace of development of games on the DS and PSP are simply too great for the iPhone to surpass it. The iPhone needs to focus on being a good phone.