iPhone – A Doubtful Gaming Platform

This article was originally written and taken from Gamers-Reunion, which is now discontinued.

I’m not much of a Mac Fan myself, but sometimes I wonder that if the iPhone will be able to play games. Sure it will, but then you have to wonder of what level of games of which it can play. It has a sharp touch screen, so that can make intuitive use – even the little sensor which when you turn the phone on it’s side can come in as a unique platform. This sounds similar… the DS maybe? However doubtful I am of it, Apple may of bought a key to their place in the gaming market – but maybe as much as the Nokia-Failure did.

People say Nintendo is like Apple, only they are slightly different due to their markets. Remember, the iPod supporting games does not count because many of them are just like the sad games you find on phones. The phone market makes quite a sum of profit over games being bought and sold, not as much as Ringtones, but it still is a profitable margin. The games do not have to be huge hits though; as I mentioned, poor a crappy games are sold on phones each day; which adds up to quite a profit and is quite profitable.

Whether Apple decides to go into gaming on the iPhone or just have sleeper hits available, there is quite a chance for Apple to push into the gaming market. Although many people, including myself, do not want Apple to get into the gaming market. (Because we have Nintendo?) The hardware used in the iPhone can be quite a development. You have the precise and accurate touch screen which can act as a DS styled platform, along with a rotation sensor. Combining these two aspects, Apple can create something similar to the DS, but possibly not on a scale that the DS and DS Lite turned out to be. Or maybe… as Apple has incredible reputation upon the hardware and software market at this point, which can ensure them some sort of profit. As people are switching over the border between PC’s and Mac (and Visa Versa in many cases) this over-hyped piece of hardware possibly might have an edge because of it’s popularity as an unreleased product; and if Apple mentions that there will be a gaming market available around it, it might hype the iPhone a tad more.

With all that said, the doubt comes in when the limitations are seen. Firstly, Apple has never had any sort of major impact in the gaming market, where as Microsoft has countless games being developed for Windows, and Nintendo as they have been around for generations (before 1970). There are not many good titles for the Mac, apart from World of Warcraft and various others. This cannot be enforced by people using Bootcamp or Parallels on a Mac. Although we are talking about PC’s and Mac’s, there has not been much attention towards Apple and their part in the gaming market. Secondly, the iPhone generally is not that intuitive. You see phones in Japan which can last for days on end, to be used a credit cards, and in many cases as a powerful gaming device. With the iPhones relatively bad battery life, it can be a problem when coming to games which require frequent processing and rendering, especially with the phone service running in the background, the sensors inside the phone, the touch screen, the back light, Wi-Fi, sound and various other processes, including the game itself can use up to quite some battery power.

Lastly, despite the iPhone running OSX10 (Which it does not, literally), it does not look like there will be much third-party support, where as Linux or Windows portable based devices usually do. I doubt that Apple will open up the iPhone to third party developers, leaving Apple to either develop their own games or just transfer the iPod games onto the iPhone. In some cases, Dev Kits for the iPhone can be put out onto the market for publishers to buy, but for myself; I doubt there will be much support for it – but maybe there will be.

Another point which maybe a trouble for Apple that there is not exact gaming hardware feature – such as cartridges, Discs (UMDs) or any other type of hardware support. We have seen this as an obvious point, that there will not be any specific functions for gaming because we have seen the device up front, and Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) never mentioned anything about gaming. So the way to possibly play games on the iPhone is to have them stored on the Hard Drive – but with the relatively small storage space (~20GB I presume), it might be doubtful because having games, and music, videos and various other files on the same, small Hard Drive might be a big limitation.

As much as the iPhone has the potential to become a relatively good gaming platform, Apple’s experience in the gaming market lets it down, including the hardware and software support of the iPhone itself. Apple fans maybe disappointed that this generation around there will not be any gaming support of any kind – maybe you will get Solitaire or Chess as an Apple OSX10 feature, but no massive gaming support from publishers around the world.