I have quite an interest in the development of the handheld console market. Over the years Nintendo has dominated with its gameboy and DS series. Playstation entered the market late with its PSP and has been until recently the only competitor Nintendo has really faced. However during the Apple conference not long ago CEO Steve Jobs announced that the Ipod touch is infact the ‘number 1 portable game player’.
This statement sent me on a journey of confusion and rage. Firstly how do you classify what is a portable game player and what is a portable device that has the capability of playing games? The Ipod touch is an Ipod after all and therefore is by nature primarily an mp3 player. I own an Ipod touch myself and mainly use it for listening to music on the go. So should the Ipod touch really be classified as a gaming device? In my own opinion, no, no it shouldn’t. This is for many reasons including the fact that the main use of the device, and also the reasons behind purchasing the device, are generally unrelated to games.
So that explains my opinion on how the device shouldn’t be classified. So how exactly did it beat Nintendos behemoth of the DS and Sony’s PSP? In sales of ‘Game & entertainment downloads’. This figure was quoted on the conference as being 1.5 Billion. Now call me a skeptic but this seems abnormally high for game sales. Im willing to bet that this figure encompasses apps such as ‘Virtual Lightsaber’ and ‘Pop the bubblewrap’. THESE ARE NOT GAMES. Games have purpose, goals and rules. Also included in this figure is probably the free games offered in its service. Now i am not saying free games should be included in the figures quoting downloads, but can you really call it ‘number 1’ when the average sale price of a gaming app is around £1 and the majority of downloads are free? Games are ultimitly about making money, sucess in business is based on turnover. Funny how no figures like that showed up in his presentation.
However, ignoring my ranting argument against this statement there has been recent news about Epics development of the Iphone/Ipod as a gaming platform by introducing the Unreal 3 Engine to it. Now my Ipod touch is actually 2nd generation and therefore cannot play the games that EPIC have boasted. Regardless, this is an amazing achievement in my eyes. It is a leap forward in what is possible on such a portable device; normal mapping, lighting, and sheer number of polys, and from what im told it runs well. The Epic Citadel app is a tech demo preparing skeptics for the launch of its sword based title announced for the Iphone/Ipod.
Even more recently the PSP has managed to do well for itself over in Japan, selling 55,000 units for the week of Aug23-29. This compared with the sales of DSiXL, DSi and DS come in at 25k, 19k and just under 4k respectivly. The handheld console market is very competitve and its nice to see some real competition. I just hope Sony is working on a counter attack for the 3DS as the 3DS will sell phenominally well given the launch titles announced. I don’t know which i will be playing more come late spring next year, my 3DS or Guild Wars 2!
Endnote: I hope everyone saw through what Steve Jobs was saying in his presentation. Spinning Figures like that is just paper thin nowadays.
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