Apple’s marketing head honcho Greg Jozwiak has been flapping his gums with some pretty hefty rhetoric about the iPod touch being the “future of gaming.” He’s even had a pop at Sony and Nintendo, not to mention laying into Nokia over N-Gage. But is he right? Will you ever ditch your console for an iPod?
We can see the point Jozwiak’s making. The number of games available for the iPod is impressive, especially considering the App Store has only been open a few months.
What’s more, he’s right in saying the iPod touch and iPhone has a nicer touchscreen than the Nintendo DS.
But isn’t he missing the point? Don’t gamers love button-mashing rather than screen-stroking? Isn’t the whole point of a console that it’s solely dedicated to cranking out games? After all, Apple’s hardly going to build shoulder buttons into the iPod.
The comments section is open, and ready for your thoughts below.
As the Wii has amply proved, you don’t need to make a gamepad for a home console covered in buttons. And the iPhone has definitely shown there are fun games to be had without shoulder-buttons.
BUT what iPhone games are competing against in a way is not PSP games, or DS games, but other things to do on an iPhone. And for that matter, other things to do full stop.
Portable games are mostly played at home. The iPhone *may* become the most-played portable console. But home consoles will always offer a better gaming experience than portable devices.
And yes, just as the Wii lends itself to certain game types, but not so well to other game types, I can’t see the iPhone working brilliantly for complex RPGs, first-person shooters etc. Which have worked well on the DS and PSP.
In short, it’s horses for courses, innit?
No chance! First of all there’s the obvious matters like screen size, then there’s the controls. Handheld devices don’t lend themselves to genres involving more than limited button presses. Also, there’s no way handheld devices will be able to replicate the feeling of playing with your mates in person. There’s nothing better than gathering your chums for a Pro Evolution Soccer tourno! Try doing that with an iPod. If the iPod really was the future of gaming it would cause certain genres to die out (far fetched?) and eliminate the “hardcore” to use a common term element to gaming. And for me that would be the death of gaming.
There’s no buttons! I’m not tilting around on a bus looking like a berk, even if onscreen d-pads do work OK.