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The Mixed Outlook for iPhone Gaming

Posted by Zonk on from the a-lot-of-talk-little-content dept.

With everyone talking about Apple's big announcement, it's unsurprising that commentators are discussing the possibilities of gaming on the iPhone. The DS and the PSP are both on N'Gai Croal's list of who is afraid of the iPhone, and with good reason. Touchscreen gaming on a high-resolution screen? Sounds like fun. TIME's lengthy run-down on the iPhone even mentions the possibilities of games on the small screen. Just the same, it's not all roses: Kotaku talks about the developer unfriendly nature of the platform, and how that could throw up barriers to the first game on the handheld.

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Developer Unfriendly? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If it already uses widgets, couldn't you just write the games in Javascript? That doesn't sound that developer unfriendly to me. Also, what about web games that use Flash. You're going to be able to play those under Safari already, right? I'm sure many developers will design Flash games specifically tailored to the iPhone.

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    1. Re:Developer Unfriendly? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      There'll be no Flash or Java on the first iteration of these phones, although that's probably because involving too many developers would kill the secrecy around this product. The next revs will probably support them.

      Well, that pretty much eliminates the whole fucking point of having a browser that doesn't display a subset of HTML. If you're giving me a full web browser, you NEED to give me flash and java. Otherwise large portions of the web that would otherwise be accessible because I can view webpages are now closed to me. Yet another reason why this device is going to fail, I guess.

      Another kicker is: no video support in the current camera (although that'll probably change soon). Lots of people use their cameras to record video.

      Given Apple's and Apple Fanboys' continual attempts to paint OSX as THE media platform of choice, this is an extremely horrible decision. But then, no flash, no java, no third party support... I guess this thing is ALL horrible decisions.

      I have a Motorola V3i that I hacked to support video clips longer than one minute. The quality is pretty poor (actually it's the low resolution that hurts the most) but generally speaking the video tells the story. I can't imagine spending $600 on a phone with a camera and finding out that it doesn't do video. That's like spending $50,000 on a car and finding out it has no reverse gear - it doesn't make it totally worthless, especially if you're say purchasing it to race with, but it is a mind-bending omission.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Re:FOUR great devices in one package? by philipgar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When did jobs say users couldn't install software on the iPhone? If you people RTFA, jobs said that they will not allow users to install random software on the phone, however I see no reason they won't have it open to developers, and after extensive testing of the device, allow users to buy the software on iTunes or something. It would seem perfectly natural to me. Jobs point of not allowing all software to run on it is to avoid the issues that plague computers and such when users install a ton of crap on their machines and wonder why things aren't working right. Limiting what can run on a device that has real time constraints and primary functionality that MUST always work is a perfectly logical idea. Especially considering the thought of iPhone viruses that could spread through bluetooth or something if it was allowed.

    Phil