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iPhone's Game Potential As a Threat to Java Phone Games
Ian Lamont writes "In the runup to Apple's WWDC 2008, Chris Tompkins thinks that the iPhone's gaming potential 'might finally put the lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death.' He cites the iPhone's use of Core Animation adapted for ARM processors, which he says allows for the advanced effects of OS X and now OpenGL-accelerated 3D games, as well as the importance of an on-demand store and Internet connection. Tompkins says that while certain genres lend themselves to the iPhone's touch controls, such as real-time strategy games (think StarCraft) the lack of physical controls will force developers to creatively approach the multitouch and accelerometer on the iPhone. His advice to Apple — make a compelling overture to independent game designers, and treat them like rock stars. Tompkins, incidentally, is one of several people who have recently pointed to Apple's mobile gaming potential."
The iPhone will only put the "lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death" when most phone users out there are iPhone users.
Apple has captured an impressive portion of the smartphone market, but their overall market share among all cellphones is minuscule.
The threat isn't to shitty cellphone games. The threat is to the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. The iPhone has a touch screen like the DS and can play movies like the PSP, and WiFi like both of them, plus it has a tilt sensor and oh, yeah, multiple gigs of storage space. Once the iPhone costs the same as a PSP and game manufacturers are allowed to build for it (ie. after Monday), Nintendo and Sony are going to be entering a world of pain.
Nobody really buys a Blackberry for the express purpose of gaming, and it's not at all a gaming platform, but games are very popular on them. Same goes for other phones. Though gaming is never going to be the focus of the iPhone, games could be the thing that pushes some people over the edge to get one.
Last I checked the only company making iPhones is Apple. There are and will continue to be many Java-based phones and companies that will make games for them.
This entire discussion about the iPhone's new bling features, in 10 years time will read a bit like the bling new features of a calculator watch. I remember as a kid how everyone sat around comparing who's digital watch had the most buttons, or whether every watch will some day tell you your altitude and temperature and all sorts of other useless rubbish.
I smell feature-creep.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Even if the iPhone is enormously successful, there's no way it poses a threat to Java phone games.
1. The iPhone's market share is a tiny drop in the global bucket, even if all the Apple-loving tech media journalists would like to have you think otherwise.
2. iPhone game development restricts you to a MacOS development environment. This basically guarantees that even if the iPhone becomes hugely successful, its place in mobile game development will never capture more than a minority status among game developers.
3. Unless all of the other mobile industry players spontaneously decide to line up behind Apple, Java is not going to lose ground to C# anytime soon as the language of choice for game developers.
4. Java is a programming language and a set of industry standards for mobile hardware, not mobile phone hardware itself. Pointing to the cool new hardware features that the iPhone supports isn't an argument against java phone games, it just points towards Apple's decision not to play nice with the rest of the industry standard apps and developers out there. If anything, this decision will limit the scope iPhone-specific game development (who wants to waste their resources on such a small market segment when they can make games that will run on a much larger amount of phones out there), it doesn't pose any threat to the use of Java as a mobile game development standard. At the very least, it means that Java game developers will have to wait for Sun (or any other company) to provide a good set of translation tools that will let them develop for the iPhone's hardware in Java.
Seriously. I don't think people buy more than two or three of those Java
All your base are belong to Wii.
While there are a lot of possible ideas with tilt and touch only, the lack of real tactile buttons is a major problem for a lot of games. cellphones, ds, psp, all gameboys till today, all consoles, pc's all have buttons, which get used in most games.
the iphone looks like a sweet psp, but it definitely doesn't feel that way.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"might finally put the lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death" I thought "Lackluster" was being generous. When was the last time you've heard someone say "OMG! You've got to play that 'insert java game here' on my cellphone!" Handheld consoles like the DS or PSP should be the ones quaking in their boots.
What you're describing are approximations catering to an inappropriate control scheme. I'd like to see you play Megaman with your finger, or something more complex like Castlevania. I'd like to see you get past 50 lines in regular Tetris making those crossing motions you describe. Virtual buttons have no tactile feedback, imagination has nothing to do with it. They take up screen space, and what you have left is a graphically superior Gameboy Color. Gratz, you beat Nintendo c. 1998, albeit with even more cramped controls (iPhone's really thin to be playing Gameboy-style for very long). A bluetooth addon would either drain the iPhone battery faster, or require its own power source which would need to be charged also. That's not very enticing to me.
Java Mobile = open platform used by cell phones from almost every vendor iPhone mobile = proprietary platform for 1 phone on the market
Horns are really just a broken halo.
"PSP = $170. NDS = $130. iPhone = $399."
Rumor has it that the price will drop, but you're missing the point. People won't buy a $399 game console. But they may well buy a $399 device that's a phone, and a text messager, and an email and internet browser, and camera, and music player, and movie player, AND a game player.
Further, if you have the iPhone, just how likely is it that someone is going to buy yet another portable device in any of those categories?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Define dominate. They're already skimming the lion's share of the premimum computer market (70% or so?). And the online music and video market. And the mp3 player market. And they're making a pretty good dent in the premium smartphone market after just one year and one phone.
If you ask me the smartest thing they can do is just keep on doing what they're doing, and let the other idiots fight it out in the $495 beige-box zero-margin marketplace.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The iPhone won't put these games to death, but the nextGen smart phones will (timeline? Anyone's guess). They'll die because they suck, not because the iPhone is indestructible.
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Five million in the overall world wide market is nothing. It's great for the smart phone market (as Apple keep telling us), but the gaming market isn't aimed at smart phones. The money is in small, casual games that you can play on a five minute break.
What you're going to get is a repeat of the current computer market where Apple gets thrown the gaming scraps because no-one wants to pour development money into something that has single digit market share (no matter how capable the hardware/software).
For comparison, Galactic Civilizations II, a PC only game by a rather unknown developer, made 8 figures (as in more than 10 million dollars). That's one game, from one publisher, and not a major title at that. For another comparison, World of Warcraft has somewhere in the realm of 10 million active players paying a monthly fee between $10-20 depending on region. That would be 9 figures PER MONTH.
So yes, $2.6 million is rather lackluster. Not surprising, the games blow and playing games on your phone cuts in to your talk time, but that doesn't change what it is.
Seems a little pointless to buy something you can download for free.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
I think you are missing the point.
Nobody is saying that Apple will wipe out java-based games with market saturation, instead they will wipe them out by "changing the game".
In other words, every other cell phone manufacturer is going to realize that "Hey, we need to up our hardware/OS and start supporting 3d accelerated games, etc!".
So java based phones become a thing of the past, because of the market pressure from Apple.
I guarantee you that studios will pick up a Mac if it means developing for the platform. You're thinking from the standpoint of a closed-minded PC bigot. Developers spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on gaming console development platforms. This one just happens to be a Mac.