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iPhone's Game Potential As a Threat to Java Phone Games

Posted by timothy on from the your-tempest-is-boiling dept.

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."

38 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Umm, no. by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Umm, no. by catch23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah well, when they came out with their first version of their iPod music player, it was expensive, bulky, and claimed only a small percentage of the market. Wait a few years and you'll have iPhone Mini/Nanos replacing your Nokia and Sony Ericssons. When the iPod was initially released, one could argue the Mp3 player market was already saturated with no clear winner. One could argue the cell phone market today is pretty similar.

    2. Re:Umm, no. by drsquare · · Score: 5, Informative

      When the ipod came out, the mp3 player market was empty, there was little to zero competition, and most people didn't own one. They captured the market pretty much by default.

      The phone market on the other hand is completely saturated. There is a lot of tough, long-standing competition offering phones which are much better value for money. In many markets, new phones are given away 'free' with contracts, something which is incompatable with the iphone's business model.

    3. Re:Umm, no. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One big difference though is the ipod is an open platform In what ways in the iPod an open platform?

      It's not open until you put RockBox or Linux on it, and as I understand it, that's no easier or harder than jailbreaking an iPhone.
      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    4. Re:Umm, no. by Tom · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I live in a market where phones often come "free" with contracts. And still, the iPhone came and conquered. The market for "phones" may be saturated, but have you seen mobile phones recently? Their user interfaces are designed by shizophrenic sadists. I know people who avoid entire companies because their UI is so horrible that they classify it as unusable. And these are people who want a phone for the basic functions, like calling someone and keeping an address book. Using the calculator is an advanced usage case for them.

      The iPhone taps into that market in addition to the techies who want it for the geek factor, and the marketing dudes who want it for the cool factor, and the Mac-heads who want it for the integration. And the market for people who want a great phone that's easy to use is HUGE. If the rumours are true and Apple will allow subsidies, they could've trouble mass-producing iPhones fast enough.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    5. Re:Umm, no. by ya+really · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The newer ipods have their firmware encrypted so you cant even put rockbox on them. Open platform? Yeah right. Too bad as well, I love rockbox and all the extras it allows. I don't know why apple cares that much.

    6. Re:Umm, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The phone market might be full, but the phone gaming market sucks terribly. There is a lot of opportunity for someone to come in and do it right (unlike, say the Nokia N-Gage).

      Look at it this way: the smartphone gaming market is pretty much empty.

    7. Re:Umm, no. by Firehed · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As an iPhone owner, I'll be the first to tell you not to buy it for the keyboard. It functions pretty well most of the time, but I'll often find myself hitting return rather than space (it shouldn't be that big of a button) and the auto-correct is really hit or miss. I'll take it over having a physical keyboard and losing half of the screen, but I'd love to be able to carry around a little fold-up keyboard and my iPhone and ditch the laptop when I'd be focusing almost entirely on heavy email and web browsing. I've typed out a few-paragraphs-long email on the virtual keyboard, but it's not to the point where it would replace my laptop entirely for more frequent work.

      You'll get more teens buying it than blackberry-lovers, though, especially come tomorrow (?) when apps start becoming available. Money be damned, teens and early-twenties are the ideal market when it comes to spending disposable income, and it's an ideal device for that market (I'm not saying it's overpriced for what it is - I don't regret spending $600 a couple days after it came out - but the majority of cell phones are either provided by businesses to employees (blackberries) or cheap, crappy, free-with-contract types). It will end up as this little bizarre do-everything device at that point, though you can be sure that Apple makes sure that it's core features aren't neglected. The blackberry is too email-centric and if that's your #1 priority, you'll want the "real" keyboard. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it were to become available, and certainly wouldn't say no to a slide-out version like so many crap phones have today if it didn't compromise anything else on the device (that's probably the one thing that would get me to buy iPhone 2.0, seeing that I have enough trouble getting any signal out here, let alone 3G).

      Having played a few games on it of varying quality, it's a pretty nice platform if developers adapt to the interface. Trism is a great example. The NES emulators not so much, since you're just forcing games made for physical controllers in to a touch/accelerometer device (they work well enough, but are awkward as hell). And teens + games = profit. Again, not so much on the blackberry market.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    8. Re:Umm, no. by Hes+Nikke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it's a GSM device and only 2 of the big US carriers are GSM Did you know that the US only represents a small portion of the world? did you know that GSM is used in every market in the world, and CDMA is only used in the US? sure only 2 US carriers are GSM, but so are all the other carriers in the world! :P
      --
      Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
    9. Re:Umm, no. by floppypond · · Score: 4, Informative

      Since when is the US the only country that has CDMA phones?
      There is only one carrier here that is GSM, all the others are CDMA. I live in Canada.

    10. Re:Umm, no. by McFadden · · Score: 5, Informative

      Added to which, the likelyhood of Apple even bothering about games, let alone treating game designers "like rock stars" is unlikely given their past record. This is Gabe Newell on working with Apple to develop games in the past:

      Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.

    11. Re:Umm, no. by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 4, Informative

      Umm... no. Europe has phone standards mandated by european law. It's all GSM and UMTS (which happens to use WCDMA as an interface, but it's *not* compatible with the US CDMA system).

    12. Re:Umm, no. by MrMickS · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I live in the UK. Its possible to get most phones for free here with the correct price plan. I've tried various smart phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia over the past 5-6 years and all of them have failed in one sense or another. They've all promised much but been left lacking in execution. This is not disimilar to the MP3 player market when the iPod was released.

      I don't expect technology people to see the problem. In general they are happy having to learn the various hoops you need to to get the best out of a device. The remaining people just want something that does the job as easily as possible. The iPhone fits these users. It may not have all of the features that the other phones have, it does execute the features it has better than the competing phones.

      As an example of poor implementation I'm currently using a Nokia E61 with the latest firmware on it. It has a nice web browser, built off Web-Kit. If I select a URL from the messaging app it launches a WAP browser instead of the web browser.

      --
      You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
    13. Re:Umm, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well in the UK i could count the amount of people ive seen with iphones on one hand. People are just not interested in a phone they need to pay for and have a large contract. Phones should be free with contracts. Also the iPhone is very large for a phone. This turns off alot of the mainstream crowd in the UK

    14. Re:Umm, no. by Admiral+Ag · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The iPhone is not primarily a phone. It's a mobile computer that happens to have a phone in it. You can even buy one that doesn't have a phone in if you hate telephones.

      The iPhone/iTouch is a mobile computing platform. It's the new Newton. That's the (open) secret.

      Other companies are attempting to come up with a phone that has a similar UI to the iPhone, and that is natural, since you will probably have trouble buying a phone that doesn't have multi touch in a few years.

      Like Jobs said in another context: they are digging in the wrong place. The future isn't a phone, but a mobile computer that happens to be a phone. It isn't the UI they should be trying to copy, but the platform. Google seems to be the only company that realizes this (perhaps Microsoft does, but they can't seem to do anything about it - I say this as the depressed owner of a Winmobile phone. I'd rather attempt to use an interface that involved dodging live cobras).

      --
      "by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
    15. Re:Umm, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well what I mean is that its easy to write software and drivers to interact with the ipod. For instance you can manage one with Linux. This is a very well documented interface - even though it wasn't documented by apple.

      If it wasn't documented by Apple, it doesn't count as open. It counts even less because if it were up to Apple, the Linux iPod apps wouldn't exist.

      Do you consider Windows open because Wine exists? Probably not.

    16. Re:Umm, no. by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

      Did you know that the US only represents a small portion of the world? Did you know that the US is the largest English-speaking market? Did you know that Slashdot is based in the US?
    17. Re:Umm, no. by Wulfstan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not true! Zapp in Romania (part of Europe now!) is a CDMA carrier.

      http://www.zapp.ro/

      --
      --- Nick, hard at work :->
  2. Missing the point. by earthbound+kid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Missing the point. by Rocketship+Underpant · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sony will be in trouble; they will have to compete on hardware specs and exclusive titles the same way the PS3 has to compete with PCs. Nintendo, on the other hand, has shown time and time again, they will take chances and innovate with unique games and hardware to an extent that other companies will not. If the iPhone comes to dominate handheld touch-screen gaming, Nintendo will come up with something new the iPhone doesn't do.

      --
      He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
    2. Re:Missing the point. by Anpheus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So you mean it might require innovation on the part of the developers?

      Dear heaven no, we better cancel WWDC.

    3. Re:Missing the point. by Firehed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm glad you're not going to be developing games for the iPhone then.

      I've played quite a broad array of current iPhone games (jailbroken phone). The ones that were designed for button-based input - the console emulators in particular - really suck. They're functional, but the input is awful, just as you would expect when the game wants buttons and all you have is a touchscreen. The games designed around the iPhone's input devices (accelerometer, multi-touch) are far better.

      Of course, putting together some sort of RPG given those inputs would be a hell of a challenge. It's not impossible by any stretch of the imagination (I'm not so sure about accelerometer-based character movement, but multi-touch menus could still work quite well) but you'll really be looking at two completely different styles of gameplay that are centralized around the input device. I had an old GameBoy kirby game that had a primitive accelerometer built in that was used for character movement rather than the typical d-pad. It was kind of hack-ish and didn't lend itself especially well to the device, but perhaps if treated as an early proof of concept, it shows that there is potential.

      The iPhone is NOT a traditional device, and no matter your opinion of Apple, you have to admit they changed the rules. If you try to develop for it while following the rules of traditional devices, you WILL fail. So porting over your DS/PSP games is right out unless you intend to give them away. If you want to develop games that need buttons, go right ahead - but keep them on the DS and PSP.

      I don't think you'll see any real collision between the portable gaming and cell phone markets for quite a while, but rather see the two coexist with completely different styles and genres of games.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
  3. Re:Do you guys seriously believe this? by mstahl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. How is the iPhone going to kill Java-based games? by Perseid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. lackluster? by Dionysus · · Score: 3, Informative

    The mobile gaming industry was $2.6 million industry in 2005 and expected to be $11.2 by 2010. I suspect most of that number is java games (never seen a non-Java games, except those that came with the phone).

    Maybe he's only talking about the US marked?

    --
    Je ne parle pas francais.
  6. From a futurist's perspective by mrbluze · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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]
  7. Re:How is the iPhone going to kill Java-based game by Perseid · · Score: 4, Informative

    OK, so...flamebait? WTF? I'm not suggesting the iPhone won't be capable of good games or even that there wont be good games. But Java games, crappy as a lot of them may be, are an already established, cross-platform industry. There are lots of Java-based phones. There's only one iPhone. So the iPhone will not "finally put the lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death".

  8. iPhone a threat to Java games? Fat chance by radimvice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:iPhone a threat to Java games? Fat chance by radimvice · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why would that be an issue? If a developer feels the market is worth going after, then buying a Mac is no big deal. In fact, I'd be surprised if there were many developers who didn't have at least one Mac in their business, even if they don't use it to develop on or for. It's not as simple as "buying a mac" and clicking a 'compile game for iPhone' button, it's forcing your project cycle to incorporate the entire MacOS environment into your game development, which is a very big deal. Now, assuming that the developer makes the decision that it's even worth making an iPhone port of their game, this means that not only do they need to port any of their existing Java code over to objective-C, but they have to either (1) purchase Macs for all of the programmers put on the porting project, allotting them enough extra time to learn the quite unfamiliar OS, IDE, and programming language combo; or (2) hire an extra, separate team of Mac-capable developers just for the iPhone ports.

      The other option is to just do iPhone-exclusive game development from the start, which right away corners you into an extremely niche and unproven market. You'd be better off developing for the portable consoles (DS, PSP, etc) which have markets large enough to actually justify this sort of device-specific exclusive game development.
    2. Re:iPhone a threat to Java games? Fat chance by shmlco · · Score: 3, Interesting

      True. Any major game developer isn't going to mind spending a few grand on Macs. Heck, even smaller developers like PopCap can afford it (and are doing so).

      Further, you get an added bonus. Develop a game for the iPhone and you're probably close to having a game that could be upgraded and sold to the entire Mac audience. Develop for Symbian, however, and... well... you have a game for Symbian.

      Sorry about that.

      --
      Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
    3. Re:iPhone a threat to Java games? Fat chance by tepples · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You'd be better off developing for the portable consoles (DS, PSP, etc) which have markets large enough to actually justify this sort of device-specific exclusive game development. One advantage of the iPhone, at least for developers who have already moved to the United States, is that the official devkit costs only about $2,000 (Mac + iPhone + data plan + developer certificate), and it can be installed in a home office. Compare this to the DS official devkit, which Nintendo will not allow to be installed in a home office.
  9. Non-Button Gaming by davepermen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  10. People play Java games? by blumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

  11. Re:hm by Aerundel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  12. Apple isn't interested in gaming by SnappyCrunch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Gabe Newell of Valve Software (Makers of the Half-Life series, Portal, Counter-Strike, etc.) has said in an interview that they have spoken to Apple several times about getting their games on the Mac platform. Apparently, each time they're approached by Apple, Valve tells Apple what they'd like Apple to do, and each time Apple doesn't do it. Apple wouldn't say no to having games developed for the Mac or iPhone, but I just can't see them trying to cater to game developers. They've never done it before, despite ample opportunity.

  13. Convergance by shmlco · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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.
  14. Ummm, that's not much by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  15. And they'll quickly regret it by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apple is bound by the same laws of physics as all the rest of us and that means battery life. While it sounds like a great idea to use one device for everything you quickly come to realise that if you do that on your phone, you kill your talk time. You just can't have it both ways: You spend the battery on toying with it, it isn't there for a conversation, you talk on it, you don't have the battery for other stuff.

    This isn't something that is problematic if you use your phone a little bit, like playing 10 minutes while waiting for a doctor's appointment, but it is if you try to use it to replace other devices. If you listen to MP3s on your phone all day, watch a video on the train ride to work, then play a game for an hour at lunch time, well you are going to find that if you need to take a long call, you are fucked, especially if you don't remember to recharge every day (which many don't). Even if the processor is super efficient, those pretty active matrix LCD screens still suck a bunch of juice.

    So I don't think you'll find people giving up their DS's and iPods just because they get an iPhone. Until we find a way to significantly increase the energy density of batteries, it just isn't a good idea. Phones already have a limited enough talk time, cutting in to that in any significant manner isn't a winning idea.