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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."

19 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 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.
    7. 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.

    8. 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.

    9. 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).

    10. 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.

  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: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".

  4. 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.
  5. 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.

  6. 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.