Slashdot Mirror
iPhone Shakes Up the Video Game Industry
Hugh Pickens writes "Troy Wolverton writes in the Mercury News that in less than a year, the iPhone has become a significant game platform, but its bigger impact could be to help change the way the game industry does business. 'It's got everything you need to be a game changer,' said Neil Young, co-founder and CEO of ngmoco, which develops games solely for the iPhone. With a year under its belt and an installed base of iPhone and iPod Touch owners at around forty million, the iPhone/iPod Touch platform has eclipsed next-gen console penetration numbers and started to catch up to the worldwide penetration of both Sony's (50 million) and Nintendo's (100 million) devices. Wolverton writes that not only is the iPhone one of the first widely successful gaming platforms in which games are completely digitally distributed, but on the iPhone, consumers can find more games updated more often, and at a cheaper cost per game than what they'd find on a typical dedicated game console. While an ordinary top-of-the-line game for Microsoft's Xbox 360 sells for about $60, and one for Nintendo's DS about $30, a top-of-the-line iPhone game typically sells for no more than $10. With traditional games, developers might wait a year or two between major releases; ngmoco is planning on releasing new versions of its games for the iPhone every four to five months. 'You have to think differently,' says Young. 'It's redefining what it means to be a publisher in this world.'"
This is silly; mobile devices and "full size" gaming systems have to be considered different markets.
I can write documents on my iPhone, but that doesn't mean I won't be buying word processing software for computers any more.
iPhone + iPod Touch: ~30 million. Phone/iPod.
PSP: ~48 million. Games device/media player.
DS + DSi: ~105 million. Games device.
There is, however, a much lower barrier to entry on the iPhone/iPod Touch than there is for the DS. Nintendo requires you to get approval for your game before you start, and you have to be a registered, paid developer to get a look at their Dev Kit. In part, this is to try and keep the overall quality of software on the platform high, and it has been since the NES days.