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.'"

Comments

saturation point

[rarel]

Am I the only one who's starting to be completely saturated by iPhone stories posted left and right and how it's awesome and shiny and great?
I swear it's like the damn thing is going to save the world. Even for nerds there must be other topics of conversation, right?

...Right?

I think I've reached the point of hype backlash. I might have been somewhat interested in the iPhone at the beginning, but now I'm just tired of seeing it everywhere.

I bow to the Apple marketing team though. They are doing a truly excellent job. Honestly.

Re:saturation point

[causality]

I think I've reached the point of hype backlash.

I don't believe it should take much to reach that point, either. To quote Henry David Thoreau (emphasis mine):

"And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure -- news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy."

The meaning of "acquainted with the principle" is such a contrast to the methods of learning-by-rote so common in education today. As in, I believe the latter is doing it the hard way for the dubious "benefit" of avoiding abstract thought. Subjectively, I can see a link between that rote learning and the repetition behind this kind of hype saturation. It's how people have been conditioned to acquire information and it's how you transform a message into something everybody knows about. As a consequence, we don't have many proactive people who like to discover things on their own; we have passive people who wait to be told what the next big thing is. Of course, that's synonymous with the next popular thing. So, I think backlashes against this kind of hype are overdue but it helps if they comet with an understanding of why companies use these methods and why they make money when they do.

The games are gimmicky

[MBGMorden]

As an avid iPod touch user (and iPhone if Apple ever gets one onto Verizon . . .), I must say that the vast majority of the games I've seen for the platform is just too gimmicky. The system has plenty horsepower for simple stuff that might be a good diversion (think Pacman, Asteroids, Space Invaders - or even some more powerful stuff - I recently downloaded Myst for my iPod), but the touch screen interface is just terrible for gaming purposes.

I just don't see it cutting into Gameboy sales that much. On the other hand as an APPLICATION platform the little bugger is amazing. Sure it's an "iPod" suggesting music player (which is does indeed do, and do well), but my iPod touch is about the best damned PDA I've ever used. There are apps for everything I need, and much unlike most cell phone browsers of old (including the one on the Blackberry Curve that I have for work), the included version of Safari actually works for almost any site I want to visit. I might have to zoom in/out to see some things, but I can use the page at least.

To tell the truth mine has replaced 95% of what I would use a laptop for. My laptop now has become truly a "portable computer" like the old ones that you just lugged around. I'll take it on a trip to use in the hotel room, but for when I'm actually out and about, in a coffee shop, etc, the iPod is smaller, lighter, and is always with me. Battery life is great too.

All in all I truly do see them as revolutionary devices, just not so much on the gaming front.

The games are $10 because they aren't worth more

[Jonathan]

Really, I have yet to see an iPhone game that captured my attention for more than an hour or two -- even the recent version of the Sims for the iPhone is a very stripped down version of the real game. A DS or full fledged console or computer game may cost $30 or more but I expect I'll get at least 50 hours of enjoyment out of it....

I'm a game, have been since 1983.

[DragonTHC]

What people play on the iphone are time-passers. Mere distractions.

While the platform is certainly selling these time passing distraction apps, I don't believe I'll call it a serious games platform.

Business goes where the money is. Sometimes the money is in wasting your time.

Big deal!

[wytten]

...and I'm not being sarcastic, if my 11 year old son is any indication of what is happening around the country.

He saved all his birthday, christmas and allowance money for months to buy an iPod touch and spends way
too much time playing games on it. Most of the games are free or only cost a couple of bucks, meaning he
can get near-instant gratification without having to save $50 to buy a console game. He uses it almost
exclusively as a game platform, even to the point of using a clunky old mp3 player for music, in order to save the
iPod touch battery for game play.

Come on

[kuzb]

The iphone is so limited as a game platform it's silly to try to compare it. The touch screen does work well for some kinds of games, but it's an absolutely horrid interface for a lot of others.

Shooters do not work well with the touch interface. Racing games do not work well with the touch interface. Sports games do not work well with the touch interface. Platformers do not work well with the touch interface. Right there, you've accounted for (conservative estimate) more than half of the game market. The iphone/touch is great at what it does, but it isn't very good as a portable game system. People are still better off getting a DS or PSP if they want that kind of thing, because let's face it. Having a lot of games doesn't mean you have a lot of good games that have interfaces which are implemented well.

Re:Come on

[Graymalkin]

Rail shooters work pretty well on the iPhone, i.e. Time Crisis works well enough on the iPhone. Wolf3D is also fun to play and I'm looking forward to Doom. There's nothing inherently wrong with rail shooters and there's likely a lot of legs to that type of game on touch devices. A lot of FPSes are effectively on rails but allow free movement to give the illusion that they're not. On the iPhone such a game could just be a rail shooter and let you focus on the shooting part. More to the point, games have adapted to a variety of controller types over the years. A lot of the genres you mentioned are as old as video games. Several game types used paddle controllers in the 70s, if you can use a dial to control a game you can use a tilt sensor. Besides the genres you mention adapting play styles to fit the iPhone there's also the other half of the game market. There's plenty of genres that are almost optimized for playing on a touch sensitive screen. Point-and-click adventure games like Myst are a natural fit as are many types of RPGs. Shmups that use the tilt sensors tend to work really well in most cases.

The iPhone isn't going to be good at every single type of game but it doesn't have to be. It also offers a bit more than just a touch screen to developers. The iPhone can find its location via GPS, the 3GS can determine its heading with its compass, and can find its orientation in space with the motion sensors. It also has a microphone, a camera, and near constant network connectivity. While the motion sensors are probably most useful for controlling games of all those features the others do offer developers options.

Re:Yeah, right

[toppavak]

This lower barrier to entry puts the platform on par with online flash games, not portable consoles. Even the platform itself is best suited to the type of game you play to pass the 5-30 minutes it takes your train/bus/etc to reach its destination. While the size of the iPhone market is significant, comparing it to the DS/PSP market is comparing apples to oranges. Every DS/PSP owner bought theirs to play games on, what percentage of iPhone owners would even care about a new $30 FPS for their phone, let alone want to kill the battery for their primary means of communication with it?

Re:Yeah, right

[thetoadwarrior]

The barrier is much lower for iPhone development which is why there are more rubbish games on the iPhone. Everything about the DS is more expensive to develop on but, as he pointed out that keeps the quality high. There is nothing like Chrono Trigger, Ninja Gaiden, Grand Theft Auto, New Super Mario Bros, etc on mobile phones. The DS just blows them away but you gotta pay more for games.

But at least you get to keep your games unlike mobile games which are only good on that phone and, if you're unfortunate, your provider won't even let you free up space to even delete the damn things.

Re:Neil Young Says ...

[Golias]

This is all well and good, but all I want to know is when somebody will release a Katamari game for the iPhone!

Back when I had a PSP, that was, by far, the most addictive game in their lineup. A version that worked off the iPhone's tilt sensor would be even cooler.

(Disclaimer: Yes, I'm aware that it will probably never happen. It's nice to dream, though.)

Re:Attention Span = 0

[meta-monkey]

There are some complex games, though, and I hope there'll be more. I just finished Zenonia on my iPhone. It's an original content game, reminiscent of Zelda on the SNES, but with modern updates like a Diablo-style loot system. The first play-through took me 38 hours. That's a real game. I mean, it's the sort of game people would have bought for $60 on the SNES and said "this is a good game!" And now I get it on my phone for $4.99. That's not bad. Oh, and you can play it in line at the bank, because you just click off you phone and it freezes the game and saves all your progress.

Re:Neil Young Says ...

[Lars T.]

Wouldn't number of games sold be a better index of how much something is used as a games machine?

And how many DSs are rotting in some cupboard after the buyer grew tired (or is still only using) the Dr. Kawashima or Nintendogs that came with it - IOW are overly expensive Tamagotchis?

Re:iPhone is God

[c_forq]

I actually prefer it to every other phone keyboard I've used to date, but pretty much only for one reason: symbol and accent entry. I type very verbose text messages and don't use "text speech". Additionally, I use punctuation (especially parenthesis). I use Spanish and French words (not regularly, but often). The iPhone makes this easy, the Nokia I had before the iPhone was a complete pain in the ass. In Windows Mobile I could do it in, but it was not nearly was quick and intuitive as Apple makes it (plus I had to reset my Windows Mobile device at least once a day).