Gaming On the iPad 2 and What It Means For Apple

The Digital Foundry blog took a detailed look at gaming on Apple's recently released iPad 2. While most reviews of the device focus on the tablet's size, accessories and software features, this one puts the new A5 processor through its paces, finding "anything from a 4x to 7x leap over what was seen in the original version of the tablet." The authors suggest that it has boosted mobile gaming to a point where Apple could be preparing for a much bigger entrance into the gaming market. "Either we are looking at a company looking to consolidate its iron grip on the mobile games market by combining its existing unparalleled developer support with state-of-the-art technology, or else iPad 2 represents the first stages of a plan to expand iOS' reach from mobile phones and MP3 players through to tablets and perhaps in the near future, home games consoles. ... Technical and hardware challenges aside, there's no doubt whatsoever that Apple is extremely well-placed to expand its reach in the games market and launch a new, disruptive assault on the status quo every bit as effective as its mobile offerings have been. There have been plenty of creditable attempts at claiming the multi-purpose set-top box market, but there has been no outright winner. Arguably, Apple has the brand presence, the games, and the music/video services to actually make it happen."

Comments

Pippen pad?

[AHuxley]

Back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin
But will do a basic 1080p unlike the like 640p is 720p HD efforts still on sale.
Lets hope the SDK is easy to work with and cheap.

Re:Pippen pad?

[itsdapead]

Well, I'd rather play on the Pippin than on a friggin' touchscreen.

It depends on the type of game and how it is designed - On the one hand, we have FPS, for which I don't think they've cracked the touchscreen controls yet, but in the case of (say) Plants vs. Zombies, the touchscreen works well (if anything, it made PvZ a bit too easy and they should have cranked up the difficulty a bit to compensate). Settlers was fine, too (except for the unforgivable lack of skirmish mode).

ISTR the iPad2 has better motion sensing than the original - which could make for better FPS games where you look around by physically moving the tablet, not to mention "augmented reality" style games using the camera. Plastic machine gun with an iPhone dock as a "sight", anybody?

So, they might have to be innovative with game concepts and game controls rather than just keep turning out Doom N+1. It worked for Nintendo. Or, just concentrate on types of game that are poorly catered for on consoles (e.g. RTS) and work well on tablets.

Pieces of the Puzzle

[high_rolla]

So the Apple TV becomes your console and the iPad becomes your controller. You wouldn't play your typical games on it but with a bit of creativity I could see some rather interesting games coming out of it. Board games could work really well under this scenario. Especially quite complex ones.

Not an all in one solution

[Andtalath]

Gaming boxes are poorly equipped to be a general solution for loads of reasons.
Also, the margins on a machine that is just used for games can't be as high as apple likes to sell its hardware.

The real question is whether people will care about high-performance gaming or not, if so, apple is an equal competitor with an already functioning market.

So, no, a console has too many requirements to behave in the same fashion for a long while to suit apples needs.

No buttons, no deal

[Coolhand2120]

Without the traditional set of buttons, a joystick and for FPSers a mouse it's really a non-starter. Pressing virtual buttons on the screen will never be as satisfying or as technically accurate (a big deal for video games) as a physical button/stick/mouse. If you were to add the buttons, a mouse and/or a joystick the lovely touchscreen becomes a regular monitor and is ill suited to deal with the dedicated gaming rigs (laptop or desktop) and won't be much competition for the next gen gaming consoles, even more so when you consider these newer gaming consoles will be running 1080p on a 60" 3D screen. You may have some weekend gamers pick up a bubble buster game or two in lieu of reading a book or watching TV but hardcore gamers will never touch it.

Re:No buttons, no deal

[EponymousCustard]

wouldn't a bluetooth hand-held controller remedy that problem?

Re:No buttons, no deal

[MemoryDragon]

Yes, thats one point apple definitely has overlooked they need to push a standardized gaming api for such controllers so that the game makers can hook into. There already are bluetooth gamepads for the iphone but none of them has standardized apis so they have to rely on the mercy of the gamemakers to support them.

Re:No buttons, no deal

[Vectormatic]

the problem here is how to hold the things, if you have a seperate controller, then the controller/pad/phone combo gets rather wieldy, you either have to set the tablet down (at which point you might as well suck it up and get an xbox with a tv), or dock the tablet/controller, making for a very poor form factor psp/ds competitor, and device specific controllers.

a plug-in controller would allow me to play decent nes/snes games on my 7" android tablet (no bluetooth sadly, and only a resistive screen), but for gaming on the go my PSP or DS would be superior (or for stuff like angry birds, my phone), and if i'm gonna sit down and set the tablet down i might as well turn on the 360

similar to what people said about the Wii

[fadir]

I heard pretty similar comments when the Wii came out first (no HD, no conventional controller, etc.) and yet it was a huge success.

Apple is known for taking a different approach when trying to solve issues. That's the way they succeeded with the iPod (hard disks instead of tiny flash RAM back then), the iPhone (all touch, almost no buttons) and the iPad. I won't be so fast to predict a failure because of the lack of conventional and established controller styles here. Don't forget that there is a huge market with people who are not die-hard players, who do not care about how a PS1 controller looked like, etc.

It's a fairly common mistake to think only the hard core games matter. They only do matter if you have a hard core game. For all the rest it's the casual gamers that count and there ease of use is the key.

Re:similar to what people said about the Wii

[thegarbz]

The comments to the Wii still apply. Take a look at some of the most successful games on the Wii, the Mario franchise and the new release of Donkey Kong. The thing about the Wiimote is that while it was fundamentally a motion controller it still had a D pad and 2 buttons. The Nunchuck despite how it is used in the boxing game ultimately still ends up being a joystick and two buttons. This is essentially a classic game controller that has been sawed in half.

Many of the games on the Wii opt to allow a traditional form of gameplay. Super Maro Bros Returns, and Donkey Kong Country Returns both have at message at the beginning saying "turn controller sideways". That essentially turns them into NES controllers with motion control, and a quick flick of the controller is the only additional interaction. Even racing games give you the option of using the controller as a steering wheel or just plugging in the Nunchuck to get your joystick back.

My point is games need to take into account their controllers. This is fine in the current range of games. I really like the gameplay in Angry Birds, Infinity Blade, Doodle Jump etc which are designed from the ground up to be a touch / motion interaction. However I don't like the countless ports of Geometry Wars, not to mention console emulators which place a button region on the screen. There is no tactile feedback and the first time you realise your thumbs no longer in the right place is when Mario starts running backwards or doesn't duck etc. Any game that relies on the traditional control scheme is going to be borderline unplayable.

The key point of the parent is not that games on the iPad are doomed, just that competing with traditional consoles using traditional games is doomed. Ironically the only traditional game I see the iPad being any good at is Strategy games, and I still find a point and click interface the most retarded thing to ever have been ported to a console with only a Joystick available. /Eagerly awaits angry Birds 3D :-)

Re:Do you remember

[somersault]

Rock Band games could still be "the thing" if they didn't oversaturate the market, and pump out expensive new peripherals (that you need if you want to get the full features of the game) each generation.

Hype will brew sure, but mobile games won't just die away after the hype has died down (same as Rock Band will probably still be going in a couple of years time, even if Activision have done their best to destroy Guitar Hero). The market has always been there, just that a lot of people were stuck playing "Snake".

It's NOT a console

[Skywolfblue]

There have been plenty of creditable attempts at claiming the multi-purpose set-top box market

Apple would have to be kinda suicidal to try a Set-top-box with Sony and MS hogging that spotlight, and the last time they tried it it didn't work so well.

The iPad is not a universal set-top box for playing "traditional" (AKA console controller based) games. The iPad/iPhone have a heavy dose of casual/popcorn/social network gaming, and that has been a huge part of their success. That type of gaming is shooting through the roof while more "traditional" gaming struggles.

TL:DR version: You won't be using an iPad to play Gears of War, but since everyone in the future is playing Angry Birds...

What it means for Apple, and the industry.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The question this is all dancing around is, will this kill traditional gaming platforms?

Short answer is no.

Long answer is no, and I consider your argument ignorant and misinformed.

Nintendo and Sony made roughly the same gains they otherwise would have in the market. Apple being around isn't going to stop Hideo Kojima from putting out Metal Gear on the PSP or Nintendo from putting out Pokemon on the DS.

What Apple IS doing is expanding the market place for mobile devices, they're making the pie bigger and taking that expanded pie away. There's some pull over, but, the types who were crazy for portable gaming before aren't going to stop because they have an iPhone or a Droid somethingoranother.

What is happening is that those who wouldn't have normally been gaming on the go, or even gaming for that matter, are now gaming on their phones in their down time. A few levels of angry birds before bed, a sudoku while waiting at the dentist, etc. I don't think that Nintendo largely has anything to worry about. They're digital crack dealers and just because someone, say Apple, comes by offering digital heroin doesn't mean that their bottom line is compromised.

just give it a dock and some controllers, WINNER

[alta]

Seriously, they've already got all the power they need in the ipad... It just needs a few, rather cheap, pieces to bring it all together.

First off, give it a dock, something nice looking, but small to fit in your stack of electronics. On the front, nothing except maybe a light to let you know there's something docked. On the back, power, video/audio out. Maybe ethernet, but that's not really apple's way.

As for controllers... just make it bluetooth. This way, when you're travelling with your games, you don't need the dock, just grab your pad and controllers and go.

$50 for the dock, $25 for each controller.

So, now, for everyone who already has an ipad, for $75 or $100 they can now have a console that's considerably more capable than a wii. Oh yeah, it's also a damn good web browser. Oh, and facebook. And outlook, and gmail, and maps, and reminders and media player and everything else you can imagine. Oh, and lets add facetime to it. Cisco is now trying to get into home video chat. This may raise the price of the dock a bit because when docked the camera wouldn't necessarily be exposed.

It may not be as powerful as an xbox360, but id has already shown that some good stuff can come out of it. And who needs 55million poly/sec for angrybirds?

Re:just give it a dock and some controllers, WINNE

[alta]

The point is, many people already HAVE an ipad, based on it's current merits alone. No one in their right mind would buy an iPad to play angry birds... But if they already had one (and maybe an iphone4/5 as well) and all they had to do was buy a dock and controller, no brainer.

But how many people WOULD spend $500 for a box that plays games, surfs WELL, has TONS of free apps and overall does a lot more than an xbox or 360. Sure those two devices have the hardware to do all this, but they don't have the software, and with the amount of developers between the different platforms, they'll never come close to what apple has.

Huge back catalog of games? No. And worse, it's 99% games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_360_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_3_games

Wow, that's pretty sad. where are the productivity apps? where's everything that's NOT a game? Oh, I see.

And lets see, prices? If you pay less than $30 it better be used or it's going to suck. Want an AAA game? Yeah, that's $60. So, for the price of two first class xbox360 games I can buy my fictional ipad dock. Or an existing apple tv...

Nintendo ahead of the curve? They came out with weak device that plays cute, yet overpriced, games and doesn't do HD. Have you looked at the wii/ds store? Wow, what a load of crap! My kids have a DSiXL and a Wii... The amount of downloadable content there is a joke. The DS has almost nothing. Yeah, they had a good idea on the controller. I use it on my PC as an extra input. My kids have a DS and about 25 games between them. What do they constantly want to play? my iphone. If I ever can't find my phone, the kids have it. Nintendo is a has-been.