The point of a demo is to convince people to purchase your game. If you force people to also purchase the demo, then they'll likely not bother purchasing anything.
While I get your point, that doesn't always have to be true. One of the biggest things that holds me back from purchasing games is uncertainty of whether or not I'll like them. And the 20-30 min demos most games get often aren't enough to assuage those fears. For example, if I've got a 50/50 chance of liking/not liking a $60 game, and I can get enough gameplay for $10 to essentially assure me of whether or not I'll like the full game, that's a net gain to me.
Granted, rentals are still a better value proposition. However, the problem with rentals is that 9 times out of 10 they don't have the game that I want to play available when I want to play it.
High-speed internet is a *luxury* not a necessity.
True. However, the question of whether or not the Federal government should fund such a program is not a question of necessity. After all, there are many necessities that the Federal Government is more than happy to leave to markets to furnish us with.
Rather, the question we should be asking ourselves is, "does this program confer positive externalities on society which markets would otherwise overlook?" For example, I might value a flu immunization at $50. However, when I am immunized there is a benefit to those around me that I do not receive, since I remove a potential source of transmission for them. Suppose the total net benefit to those around me is also $50, then the total value of me getting immunized is $100. However, since I don't realize that additional $50 of value, I would not be willing to pay more than $50 for the shot, even though prices as high as $99 still result in an economically efficient outcome. Thus immunizations are a good target for government funding, since the market alone will lead to inefficient outcomes.
Similarly, we should consider whether universal high speed internet access conveys any positive externalities on society. I'll admit that I haven't actually given it much thought and can't think of many good arguments off the top of my head. It's certainly a good topic for thought, though.
Our national debt is nearly $130,000 per American home* and projected by Obama's budget to increase +$10,000 more each year. We. Need. To Stop. Spending. Otherwise we'll have ~$200,000/home by the end of this decade, and all go bankrupt. As Cosby might say, "C'mon people! This isn't hard to figure out."
Regardless where one stands on the budget issue, cutting the broadband stimulus would be nothing more than a token gesture at solving our problems. The US 2010 federal budget is $3.5 trillion. The broadband stimulus is $7.2 billion. Cutting the broadband stimulus would be analogous to an average household with a $46,000/year income and $140,000 in debt cutting back from a $50/month ISP plan to a cheaper $42/month ISP plan. Sure, every little bit helps. But in the grand scheme of things it's not going to solve your problems.
If you're concerned about the federal budget, then what you should be worried about is the 4 programs that consume fully 60% of it: Social Security, Defense, Medicare, and Medicaid. We could cut all other federal spending by as much as 75%, and without cuts in those 4 programs, we'd still be running a deficit. Without tackling those programs there's almost no hope for returning the Federal budget to a stable position.
Really? I've had quite the opposite experience with my Droid. Lots of freezing/crashing, and lots of instances of programs continuing to run in the background when I want them closed draining my battery and heating up my phone. If I didn't loath AT&T so much I'd go back to the iPhone in a heartbeat, multitasking or no. As it is, I'm hoping the 2.1 patch (if it ever gets here) at least irons out a few of the kinks.
And if your entire premise is "neighbourhood property values", you've already lost, because if a property value declines, it hits the homeowner much more than his/her neighbors, and so is not an externality.
The homeowner sees part of the effect on the property value, but not all of it. For instance, suppose that in a fit of frustration with mowing the front lawn, I decide to pave over my entire yard at a cost of $10,000. And suppose that doing so lowers the value of my home by an additional $10,000. In paving my lawn I've essentially shown that having my yard paved over is worth at least $20,000 to me.
However, that is not the full true cost of my paving my front lawn. Let's assume that my 3 direct neighbors (two to the sides and one across the street) experience a negative impact on their property of $2,000 each. Let's also assume that the two houses diagonally across the street from me experience a negative impact on their property of $1,000 each. This puts the true cost of paving my lawn at $28,000.
The $8,000 difference between the true cost and the cost that I incur, is the externality. There's a very real possibility that, while I value the change more than $20,000, I still value it less than $28,000, and my decision to pave my lawn is actually a net loss when considering all those involved. And if I had to incur the true cost of my actions, I would not have made the decision to pave my lawn.
Perhaps I'm not understanding something here, but why should your neighbor care about your home's value?
Because most people have a large percentage of their assets tied up in their home and few people stay in a single home longer than seven years. So even if they don't mind your decorating decisions, when they go to sell their home the value of the home is impacted by the eyesore next door. Because, while many people may not mind staying next to a bothersome neighbor, they're not going to consciously choose to live next to one if there are other options available. So by painting your front lawn with grey paint, you're imposing an externality on those around you. That is, you're not bearing the full cost that your decision to paint your lawn imposes on the rest of society, and therefore you're not properly weighing the benefits to you against the full, true cost of the decision.
Why is it your neighbor's responsibility to use their property in a way they dislike in order to bolster your property values?
Because exterior changes to your neighbor's home often have negative externalities. That is, they have costs not incurred by the person who pays for the changes. It's the same logic that underlies why we regulate things like water pollution and public dumping. The point of regulating these things is not to bolster property values, but to make sure that the true cost on society of such changes, rather than just the cost to the homeowner, is more accurately reflected, and therefore properly weighed against the benefits which are generally enjoyed only be the homeowner.
That being said, many people enforcing and making these kinds of laws often get carried away and forget the underlying reason for them, as seems to be the case here. So instead of properly weight the negative externalities, on property value, against the positive externalities of the Ha's reduced water usage (or, as was recently the case in my state, reduced electricity use when a couple decided to start hang drying their clothes in their backyard), we have some bureaucrat rubber stamping things to the letter of the law.
GFWL isn't explicitly DRM, but it has some DRM-ish aspects to it. For example, with an online account you must be logged in to access your save games on many newer games. Granted, you can create an offline account, but you can't share save games between your online account and offline account. So if you start a game online, you better be prepared to finish it online. This problem is further compounded by two things. First, games using GFWL must be patched through GFWL. There is no alternate route if say GFWL's servers are down. Also, you can only be logged into your GFWL account in one place at a time. That might not seem like a problem, but if you have an Xbox 360, then your GFWL account is likely shared with your gamertag. So if your wife wants to watch Netflix on the Xbox and you want to play Red Faction: Guerrilla on your PC, tough luck. Only one of you can log in.
So like I said, GFWL isn't exactly DRM. But keep in mind that the problem that people have with DRM is not that they can't pirate the games, it's that it restricts legitimate use of the product, or at least makes legitimate use unnecessarily convoluted and cumbersome, which is exactly what GFWL does.
I don't think that the article really understands Google's intentions here. Google has already demonstrated, with Wave, that they do not see email, in its current incarnation, as the future of communication on the Internet. They have a very clear vision of merging all the disparate forms of communication on the Internet into one platform. Yet they've hit a stumbling block with Wave, in that nobody really wants to use it until everyone else is using it. I think that this is less about "taking on Facebook", as so many people want to think, and more about integrating some of the concepts that they've been exploring in Wave into, the already widely used, Gmail.
It has been fixed. In general the balance has been shifted so there are a lot fewer side quests and a lot more plot-relevant quests. Also, there's a lot less empty space. You can't land on a planet unless there's a mission for you there, which means that instead of wasting time creating a lot of repetitive environments you'll never see, a lot more effort has gone into making each mission and environment unique.
Most likely, yes. Like all Bioware games, Mass Effect is very story and character driven. There are a lot of returning characters and a lot of references to previous events from the first game. In addition, actions and decisions you make in the first game are carried over to the sequel (ie if you killed a character in Mass Effect, they won't be showing up in ME2 and vice versa). I would seriously recommend playing the first game. The sequel is a vast improvement over it, but it's still a decent game. You can find it for less than $20 now, and if you burn through the main plot line, without veering off on side quests, you can finish it in less than 15 hours (you'll also avoid most of the much hated Mako sections).
The iPod and iPhone were certainly transformative products, but that's not the case for every single new product Apple announces. How many people here have an Apple TV under their television set? It's certainly exciting to speculate, but like the GP said, it's getting out of hand. Every single blog on the Internet is speculating wildly, and the New York Times isn't even taking the time to qualify "news" about the device as rumors anymore. Chances are good that Apple will announce something pretty spectacular next week, but until then I think it would a lot of people some good to simply step back and take a deep breath every once in a while.
That's why nobody does it. The $10-$15 titles are always new releases that are only available in hardback for $20+. Once titles go into paperback, they almost always drop to the $5-$10 range, generally $0.50 to $1 less than the mass market paperback price.
This would be a whole lot more interesting if Intel didn't have a pretty solid track record of producing some of the worst GPUs on the market. Perhaps the performance and power gains are more than I'm expecting, but from my perspective this seems like a pretty transparent move to cut Nvidia out of the netbook chipset market, and consequently cut down on consumer options on how they want to configure these types of machines as well.
So, the retaliation against the AT&T CEO saying that iPhone users use too much data... is for iPhone users to use too much data? How is that going to ensure that the unlimited pricing stays in affect?
The point is not to prove that iPhone users don't use a lot of data, the point is to call attention to the fact that AT&T is nowhere near capable of providing the service that they are advertising and selling. It's entirely disingenuous for AT&T to use "unlimited data" in their advertising as a lure to attract new customers, then turn around and play the victim when their customers actually choose to use the service that both parties willingly signed on for.
AT&T wants the extra revenue that comes with these unlimited data plans and the customers that come with high-profile smart phones, like the iPhone, but they don't want the operating expenses that come with actually supporting these services. They don't get to have it both ways.
I've seen people discuss this in other places and I just don't buy it, at least not in the near term. There are already lots of phones sold as unlocked-only in the US (see just about every smartphone made by Nokia), and carriers don't currently offer rate discounts for them simply because they're not taking advantage of the subsidy. In order for the Nexus One to have enough force in the market to force the carrier's hand on rates for unsubsidized phones it's going to have to be tremendously successful (I'm thinking iPhone-like numbers). The problem is that in order to do that, they have to sell the phone unsubsidized with the same rates as subsidized phones. Which makes the cost quite a bit more than competing, subsidized phones. Which makes it all the much harder to reach the critical mass where they can exert pressure on the carriers to cut rates.
Perhaps the Nexus is the phone that finally achieves this. But it's nowhere near a done deal. Even if the phone and the sales strategy were confirmed (which they aren't), it's going to take years before they have enough market force to make the carriers change their ways.
True, no phone currently runs Android 2.1, but will that be true if and when the Nexus launches? And even if the Nexus is the 1st Android 2.1 phone, Google and their partners generally role out new version updates to the rest of Android phones within a couple months.
As for the hope that the Nexus spells the end of the fragmented Android UI, I think that it's misplaced. HTC recently showed off their 2010 roadmap, and there are a lot of Sense UI Android phones on it, including a couple running Snapdragon.
Perhaps you have a point, but I don't think that the Nexus will solve the problem of Android UI fragmentation. For example, the HTC Bravo is also slated for 2010, and also runs a Snapdragon CPU but runs HTC's Sense UI.
After reading through all the tech blog posts about this phone I fail to see what makes it such a big deal. It runs stock Android, so on the software side there's nothing that actually sets it apart from any other Android handset on the market. It's got some nice, next-gen hardware specs, but then again so does every other Android handset slated for a 2010 release. Snapdragon CPUs and AMOLED displays aren't exactly proprietary technology. In fact, the only thing about this phone that really seems to differentiate it from every other one of the dozens of Android handsets launching in 2010 is that it potentially will be branded as a Google device (oh, and the possibility that it may actually just be a dev phone and never make it to market anyways). So can some please explain to me why exactly everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this?
Granted, there's a small subscription fee, generally $1/month, but it's a start. Generally, I find the Google Reader + Smart Phone combination to be better for consuming blogs and other web content though. Web content just isn't usually authored with a black and white screen in mind.
I think it has more to do with the wireless radio inside the thing. When wireless is turned on, it drains the battery faster than almost any other part of the device. So it's set to go to sleep when not in use. I think it's just an oversight that it still goes to sleep when wireless is turned off.
True, but at least then the cable company doesn't have a vested interest in serving up content from their affiliated provider over a 3rd party provider like Amazon or Netflix.
I don't really have much to say about your argument other than I think your personal experience is somewhat subjective. As evidence I'd just point out that the iPhone games market is something that is clearly on the minds of people at Sony and Nintendo. Since the iPhone has launched both Sony and Nintendo have introduces low priced, downloable tiers to their platforms (DSiWare and "snackable" games on the PSN) to compete directly with the game market on the iPhone. And in this very article, Iwata directly compares this possible download system to that of the iPhone.
As for the issue of how much functionality the iPhone replicates... I think it varies from title to title, but the iPhone most certainly does replicate some of the functionality of the DS. For example, the iPhone version of Civ Rev is nearly identical to the DS version.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of a demo is to convince people to purchase your game. If you force people to also purchase the demo, then they'll likely not bother purchasing anything.
While I get your point, that doesn't always have to be true. One of the biggest things that holds me back from purchasing games is uncertainty of whether or not I'll like them. And the 20-30 min demos most games get often aren't enough to assuage those fears. For example, if I've got a 50/50 chance of liking/not liking a $60 game, and I can get enough gameplay for $10 to essentially assure me of whether or not I'll like the full game, that's a net gain to me.
Granted, rentals are still a better value proposition. However, the problem with rentals is that 9 times out of 10 they don't have the game that I want to play available when I want to play it.
High-speed internet is a *luxury* not a necessity.
True. However, the question of whether or not the Federal government should fund such a program is not a question of necessity. After all, there are many necessities that the Federal Government is more than happy to leave to markets to furnish us with.
Rather, the question we should be asking ourselves is, "does this program confer positive externalities on society which markets would otherwise overlook?" For example, I might value a flu immunization at $50. However, when I am immunized there is a benefit to those around me that I do not receive, since I remove a potential source of transmission for them. Suppose the total net benefit to those around me is also $50, then the total value of me getting immunized is $100. However, since I don't realize that additional $50 of value, I would not be willing to pay more than $50 for the shot, even though prices as high as $99 still result in an economically efficient outcome. Thus immunizations are a good target for government funding, since the market alone will lead to inefficient outcomes.
Similarly, we should consider whether universal high speed internet access conveys any positive externalities on society. I'll admit that I haven't actually given it much thought and can't think of many good arguments off the top of my head. It's certainly a good topic for thought, though.
Our national debt is nearly $130,000 per American home* and projected by Obama's budget to increase +$10,000 more each year. We. Need. To Stop. Spending. Otherwise we'll have ~$200,000/home by the end of this decade, and all go bankrupt. As Cosby might say, "C'mon people! This isn't hard to figure out."
Regardless where one stands on the budget issue, cutting the broadband stimulus would be nothing more than a token gesture at solving our problems. The US 2010 federal budget is $3.5 trillion. The broadband stimulus is $7.2 billion. Cutting the broadband stimulus would be analogous to an average household with a $46,000/year income and $140,000 in debt cutting back from a $50/month ISP plan to a cheaper $42/month ISP plan. Sure, every little bit helps. But in the grand scheme of things it's not going to solve your problems.
If you're concerned about the federal budget, then what you should be worried about is the 4 programs that consume fully 60% of it: Social Security, Defense, Medicare, and Medicaid. We could cut all other federal spending by as much as 75%, and without cuts in those 4 programs, we'd still be running a deficit. Without tackling those programs there's almost no hope for returning the Federal budget to a stable position.
Really? I've had quite the opposite experience with my Droid. Lots of freezing/crashing, and lots of instances of programs continuing to run in the background when I want them closed draining my battery and heating up my phone. If I didn't loath AT&T so much I'd go back to the iPhone in a heartbeat, multitasking or no. As it is, I'm hoping the 2.1 patch (if it ever gets here) at least irons out a few of the kinks.
And if your entire premise is "neighbourhood property values", you've already lost, because if a property value declines, it hits the homeowner much more than his/her neighbors, and so is not an externality.
The homeowner sees part of the effect on the property value, but not all of it. For instance, suppose that in a fit of frustration with mowing the front lawn, I decide to pave over my entire yard at a cost of $10,000. And suppose that doing so lowers the value of my home by an additional $10,000. In paving my lawn I've essentially shown that having my yard paved over is worth at least $20,000 to me.
However, that is not the full true cost of my paving my front lawn. Let's assume that my 3 direct neighbors (two to the sides and one across the street) experience a negative impact on their property of $2,000 each. Let's also assume that the two houses diagonally across the street from me experience a negative impact on their property of $1,000 each. This puts the true cost of paving my lawn at $28,000.
The $8,000 difference between the true cost and the cost that I incur, is the externality. There's a very real possibility that, while I value the change more than $20,000, I still value it less than $28,000, and my decision to pave my lawn is actually a net loss when considering all those involved. And if I had to incur the true cost of my actions, I would not have made the decision to pave my lawn.
Perhaps I'm not understanding something here, but why should your neighbor care about your home's value?
Because most people have a large percentage of their assets tied up in their home and few people stay in a single home longer than seven years. So even if they don't mind your decorating decisions, when they go to sell their home the value of the home is impacted by the eyesore next door. Because, while many people may not mind staying next to a bothersome neighbor, they're not going to consciously choose to live next to one if there are other options available. So by painting your front lawn with grey paint, you're imposing an externality on those around you. That is, you're not bearing the full cost that your decision to paint your lawn imposes on the rest of society, and therefore you're not properly weighing the benefits to you against the full, true cost of the decision.
Why is it your neighbor's responsibility to use their property in a way they dislike in order to bolster your property values?
Because exterior changes to your neighbor's home often have negative externalities. That is, they have costs not incurred by the person who pays for the changes. It's the same logic that underlies why we regulate things like water pollution and public dumping. The point of regulating these things is not to bolster property values, but to make sure that the true cost on society of such changes, rather than just the cost to the homeowner, is more accurately reflected, and therefore properly weighed against the benefits which are generally enjoyed only be the homeowner.
That being said, many people enforcing and making these kinds of laws often get carried away and forget the underlying reason for them, as seems to be the case here. So instead of properly weight the negative externalities, on property value, against the positive externalities of the Ha's reduced water usage (or, as was recently the case in my state, reduced electricity use when a couple decided to start hang drying their clothes in their backyard), we have some bureaucrat rubber stamping things to the letter of the law.
You need a gold account for Netflix.
GFWL isn't explicitly DRM, but it has some DRM-ish aspects to it. For example, with an online account you must be logged in to access your save games on many newer games. Granted, you can create an offline account, but you can't share save games between your online account and offline account. So if you start a game online, you better be prepared to finish it online. This problem is further compounded by two things. First, games using GFWL must be patched through GFWL. There is no alternate route if say GFWL's servers are down. Also, you can only be logged into your GFWL account in one place at a time. That might not seem like a problem, but if you have an Xbox 360, then your GFWL account is likely shared with your gamertag. So if your wife wants to watch Netflix on the Xbox and you want to play Red Faction: Guerrilla on your PC, tough luck. Only one of you can log in.
So like I said, GFWL isn't exactly DRM. But keep in mind that the problem that people have with DRM is not that they can't pirate the games, it's that it restricts legitimate use of the product, or at least makes legitimate use unnecessarily convoluted and cumbersome, which is exactly what GFWL does.
I don't think that the article really understands Google's intentions here. Google has already demonstrated, with Wave, that they do not see email, in its current incarnation, as the future of communication on the Internet. They have a very clear vision of merging all the disparate forms of communication on the Internet into one platform. Yet they've hit a stumbling block with Wave, in that nobody really wants to use it until everyone else is using it. I think that this is less about "taking on Facebook", as so many people want to think, and more about integrating some of the concepts that they've been exploring in Wave into, the already widely used, Gmail.
It has been fixed. In general the balance has been shifted so there are a lot fewer side quests and a lot more plot-relevant quests. Also, there's a lot less empty space. You can't land on a planet unless there's a mission for you there, which means that instead of wasting time creating a lot of repetitive environments you'll never see, a lot more effort has gone into making each mission and environment unique.
Most likely, yes. Like all Bioware games, Mass Effect is very story and character driven. There are a lot of returning characters and a lot of references to previous events from the first game. In addition, actions and decisions you make in the first game are carried over to the sequel (ie if you killed a character in Mass Effect, they won't be showing up in ME2 and vice versa). I would seriously recommend playing the first game. The sequel is a vast improvement over it, but it's still a decent game. You can find it for less than $20 now, and if you burn through the main plot line, without veering off on side quests, you can finish it in less than 15 hours (you'll also avoid most of the much hated Mako sections).
The iPod and iPhone were certainly transformative products, but that's not the case for every single new product Apple announces. How many people here have an Apple TV under their television set? It's certainly exciting to speculate, but like the GP said, it's getting out of hand. Every single blog on the Internet is speculating wildly, and the New York Times isn't even taking the time to qualify "news" about the device as rumors anymore. Chances are good that Apple will announce something pretty spectacular next week, but until then I think it would a lot of people some good to simply step back and take a deep breath every once in a while.
That's why nobody does it. The $10-$15 titles are always new releases that are only available in hardback for $20+. Once titles go into paperback, they almost always drop to the $5-$10 range, generally $0.50 to $1 less than the mass market paperback price.
This would be a whole lot more interesting if Intel didn't have a pretty solid track record of producing some of the worst GPUs on the market. Perhaps the performance and power gains are more than I'm expecting, but from my perspective this seems like a pretty transparent move to cut Nvidia out of the netbook chipset market, and consequently cut down on consumer options on how they want to configure these types of machines as well.
So, the retaliation against the AT&T CEO saying that iPhone users use too much data ... is for iPhone users to use too much data? How is that going to ensure that the unlimited pricing stays in affect?
The point is not to prove that iPhone users don't use a lot of data, the point is to call attention to the fact that AT&T is nowhere near capable of providing the service that they are advertising and selling. It's entirely disingenuous for AT&T to use "unlimited data" in their advertising as a lure to attract new customers, then turn around and play the victim when their customers actually choose to use the service that both parties willingly signed on for.
AT&T wants the extra revenue that comes with these unlimited data plans and the customers that come with high-profile smart phones, like the iPhone, but they don't want the operating expenses that come with actually supporting these services. They don't get to have it both ways.
I've seen people discuss this in other places and I just don't buy it, at least not in the near term. There are already lots of phones sold as unlocked-only in the US (see just about every smartphone made by Nokia), and carriers don't currently offer rate discounts for them simply because they're not taking advantage of the subsidy. In order for the Nexus One to have enough force in the market to force the carrier's hand on rates for unsubsidized phones it's going to have to be tremendously successful (I'm thinking iPhone-like numbers). The problem is that in order to do that, they have to sell the phone unsubsidized with the same rates as subsidized phones. Which makes the cost quite a bit more than competing, subsidized phones. Which makes it all the much harder to reach the critical mass where they can exert pressure on the carriers to cut rates.
Perhaps the Nexus is the phone that finally achieves this. But it's nowhere near a done deal. Even if the phone and the sales strategy were confirmed (which they aren't), it's going to take years before they have enough market force to make the carriers change their ways.
True, no phone currently runs Android 2.1, but will that be true if and when the Nexus launches? And even if the Nexus is the 1st Android 2.1 phone, Google and their partners generally role out new version updates to the rest of Android phones within a couple months.
As for the hope that the Nexus spells the end of the fragmented Android UI, I think that it's misplaced. HTC recently showed off their 2010 roadmap, and there are a lot of Sense UI Android phones on it, including a couple running Snapdragon.
Perhaps you have a point, but I don't think that the Nexus will solve the problem of Android UI fragmentation. For example, the HTC Bravo is also slated for 2010, and also runs a Snapdragon CPU but runs HTC's Sense UI.
After reading through all the tech blog posts about this phone I fail to see what makes it such a big deal. It runs stock Android, so on the software side there's nothing that actually sets it apart from any other Android handset on the market. It's got some nice, next-gen hardware specs, but then again so does every other Android handset slated for a 2010 release. Snapdragon CPUs and AMOLED displays aren't exactly proprietary technology. In fact, the only thing about this phone that really seems to differentiate it from every other one of the dozens of Android handsets launching in 2010 is that it potentially will be branded as a Google device (oh, and the possibility that it may actually just be a dev phone and never make it to market anyways). So can some please explain to me why exactly everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this?
Here you go
Granted, there's a small subscription fee, generally $1/month, but it's a start. Generally, I find the Google Reader + Smart Phone combination to be better for consuming blogs and other web content though. Web content just isn't usually authored with a black and white screen in mind.
I think it has more to do with the wireless radio inside the thing. When wireless is turned on, it drains the battery faster than almost any other part of the device. So it's set to go to sleep when not in use. I think it's just an oversight that it still goes to sleep when wireless is turned off.
True, but at least then the cable company doesn't have a vested interest in serving up content from their affiliated provider over a 3rd party provider like Amazon or Netflix.
You're talking about columnists, not reporters. They used to be different.
Fixed it for you
I don't really have much to say about your argument other than I think your personal experience is somewhat subjective. As evidence I'd just point out that the iPhone games market is something that is clearly on the minds of people at Sony and Nintendo. Since the iPhone has launched both Sony and Nintendo have introduces low priced, downloable tiers to their platforms (DSiWare and "snackable" games on the PSN) to compete directly with the game market on the iPhone. And in this very article, Iwata directly compares this possible download system to that of the iPhone.
As for the issue of how much functionality the iPhone replicates... I think it varies from title to title, but the iPhone most certainly does replicate some of the functionality of the DS. For example, the iPhone version of Civ Rev is nearly identical to the DS version.