GlingGling said: Why would anyone pay over $1800 just to access the hardware? |
You just answered your own question. The comparable cell phones out there are in the same price range as iPhone, but won't make a similar gaming platform. Obviously people aren't going to buy the iPhone solely for gaming, or even mainly for gaming: it is a phone after all, along with a host of other things. But, way more people have phones than game consoles, and a lot of the gaming demographic is going to overlap with the iPhone demographic, so for them it may make sense to pay that much for a Dreamcast, iPod, Phone, GPS etc. on the go. I am one of them.
Then again, I don't know what you mean by a viable gaming platform. We'll have to see how it turns out, but I believe that after a year or two, iPhone will be the number 3 mobile gaming platform, right after DS and PSP. Other cell phones just can't compete with it.