iPhone: The decline of the protable games market?

[averyblund]

Zkuq said:

I'm just worried about my rights as a customer - the whole affair being easy just isn't enough to make me forget my rights.

It seems you were lucky with you iPhone - still, it's too expensive for what you get and that alone is enough reason to stay away from it (and Apple). Actually the price of Apple's products makes me boycott Apple, especially since there's no advantage in using Apple's products over those of the others. And we seem to agree about your last sentence.

Basically digital distribution means that the customer only has the right to use whatever he has paid for while buying a retail copy is actually owning the product. Of course it depends a lot on the person whether he cares or not, but I'd say it's still worse. Not that I'm always agains digital distribution; nothing wrong if there's no DRM and you can copy it for personal use as much as you like (ought to be pretty much of a hassle with the iPhone even if it was that way, but at least it would be possible), and it's not very bad if it's very cheap (but still slightly worse)

A few things I'm surprised you didn't realize. First DRM. Yes Apple has DRM, but can you backup games from any of your gaming systems with the consent of the maker? There are work arounds for iApps just like there are for Wii, 360, PS3 and just like them they are not supported by the manufacturers. So how is the iPhone different? Console games sadly have never been easy to back-up and Apple is hardly bucking the trend.

You seem to be making the same mistake when you talk about retail. Once again buying something in retail for consoles is just as hard (well actually significantly harder) to backup than iApps. Consoles require hardware mods, the iPhone can run unlicensed software with a simple jailbreak. 

Finally in regards to price. If somebody owns a cell phone and an MP3 player with more than a few gigs of music it really isn't a bad value. I got my iPhone when somebody stole my Sony Ericsson phone and my Creative Zen. It would have cost me more to re-buy than to upgrade. And clearly the iPhone is targeted at people who use both a media player and a cell. So if you fall into the niche where you only want a phone or an mp3 player it might be pricey but for most people that is simply not true. And when you compare it to the price of the competition it is quite competitive- and the availability of a software ecosystem makes it far more valuable than for instance a Sprint Instinct which costs nearly as much and is almost totally inflexible. At a $100 my iPhone was a steal. At $200 it is worth it- but only if somebody wants a phone and an MP3 player- which the target demographic does.