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Forums - General - Apple has ALREADY released their gaming device.

Summaro400ex on 07 March 2008

I have an iPod touch. I'm actually using it right now to type this. I love this thing its by far the best media device or PDA I have ever used. That said, I would most likely never put any real games on here besides games like minesweeper or solitaire. It just is not setup well to play games. There are no buttons that can be used and in general it would not be very comfortable in my opinion



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shams on 07 March 2008

This is fantastic news - and completely expected :)

The architecture of the iPhone always made it more of a console than a mobile - and it was only a matter of time before they started pushing the games angle. Expect some "unique" games as well.

The way I see it - its like WiiWare - but better. Its for a mobile device, has *heaps* of onboard storage, has better SDKs/tools, is much cheaper to develop for - and Apple seem more open than Ninty about this all.

My studio will definitely (at the least) be looking into it - and we may well start porting our engine to the iPhone immediately (its design is almost perfect for the device ironically).

If I was Sony, I would start being worried sometime around now. Seems like the perfect PSP killer to me. Nintendo might start getting worried as well...



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joshjosh on 07 March 2008

By golly Mr. Yikin, this sure is an interesting topic!



Playing:

1)Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate (DS)

2)Neverwinter Nights: Hoards Of The Underdark

3)I don't know

famousringo on 07 March 2008
sc94597 said:
Garcian Smith said:
 

Well, for reference, I used to own a PocketPC with a 400 MHz processor and about 96 MB RAM. Of the PPC games I played on it, it could manage graphics at about the level of a Windows PC circa-1996. (In other words, about Quake-level.) In comparison, the iPhone seems to have about the same clock speed, a little over twice the RAM, and a graphics coprocessor of unknown clockspeed. Therefore, it stands to reason that it could probably handle a bit more than that; say, around Half-Life-level.

But that, of course, doesn't solve the control issue. The fact remains that there just doesn't seem to be a good way to control most games on the thing. I mean, in theory, you could probably get, say, a PS1 emulator running on it, but how would you emulate all of the buttons on a Dual Shock?


Well they could make a stylus option like the ds' but that still doesn't solve the no button problem. Maybe they could make a expansion with buttons.


Buttons are easy to make. It has a multi-touch display, so you simply cannibalize display space and draw some "buttons" on the screen which produce certain effects when the user touches them.

Heck, you could make a "thumbstick" by drawing a circle with a dot in the center. The position of the user's thumb relative to the dot determines the direction of movement and the distance determines the speed of movement.

It lacks tactile feedback, reduces display space, and might be less accurate than actual buttons and thumbsticks, but it should be doable.



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.

sc94597 on 07 March 2008
famousringo said:
sc94597 said:
Garcian Smith said:
 

Well, for reference, I used to own a PocketPC with a 400 MHz processor and about 96 MB RAM. Of the PPC games I played on it, it could manage graphics at about the level of a Windows PC circa-1996. (In other words, about Quake-level.) In comparison, the iPhone seems to have about the same clock speed, a little over twice the RAM, and a graphics coprocessor of unknown clockspeed. Therefore, it stands to reason that it could probably handle a bit more than that; say, around Half-Life-level.

But that, of course, doesn't solve the control issue. The fact remains that there just doesn't seem to be a good way to control most games on the thing. I mean, in theory, you could probably get, say, a PS1 emulator running on it, but how would you emulate all of the buttons on a Dual Shock?


Well they could make a stylus option like the ds' but that still doesn't solve the no button problem. Maybe they could make a expansion with buttons.


Buttons are easy to make. It has a multi-touch display, so you simply cannibalize display space and draw some "buttons" on the screen which produce certain effects when the user touches them.

Heck, you could make a "thumbstick" by drawing a circle with a dot in the center. The position of the user's thumb relative to the dot determines the direction of movement and the distance determines the speed of movement.

It lacks tactile feedback, reduces display space, and might be less accurate than actual buttons and thumbsticks, but it should be doable.


 YEah the only problem I see in that is the space on the screen being used up. THe rest seems really easy to make. Then you also don't really feel the buttons rather than the screen.



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johntonsoup on 07 March 2008

Amazingly, Apple just set itself up to have a challenger to both the DS casual market and the PSP media market. The DS, because casuals love playing games on cell phones. I mean, who really wants to lug around the DS to play Brain Age if they could just put it on their phone.

Meanwhile, it blows the PSP out of the water in terms of media content.

Of course, hardcore gamers are still going to want PSPs and DSs. Plus, I think big development groups will have to keep in mind that even if the iPhone has 10 million in the marketplace by June, a good chunk of those sales went to people who could not care less about games.

Before any fanboy jumps all over my post, I will post the following disclaimer: I love my iPhone, and I don't own a PSP or DS. I would buy a PSP and a DS in a heartbeat if I still had to commute, but since I work from home now I have had no need to get a handheld gaming device so far.



celine on 07 March 2008

Sega's Super Monkey Ball for i-Phone:


EA's Spore for i-Phone:



 “In the entertainment business, there are only heaven and hell, and nothing in between and as soon as our customers bore of our products, we will crash.”  Hiroshi Yamauchi

TAG:  Like a Yamauchi pimp slap delivered by Il Maelstrom; serving it up with style.

sc94597 on 07 March 2008

^ Those look like game cube games. I need an iphone now.



hunter_alien on 07 March 2008

The game looked better than DS games , but far from PSP quality ... as I told on pocketgamer , Pokemon is to popular and the PSP is to powerfull for the Iphone to compete with them ... still , as an alternative , casual platform , it could do much better than previous attempts ( see N-gage ) .



Vote the Mayor for Mayor!

sc94597 on 07 March 2008
hunter_alien said:
The game looked better than DS games , but far from PSP quality ... as I told on pocketgamer , Pokemon is to popular and the PSP is to powerfull for the Iphone to compete with them ... still , as an alternative , casual platform , it could do much better than previous attempts ( see N-gage ) .
Well those are just demos not even betas of the games. THe iphone is alot more graphically capable than the psp with 600mhz processor , 256mb of ram , and a co processor of uknown speed for graphics.