“Might Apple have interest in gaming beyond its pokey iPod gaming offerings? Maybe, when you consider that the company has recently applied to expand its trademark into the realm of gaming. The new filing was made on February 5, and has not yet been assigned to an examining attorney,” Ken Fisher reports for Ars Technica.
Fisher reports, “The trademark filing seeks to extend the “APPLE” (text) trademark to cover a wide swath of the gaming world, to wit:”
Toys, games and playthings, namely, hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games. (emphasis added.)
Fisher reports, “Tradmork, who first unearthed the application and contacted us about it, suggests that this could be the first credible evidence that Apple might build a gaming machine. The question is, does this filing suggest anything more than the iPod gaming that already exists?”
More in the full article here.
SixVodkas … Me too, ME TOO ! ! !
I keep hearing that the Mac is “no good for games” – except when my wife is trying to get me to abandon an instance and mount a lighting fixture, or something. One of my newer characters was most of the way through DeadMines when she called and said she was coming home … and Get OFF My Computer! Got a blue dagger and blue sword out of it, and some stuff to fatten my wallet.
Yes, the budget priced AliMac plays just fine with all desired options active … just a little memory leak, is all. For some of us, Macs play all the games we care to play just fine.
Dave
Is there room for another unique and proprietary console in the gaming industry? No!
The day will come when software can exist without hardware! Believe me now and hear me later.
The two current powerhouses in console gaming struggle as it is for modest incremental gains which we all know are driven by software titles. Halo is but one example, but right now these two clowns are still hardware biased and have completely neglected software’s real potential.
It’s all about the fscking box, isn’t it?
That is the nature and mindset of PC computing; between a rock and a hard place is where software is an afterthought. I believe Apple is the only one doing its best to turn that phenomenon around; where hardware is becoming lighter than air and software is bigger than life when brought to life by clever marketing.
There is a lot of room on the Mac platform for gaming respect.
Apple has spent the better part of thirty years perfecting the personal computing console and nowhere is that more evident than in my 24″ Intel iMac. With it’s high-def screen and a few modest tweaks the iMac could become a booming success as a gaming console. After all, the Mac platform in and of itself, is the consummate console in a world littered with Heinz-57-type computers.
So what’s missing?
Aside from a few hardware components, what’s missing are respected gaming titles. This is just one more area where Apple could easily be at the epicenter of ground-shaking development. They clearly understand the software formula and who could argue that the “iStyle” series is probably the best marketing ploy ever developed by Apple.
One cannot underestimate the suckage in most gaming titles.
For every blockbuster that evolves, fifty lame-assed titles follow that can be attributed to the unimaginable cookie cutter operations that is the gaming industry. The most prolific gaming titles all have one thing in common and that is the gaming engine itself. Whether it’s Doom, Unreal, or Crysis, these engines are the foundation by which we function in the world of gaming.
Only blockbuster games make it to the Mac…
Because Mac users are conditioned to discriminate against poorly developed GUI’s, they tend to gravitate towards well-developed gaming standards that reward developers who foster total game immersion and scorn those whose interface, gameplay, or story is just another distraction from what is possible.
Also, the producers of the lamer titles can’t afford to develop, nor pay the hefty licensing fees associated with a quality gaming engine, so they are content to scrape their way into the PC market using million dollar packaging to disguise a five-dollar game. Besides there’s a much bigger market in a PC world filled with mediocre gameplay, storytelling, and suckers born every minute.
Much of Apple’s token participation in gaming has been handled by lessor lieutenants with no vision, no real authority, and certainly without the benefit of Jobs’ reality distortion field. Apple could easily afford to buy a couple of hot properties whose infrastructure is modeled after the titans of the gaming industry and brand it with their own Apple logo.
This new gaming division could easily develop a gaming engine based on Core Animation along with all of Apple’s other core technologies that could bring total gaming immersion another step closer to reality.
The engine, much like Apple’s interface, would recede into the background allowing the user to become completely absorbed in a story written by the John Lassiters of the gaming world. Coupled with Apple’s award-winning marketing, they could unleash an explosive series of gaming titles available exclusively just for Apple products, which is what they should have done the day after Microsoft stole Halo from the Mac community. (I know, I need to let it go…)
Apple could easily do for gaming what they’ve done for music and theater.
Now Apple, what about iAnimate?
What makes anyone think that Nintendo would give up their games (or any other IP) to Apple?
If Apple did release a console it would probably just be another “Pippen” and fail quickly. If they put some real resources behind it Apples share price would drop like a stone, they’re not like Microsoft which can take billion dollar losses for years on end.
As for working around the edges and just making a small commitment that didn’t work for the N-Gage. It’s an all or nothing game. There’s no point in offering crap $5 games on iTunes when you can play them for free on the internet.