“Get ready, because this one may get big: 44% of all iPad applications being tested on the actual device are games,” Jesus Diaz reports for Gizmodo. “Hey Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the iPhone/iPod titan is getting its tentacles all over the living room.”
MacDailyNews Take: It’s likely they’ve already figured that out already, Jesus. Well, maybe not Micorsoft.
Diaz continues, “The iPhone/iPod monster has positioned itself as the preferred mobile gaming platform for developers and is quickly becoming one of the largest game platforms in the planet, with 75 million iPhone OS devices sold in just 2.5 years. The current king of all game platforms sold 125 million units of the much cheaper Nintendo DS in five years and two months.”
“Now Apple is moving the action into the living room,” Diaz writes. “Would gaming be one of main purposes of the iPad? Would the iPad become the next casual home gaming juggernaut, like the Wii? The market will tell in time, but apparently developers think that the possibility is there.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “sn” for the heads up.]
I’m not a big gamer, but wouldn’t a plugin controller that held the iPad, made use of its motion sensing ability and provided extra battery life be a cool thing. Of course, the game software would have to recognize such a thing, or it would need a sophisticated dongle, or something. (I’m out of my league, here.)
re: fact checker
I think such a device would be too cumbersome for use on an iPad. I’ve really hoped that someone would bring such a controller to iPhone/iPod touch, though. It would make perfect sense for those devices, making it a “real” gaming system about the same size as a PSP. But, again, the iPad is probably too large for a controller like that to be viable. It’d probably look pretty goofy, too.
Yea, Matt, I can easily picture a fairly clunky approach to what I’m suggesting.
I was thinking along the lines of something nice and slim that the iPad would slide down into, putting the controls (mostly) on top of the black border. Then, as long as it was reasonably comfortable to hold, there would be people who would go for it to be able to use a controller with a bigger screen. ?
You do realize due to Jailbreak iPhone is one of the highest pirated platforms out there? You really think iPad will not be within a month of it being on the market?
A billion downloads? Sure with 900 million being free games. You need to make a good game @ 99 cents to make a dent compared to the billion DOLLARS a triple AAA game wil Call of Duty series brings. Sure the development cost is not the same scale but it’s not even the same calibur gaming. It’s more shareware then anything.
You could change your name to Big Al’s Toy barn soon .. it will be more fitting.
Who knew a gamer could use a Mac Pro AND be a gamer. Why are the faithful here so tunnel visioned. Great news blog but really disturbing attitudes.
I keep hearing about”real” games needing “real” hardware buttoned controllers. That’s kind of a 1980s mindset.
The multi-touch gaming scene is VERY new. The interface is VERY new… in fact, we’ve not even had the chance to actually USE the new iPad interface!
What I’m getting at is that touch based controllers, being SOFTWARE based, are really up to the creativity of game designers and skill of the programmers. It’s really EARLY in terms of the time it’ll take game designers and programmers to come up with better control schemes that are touch/software based.
If you look at various games… YES, I have an iPod touch, use it for business related work AND play games on it (for the naysayers)… the control schemes are really quite interesting.
A few examples: Zen Bound, Spirit (GREAT GAME!), I Dig It, Ramp Champ, Samurai: Way of the Warrior, Modern Combat: Sandstorm and all the driving games.
Brace yourselves gamers: There will NOT be ONE controller standard, like the typical console game, there will be MANY. And this is a GREAT thing!
Open your minds!
Portable game consoles will not become niche you retard, tooooo many kids love the ds and everything it does which is great gaming the iPod touch/iPhone gaming is tolerable at best with a few exceptions, most games don’t have the depth or game controls that people will want to use for more than 20 minutes or so. Like someone posted earlier mainstream gaming needs fear not, some of u guys gotta quit comparing apples to acorns, demographics for itouch/ipad/iPhone user not even close to the demographic of DS owners, casual gamers rarely spend 200 bucks for a psp there’s a middle ground called gamers-not hardcore fanboys or casual solitaire gamers but the current generation of kids-teens-young adults are a gamer generation and we like great gaming experiences it’s why we buy DS and PSP yea I have an I phone but other than simple puzzle/board games and racing games it’s not that great