Ever since Apple and Sega showed off Super Monkey Ball, game developers have been flocking in packs to the iPhone as a viable device for game development. This strange phenomenon boggles my mind. As a gamer, you’d think I’d be all for companies making games for my beloved iPhone but that couldn’t be more wrong. Now I’m not against all iPhone games, some are actually quite entertaining for those moments in which you have a little time to kill. There is a market for some great casual games to be had here, the type of games that can be played in 5 to 10 minutes chunks. However I am against the people who actually believe that the iPhone will rival systems like the Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable for the mobile gaming market. There’s 3 HUGE reasons that I think this will just not happen and I would like to share my thoughts with you today.
3. Lack of buttons
Yeah I said it, lack of buttons. Now I know what you’re thinking, “it’s just going to challenge developers to think of a unique way to use the touch controls and the accelerometer.” I laugh in your face for thinking such things. You and I both know exactly what’s going to happen: developers are going to get fed up and ask for an add-on controller that you can plug into the phone. You can pretend it’s not going to happen all you want, but it’s coming. There’s only so many “rotate the phone to steer” games one can take.
2. Battery Life
Calling, browsing the internet, fetching your various emails, and listening to music puts a strain on the battery life of the iPhone. Playing games would totally cripple the battery life of the phone. Maybe I’ll just carry a spare battery. Oh wait, YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE BATTERY YOURSELF!!! I don’t want to sacrifice my precious battery life for a few moments of gaming on the go. If I get the itch to play a game on the fly, I’ll just whip out my Gameboy Micro or something.
1. The Nintendo DS
If you want to jump into the mobile gaming scene, you have to talk to the big boys at Nintendo. If you’re one of the 80 billion owners of a DS, chances are you won’t be purchasing any games on your iPhone. The DS is a beast to be reckoned with and I don’t see anyone tapping into this market anytime soon.
I hope a developer proves me wrong and a “must have” game comes out for the iPhone but I don’t see that happening. I’m sure we’ll see some cool innovations of the touch interface in games and a decent implementation of the acceleramotor used for soemthing other than steering, but I just don’t know if it will be great enough to pull people away from the DS.
Yeah, I love this iPhone and the simple games that can be played on it. Though I will stray away from long winded games that require me to play to long. Yeah, I know the battery life is best in it’s class but those 3G services sucks it dry in no time. I find myself afraid to really play games for long periods of time do to fear of being stuck with a dead phone. I will go with the 5 to 10 minute game sessions.
I find that a 10 to 15 minute game of Scrabble scrubs off like 10% of my battery! That’s insane, it’s scrabble, not a FPS.