I've been saying this for a year or two and I'll say it again: Apple is a huge player in the gaming market already.
The PSP Go and 3DS are niche products that absolutely won't reach the sales of their predecessors. This I guarantee you and you can blame the iPod Touch and the iPhone for that.
I see a future where the Apple TV becomes a low end console, much like the niche Nintendo currently fills, probably at the expense of Nintendo.
I see Nintendo becoming strictly a software house, much like Sega. Nintendo franchises like Zelda and Mario Bros are still valuable. Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple.
I'm not a console gamer. I never was. PC games were always my thing and sadly PC gaming seems to be dying. Sure it's still big for FPS titles, MMORPGs and the like but my particular favourites (RPGs and turn-based strategy games) are almost nonexistent. Even my guilty pleasure of the GTA franchise seems doomed (GTA4 took 6+ months to come to PC, RDR din't come at all, I wouldn't be surprised if GTA5 doesn't either).
The console market Sony and MS fill is harder to predict. I do kinda think it's seen its peak. Consoles are coming out less often. Mobile gaming and Steam are decreasing the prices people expect to pay for games. The hardware race has resulted in top-tier titles having massive art budgets that I don't think are sustainable in this mobile gaming world.
Plus what you can already do with the iPad 2 (in terms of graphics) is pretty incredible. I hazard to think how good the iPad 3 will be.
By any objective measure Steve Jobs has already had a massive influence on the gaming industry.
You're a little quick to judge here. PC games are going through a huge revolution right now. Small publishers and startups (OMG startups!!!) are getting massive recognition in the community thanks to new types of distribution like Steam. What used to be casual console games come out on Steam instead, with its hugely lower barriers to entry.
And really, RPGs are everywhere on the PC. Nearly every big release for consoles also come out for PC. How could you _not_ hear about Skyrim coming out all week? Most of these big name RPGs are single player too, not MMO in any sense. The RPG genre is different these days, Japan's influence is disintegrating and American publishers have taken over with Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Mass Effect.
iPad gaming won't be a serious industry until it becomes light enough to be held by two hands and upright. It's extremely awkward to hold for more than an hour. Control schemes need improvement too. Perhaps physical buttons aren't necessary, but a standard norm for input needs to be found if it's to relace a physical controller with buttons you can press and that provide feedback.
Finally, iPad and mobile gaming is hugely gimmicky and the big hits are largely based on game mechanics and concepts that are a decade old (I'll admit this is an industry-wide trend). Maybe I'm not looking I the right places but I've yet to find a rich and immersive game for my iPad that captures my attention for 10+ hours like the best of games command. The closest I've found is GTA Chinatown Wars which is a port of the PSP version that is a remake of the DS version.
>Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple.
Their hardware business is doomed because of convergence. Standard, custom-built gaming machines will only last so long as having a single consistent target environment requires a custom-built gaming machine.
But personally, I don't really see what that has to do with gaming. Gaming is an art, and I still find games written for the Nintendo just as compelling as they were 20 years ago. All iOS really offers is a better distribution mechanism. And it's still somewhat limited in that you still need to have an expensive piece of locked-down hardware. It's a footnote compared to the first First Person Shooter, top-down RPG, 3D action game, Tower defense game.
It seems silly to talk about hardware when the really interesting stuff is new paradigms in games.
>Gaming is an art, and I still find games written for the Nintendo just as compelling as they were 20 years ago.
I agree. Nintendo, much like Apple, controlled the hardware and software which allowed them to create a compelling experience.
> All iOS really offers is a better distribution mechanism. And it's still somewhat limited in that you still need to have an expensive piece of locked-down hardware.
i think that mobile is the future of all computing and there will be a day when most are choosing tablets instead of computers. At that point, it will be considerably cheaper to just own a tablet than owning a computer, a console and possibly even a smartphone for some.
The demise of PC games has been talked about at least since the PS one. I don't thinks it's going to happen for a while. The delivery mechanism on the PC side feel much better than on other platform (I'm completely bias, I even read PC Gamer every month). I do feel that web games have a chance to bring PC gaming to more platform than just Windows. Unity/WebGL/Flash are the future for a lot of genres, AAA titles will still need closer hardware access for sure.
I like what sony attempted with the xperia play an android phone with a game pad but, it's sony(who are now tarnished) and it's going to be a niche product so forget good games.
On the mobile and iDevices side, I feel their biggest draw back right now is the input mechanism. Touch is great for a lot of things but in gaming it feels a little weird to me in a lot of genres.
As for the console, well, until now the big 2(sony, microsoft) haven't seen a need to spend money on a bigger console. They are getting to the end but it's not really a longer cycle than the last one looking at this timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_video_game_console_...
Nintendo on the other side has saturated the market for the Wii and needs a new hit or they will die.
PC gaming will never be dead but it has been marginalized. There will never be the kind of revenue generated by consoles.
>The delivery mechanism on the PC side feel much better than on other platform (I'm completely bias, I even read PC Gamer every month).
That may be but most hated having to constantly deal with the requirements and the high prices needed to meet it. It's the reason the console won out.
>On the mobile and iDevices side, I feel their biggest draw back right now is the input mechanism. Touch is great for a lot of things but in gaming it feels a little weird to me in a lot of genres.
I agree but game designers will have to support multiple ways to interact with games whether it may be through touch, a controller, camera (a la Kinect), voice, etc.
Apple is a significant player in the market today, but they have a glass ceiling. Yes the iPhone has a lead on the mobile market today, but when they lose that lead what then? Apple's OS has never been a gaming platform, apple's ability to create a viable gaming network is clearly limited...
As a PC gamer, you mention it's dying, but yet the e-Sports scene seems to be the next professional sports arena. As for consoles, they're nowhere near their peak. PS4, Xbox 720, Wii-U... what we're witnessing is a divide between casual gaming and ACTUAL gaming.
Casuals will always be the majority, but to think they'll ride in on mobile horses with iPads is a bit naive. Why? Casual gamers are just that, casual. They have little loyalty to games/studios/platforms, and demand low prices because gaming is insignificant to them.
The day that a mobile platform offers the dexterity and practicality a controller or keyboard/mouse offers, then it can be safely said that the 'writing is on the wall'. But as long as there are 1.6 million dollar tournaments for BF3, grandparents bowling on the Wii, and more than 2x the viewers for eSports tournaments than those that tune in for the NFL draft, the power of Apple has limits.
The PSP Go and 3DS are niche products that absolutely won't reach the sales of their predecessors. This I guarantee you and you can blame the iPod Touch and the iPhone for that.
I see a future where the Apple TV becomes a low end console, much like the niche Nintendo currently fills, probably at the expense of Nintendo.
I see Nintendo becoming strictly a software house, much like Sega. Nintendo franchises like Zelda and Mario Bros are still valuable. Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple.
I'm not a console gamer. I never was. PC games were always my thing and sadly PC gaming seems to be dying. Sure it's still big for FPS titles, MMORPGs and the like but my particular favourites (RPGs and turn-based strategy games) are almost nonexistent. Even my guilty pleasure of the GTA franchise seems doomed (GTA4 took 6+ months to come to PC, RDR din't come at all, I wouldn't be surprised if GTA5 doesn't either).
The console market Sony and MS fill is harder to predict. I do kinda think it's seen its peak. Consoles are coming out less often. Mobile gaming and Steam are decreasing the prices people expect to pay for games. The hardware race has resulted in top-tier titles having massive art budgets that I don't think are sustainable in this mobile gaming world.
Plus what you can already do with the iPad 2 (in terms of graphics) is pretty incredible. I hazard to think how good the iPad 3 will be.
By any objective measure Steve Jobs has already had a massive influence on the gaming industry.