The 'mobile-game-boom' hype has been on the cards for a number of years now, yet it always fails to materialise. Having said that it is a much safer bet to say we're close to it these days ever since the introduction of the iPhone.
At its seasonal product unveiling yesterday (09/09) Apple showed off expected new models for its agenda-setting music hardware the iPod. However, it was games, not audio, which CEO Steve Jobs pushed to the forefront. Jobs revealed that 100m applications have been downloaded from the AppStore, the area of iTunes which distributes software. There are 3,000 apps on the store - 600 of which are games titles, many of them free.
But "some of [the games] are getting pretty fantastic. There is something here for veryone". To prove it, he called Apple's senior VP of product marketing to demonstrate three new iPod Touch/iPhone games, the Gameloft's Real Soccer 2009, the recently released Spore Origins and upcoming Need for Speed Undercover by EA (a very important association there IMO). Gameloft has programmed an on-screen d-pad into its game and has included gesture controls, while EA has transposed traditional racing game controls to the interface for its car racer, both interesting takes on interfacing with an iPhone user.
Jobs summed up, claiming that Apple's iPod Touch is no longer great for just music and video, but now games too. "Now you can make a pretty good argument that it is the best portable device for playing games on - and a whole new class of games," he said.
But "some of [the games] are getting pretty fantastic. There is something here for veryone". To prove it, he called Apple's senior VP of product marketing to demonstrate three new iPod Touch/iPhone games, the Gameloft's Real Soccer 2009, the recently released Spore Origins and upcoming Need for Speed Undercover by EA (a very important association there IMO). Gameloft has programmed an on-screen d-pad into its game and has included gesture controls, while EA has transposed traditional racing game controls to the interface for its car racer, both interesting takes on interfacing with an iPhone user.
Jobs summed up, claiming that Apple's iPod Touch is no longer great for just music and video, but now games too. "Now you can make a pretty good argument that it is the best portable device for playing games on - and a whole new class of games," he said.He also revealed details on the might of Apple's place in the market as a digital distributor. iTunes was described as the "largest online content store in the world", offering also 8.5m songs and 30,000 TV episodes for download. And there are 65m user accounts with registered credit cards on the service. All of this has "enabled us to slowly climb up to become the number one music distibutor in any format in the US," ahead of traditional retailers like WalMart and Best Buy, said Jobs.
My take on all this; if Apple taps into the mobile game market using a) the (fairly advanced) graphics hardware the iPhone has to offer b) their abilities as a distributor to reach the end user and c) associations such as the EA where big developers are finally starting to take mobile gaming far more seriously then it could well be possible that in the next year or two mobile gaming could -at long last- be the next big thing rather than the poor relative of game development.
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