Whereas some may be skeptical about Apple’s impact on the gaming world, Apple is naturally confident that products like the iPod Touch are the future of this industry, even making a passive-aggressive swipe towards the DS and PSP by insinuating they are “the past.”
“There are over 1,500 games and there’s a great affinity between the iPod Touch customer and those games,” explains Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod and iPhone Product Marketing. “And the gameplay I think has surprised a lot of people, because it’s not just the casual games. There are real 3D games, and it’s hard to imagine we’re only a little over 100 days into it. There are already so many games and as we look at it, to us it really seems this is the future of gameplay. Whereas a lot of these devices are more in the past.
“And a big part of that is not just the device itself, which is easier to carry, and has the touch display and accelerometer which is great for gameplay, but it’s the electronic distribution of the apps as well.”
Joswiak also believes that software price is a deciding factor, with iPod Touch games shifting for £5 in comparison to the £30+ price point of DS and PSP titles. The Apple man states developers can charge far less for purely digital offerings since they “don’t have to worry about licensing and manufacturing hardware, they don’t have to worry about forecasting, returns, missing the forecast.”
While I don’t think Apple will be able to knock Nintendo from the portable pedastal any time soon, I think only a fool would discount Apple as a legitimate contender in the gaming scene. Games are a huge, huge market right now, and if Apple likes one thing, it’s huge markets. Expect to the see the company become far more aggressive at winning over the games industry in the future.
