I helped create Crash Bandicoot at Naughty Dog back in the late 90s. I've been out of the game industry since 1998, but find the industry changes catalyzed by iOS and the app store fascinating. It must be very unsettling for those working in the industry.
The survey results were indeed silly, but you have to forgive people a bit for being enthralled by the rapidity with which Apple has changed the game (pun intended). It's not just mobile vs console/PC -- Apple (and, to be fair, Zynga, though I personally despise their work) have also ushered in a new era of casual gaming that really appeals to the mass audience. And, let's not forget, to little kids.
With Crash we tried to channel Miyamoto's emphasis on simple game mechanics and fun for all ages. Nobody did more than Miyamoto to make games (industry-wide) fun. (As an aside, though, there are many largely unknown industry figures who have worked very hard in the same way, and have accomplished similar results; Mark Cerny, whom we worked with at Naughty Dog, and who designed or co-designed the gameplay for the Sonic, Crash, Jak & Daxter, and Ratchtet & Clank series certainly deserves a lot of credit as well.)
As a now-industry-outsider, it seems to me that Apple's resurgence has had the following effects on games:
1) casual gaming is again dominant;
2) it's no longer clear we need dedicated consoles in our living rooms;
3) one or two people can make a viable, salable game again
Naughty Dog has seen their budgets increase from around $1M for Crash 1 to many tens of millions of dollars these days. There will still be a big market for AAA titles with huge budgets. But what interests me most is that two coders in Laos (say) can now make a game that lots of people will buy. Sort of like in the Apple II era, when one or two people could create salable games (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli for a great example); this is a welcome change for aspiring game developers.
And I confess I'm happy about the return to casual gaming and greater emphasis on pure gameplay.
But if I were Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft, I would be very concerned about #2.
The author seems to miss the point. The iPhone has had a massive impact on gaming, like it or not. The iPad will too. This is why the new Nintendo and Sony devices may be DOA.
I do think that giving Steve Jobs credit as a person is wrong, though. He didn't seem to care much for games. And according to the book, he was against the App Store originally.
Exactly. The hardcore PC/console gaming crowd is in for an unwelcome wake up call: the future of gaming is mobile. In fact, it isn't even limited to the future, it's already happening.
I think it's fair to say that devices like the iPhone and iPad will be seen as the originators of this revolution. So maybe that group of avid enthusiasts is a little more insightful than the author is willing to give them credit for.
I agree: mobile gaming is the wave of the future. But if you want to know who has affected gaming most since its inception, the answer's pretty much got to be Shigeru Miyamoto.
The problem with this poll is that it works just like "greatest movies of all time" polls. People have the attention span of mayflies.
Agree completely with you. And to my shame, I didn't read the poll question well enough. I had thought it was about what had the greatest impact in the last 15 years or so.
But given that the responses were:
iPhone: 17%
Wii: 7%
Xbox Live: 3%
PlayStation One: 3%
Steam: 2%
All of those are relatively modern. I would easily put the original Nintendo and/or Gameboy before most of those. The poll question is terrible and the respondents have too short a perspective.
Then again, if you're an avid fan and/or professional, you ought to be polled on things looking forward. Much respect to the original game developers, but anyone who is in the industry today who is going to focus on the great accomplishments in the 8-bit era are going to find themselves in the same trouble as Nintendo's current revenue trend.
As of March this year, Apple sold 100 million iPhones.
So let's put things in perspective, Nintendo is an absolutely amazing company in the gaming space and has outsold all their competitors (with the exception of Sony PS2) and has sold far more than Apple across their product lines. I am not saying mobile gaming isn't huge (And perhaps handhelds like GameBoy/DS/PSP should be given their credit here), but to give Apple and Steve Jobs credit for shaping the gaming industry more than the real titans of gaming who have actively shaped it for 20 years? Bullshit.
You can't properly compare sales numbers between two products whose major purpose is quite different. Nintendo's products are for gaming only, they serve very little purpose otherwise. Every one of those was sold as a gaming unit. Most people bought their iPhones for purposes other than gaming. Sure, a large number, if not all, of iPhones users play games on their device but that's not a fair comparison since that wasn't always the reason for the sale. The fact that Nintendo has sold so many devices with one purpose as compared to the iPhone which has far more uses is the impressive part to me.
It's close to the same logic that a pirated game equates to a lost sale, which it does not.
I don't think the product's purpose is as relevant as how the product is actually used. If we want to take it to another extreme, I have an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch as well as a Wii, Playstation and Xbox. Guess which three are used to play games every day and which have not been used for anything in over a year.
What I meant by the piracy analogy is that you are assuming.
I'm not exactly comparing their purposes but the reasons people buy them. To do a proper comparison you would have to ask every single iOS device owner if they bought the thing for games, as the main reason for the purchase, to compare them with a device that is only good for gaming. You cannot assume to compare purchase numbers between two devices if people buy them for different reasons even if some features of the two products overlap.
It's the same comparison that people keep doing with PCs and consoles. Everybody buys a console for gaming (which is slowly changing, granted) while not everyone who buys a PC does so for gaming.
Mostly disagree. For comparison purposes how the device is actually used is much more indicative than what the buyer thought the primary purpose would be at purchase time.
In fact, I think that apple base turned 100-250 million folks into casual gamers is more influential than yet another console.
But it seems to me you are assuming again. You are assuming how they are using the device. With Nintendo's products you are not assuming, you know what they are using it for.
I don't think I'm getting my point across very well. I'm not disputing that a large number of people use their iOS devices for gaming, which is good.
I'm just saying that you cannot necessarily compare two devices on a 1-to-1 basis using sales numbers if the two devices are not comparable 1-to-1 in their usage. The iOS devices are versatile in nature and are suitable for multiple tasks. It's not proper to compare every single sale of an iOS device against every single sale of Nintendo's products. You can make estimates and guesses but I don't feel a 1-to-1 comparison can be made nor be fair.
To make a comparison like this I'd rather know the numbers of game titles sold per device. That comparison works for me because the purpose of buying the game is to play it, nothing else.
I specifically did not make a 1-to-1 relation on sales, instead stating "the number who play games on the device". I subsequently put up a range so large (100-250 million) that it'd be hard to call it an assumption.
"to claim Apple was wildly more influential seems flawed by the numbers."
I didn't. My message is to please use recent figures for the entire platform, not old sales numbers for just iPhones. Also, nowadays Apple sells more iOS devices than Nintendo sells handhelds and consoles. Nintendo and Sony had a head start, they've been passed by Apple in just four years.
I never really understood comparing those numbers anyway. As impressive as iPhone sales are, they're not all used for games. Every DS/PSP/3DS were sold with the intention of playing games on. Gaming on my iPhone is terrible, IMHO. Angry Birds can be entertaining, but any comparable game to what I play on the DS is just too frustrating to play on a touch screen-only device.
From my observations, facebook has had a much larger impact on gaming than iPhone has. I have plenty of older relatives that'll tend to a virtual farm on facebook but won't play games on their phones.
"the answer's pretty much got to be Shigeru Miyamoto"
No it doesn't have to be. Miyamoto is unquestionably the most innovative game designer but Apple really changed the industry from magic in a box to hey the 16 year old down the street just made $10,000 with a game he made by himself.
The future of casual gaming, sure. That’s already true, I would say. However, there are a lot of games that are far better suited to be played on a couch or sitting in a nice comfy chair with a mouse and keyboard, and PCs/consoles are much better suited for that. If anything, the iPhone and iPad have only stolen the market from portable devices like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. “Real” consoles are hardly threatened.
I definitely agree. Casual gaming has its place, but hardcore gamers and consoles have a market that is no way threatened by gaming on portable devices.
While, Angry birds and Zynga brought large sections of population into gaming, their involvement in hardcore gaming is still minimal. I will possibly be downvoted for this, but the amount of research that has been contributed by hardcore game development companies far surpasses the amount that casual game developers have produced. There is a visible differentiator between the two segments of gaming - and it will probably always be there.
Mobile and online casual games have been pulling in very impressive profits for the last 3-4 years while many companies have seen console and PC retail profits decrease in the same period. The demand for hardcore games isn't being threatened but the supply might face harder competition for funds with casual games now.
"Might" as in I don't know how these AAA game publishers are organised internally. If the console division of Capcom sees decreased profits while the mobile division sees increased profits [1], does that mean that people and capital can get reallocated from the console division to the mobile division?
If we're going to be talking about the future, that doesn't necessarily mean that Apple won't enter the hardcore market some day. After all, it's all up to the developers and game studios, and with everything merging into the living room, it's a real possibility.
I can believe that a larger proportion of gaming will be on mobile devices, but I see it as more of a swinging pendulum than a revolution. You had the same wave of "mobile revolution in gaming!" articles in the tech press in 1989, when the Game Boy was released, and it did indeed have a significant effect on the game industry and game design. Kind of waned for a bit, now is back.
The tech wasn't ready yet but everyone could see it back then. It may not be ready now but it's really close. I would give the console one more generation of dominance before everything is upended.
Well, I'm a PC gamer and I have to say that I cannot possibly see myself playing the majority of the games I play now on a phone with no solid control scheme and a 4" screen. Touch screens do not play well with non-casual games. I've tried some of the cute RTS games available for my Android phone and they're practically unplayable because my finger obscures my view of the screen.
Now, if you're saying that at some point in the future I'll be using my phone for gaming by plugging it into my TV via HDMI and using a keyboard/mouse combo via USB or Bluetooth, then sure. But at that point it's no different than what I'm doing now.
The child who wrote that article is clearly too young to realize that the Apple II was a HUGE gaming platform back in the day: http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/
"In the 1980's (and into the mid 1990's) the Apple II computer series was one of the premier game systems in the computer industry. Despite it's graphical and sound shortcomings (especially with the 8 bit series machines), programmers always found ways to make the best games possible for the II series. In it's heyday, Apple II supporters claimed the Apple II had some 10,000 programs for it and many of those were games."
No Radim, you had the whole thing wrong, is not Mark Angela going into the gaming industry list, is Steve Jobs being among the most important people for the Pizza Industry.
Yup the Apple II and clones where kind of a half decent gaming platform then. Except only for rich kids, because nobody else could afford one. At least here in good old europe i would go with commodore or atari.
No more than the C64 or (arguably) the Amiga, though. There have always been games for every platform but I think the author's point is that if you want to look at what's been transformative in gaming (at least in the US), it's the rise of NES, the ubiquity of good computer based games (which for the past 20 years has been dominated by Windows PCs, not Apple), and more recently casual gaming. And for my money, if you want to talk about casual gaming (which the iPhone is now catalyzing much more rapidly than the predecessors), I'm sorry but it's Adobe flash and web based games that started to create that market. iPhone is probably taking it further, but for anyone who still thinks Steve Jobs belongs on this list - what is your favorite Apple created iPhone game for that platform? Or even the Apple 2? Personally, I liked Mystery House, Canonball Blitz, and all the Infocom games.
He's also too stupid and biased to get around his idea that Macs can "barely run" most PC games out there.
Still buried in the Windows gamer mentality about Macs being slow. Random gamers chosen from the street would be more qualified to write a Forbes column than this punk.
If Apple was such a HUGE gaming platform, why was the company completely ignored when it came to major titles? It's only recently that studios have started investing in Apple ports, and so far the ports are late compared to the premium platforms (consoles or PC).
In conclusion, Apple II's popularity is an interest factoid, but not relevant to the article. It is barely a blip on the radar of gaming history.
The Apple II was released in 1977, and it was popular until it was killed in the eighties. Same with Amiga, Commodore, Atari, etc.
And why was the company ignored by major titles later? Well, the company was a mess, and I could argue that Apple was virtually ignored by everyone except graphic designers and musicians after Jobs left...
How is that relevant to the discussion? Let's recap: X says Apple II was a huge success in the gaming community, I say that the success was all but forgotten today and it couldn't have had an impact in the poll.
There's a lot of truth in this article but that didn't surprised me at all.
What did surprise me was the arguments against the author, specially those who said that Steve Jobs was more known that other options in the list. Under that -and many of the other- premises the top spot would definitively belong to Bill Gates, since for a long time the best games ran almost exclusively in PC, or because BASIC -that had the snake game or the one with the gorillas throwing bananas- came with MS-DOS and was the first development environment offered free for anyone who bought a PC, with no $100 annual fee and no big-brother curation.
Also I can argue against the notion that the future of gaming is mobile, I've been in the (mobile) industry for many years and I came to the conclusion that mobile gaming will always be a niche for a casual gamers, but heavy gaming, the one that pushes the technology to its limit, will be for a long time the realm of the consoles and PC's. The future of gaming is virtual reality, EEG controlling and motion sensors, not virtual potatoes spamming people's email.
And this illustrates very much the reality of Mr. Jobs, his products were in many cases very innovative from the consumer electronics point of view, but not necessarily from the technological point-of-view, even the iPod, by far his most breakthrough product, was developed from parts he bought off-the-shelf somewhere.
Saying that mobile is the future of gaming is like saying that the iPad is the future of computing.
While I entirely agree with the thrust of the article, including that his criticism is all-the-more necessary given that poll was of industry professionals, this really points out the weakness in moment-to-moment opinion polls more than anything. Much like day-to-day polling of presidential primary candidates, an even-handed, reflective consideration doesn't seem to be the dominant force in this type of measurement.
To actually consider the point at hand (influence of iOS on the game industry), it's fair to note that this battle is far from concluded. The advance of video games targeting new demographics, as led by the Wii, smartphone and social network games, and how they will play out versus sales of tried-and-true genres on PCs and consoles, is far from over. One could be forgiven an ambiguous stance on the matter.
Personally speaking, as a recently retired gamer (that is, I plumb don't have the time these days), my hat is in the ring with Gabe Newell. Game distribution following a publishing model is flawed, and while the industry is just barely waking up to this, Valve seems to be in the best position to adapt as time goes by.
Did no one here own a Mac prior to the introduction of iOS? It's a plainly undeniable fact that Jobs refused, year after year, to do anything to make the Mac a viable desktop gaming platform despite developers and publishers begging him to do so. (Valve's Source games [HL2,TF2,L4D,etc], which came out nearly six years after the first PC release, is the exception that proves the rule.)
The reason that games are a success on iOS is due to the fact that the graphics support was already there for other purposes. If an extra chip was required in order to enable that level of gaming Jobs would almost certainly have killed it.
I think mobile games are opening up a new market, not taking over an existing one. The fact that X% of gaming is taking place on i-devices / Facebook doesn't necessarily imply that people don't play AAA devices anymore.
The wave of mobile games allows people who don't play games to start - and the fact that you can play off a mobile device means all they have to do is buy a $1 game off the App Store instead of spending $250 on a PSP/DS. It also allows gamers to take their games on the go without bringing along ANOTHER device. So in this way Apple probably did influence gaming more than any other company.
That said, it was NOT Apple that got the industry to where it was before the iPhone came out. It was NOT Apple that developed video games from their infancy to the art/science it is today. And at this time, Apple still hasn't interfered into the console/AAA market, which is, in a sense, the foundation of the industry. Apple is popularizing casual games and carving out a new market, which is good. Apple is providing a good way for indie developers to distribute their games to a mass audience, which is also good. But at this point I think it's too early to give Apple so much credit, and rankings like these ones are definitely unjustified.
Note: While unjustified, the rankings are understandable, given the craze about mobile/"social" games in the industry.
The first thing you have to ask when faced with a survey like this is: who conducted the survey and to whom?
The London Games Conference is a high-level biz-dev and marketing conference. The questions were asked to readers of MCV - a games industry business and marketing magazine who are also sponsors of the show.
Says the editor of MCV:
“LGC is the only event dedicated to examining the ways connected gaming has transformed video games – we will be welcoming 300 industry professionals to head great leaders speak and discuss hot topics including how smartphone games are transforming the world.”
Not that I think Steve Jobs was the most influential person in gaming, but it would've been nice if the author had mentioned that Jobs worked for Atari, where he and Woz built Breakout. Also, let's not forget the Apple ][, which was wildly popular with gamers -- Apple sold millions of them, before anyone had a IBM PC.
According to Walter Isaacson's biography, Steve Jobs was the only one of the two who was employed by Atari. Jobs and Woz both worked days and nights on end to get the Breakout project done. Colleagues from that period say Woz was a better engineer, but that doesn't mean Jobs didn't do anything.
From a developer standpoint, the App Store did eliminate the barriers to entry for mass distribution. In order to distribute for Sony, Nintendo, or XBox, you had to go to large publisher. Just as it is with iTunes, any studio, big or large, is capable of distributing on the App Store. Even if Steam isn't difficult to get published, the App Store certainly has the perception of being easier.
That is incorrect, plenty of Apple devices had an on/off switch. The original Macintosh and LaserWriter, to name a few [1][2].
The quote you were referring to:
"ISAACSON: I remember sitting in [Jobs'] backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God. He said, "Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of-- maybe it's 'cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on. The he paused for a second and he said 'yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He said—and paused again, and he said, "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices."
If Steve Jobs is that much serious about gaming then he would have taken the acquisition offer from Bungie first time, not after hearing that Microsoft also wants to buy Bungie. Source http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-... .If they bought Bungie then there was a chance that Mac would have been a gaming platform not PC or XBox.
iOS devices emerging as a popular casual gaming platform is a side effect imho. The credit goes to casual gamers who plays games for time passing. By that same logic one can easily say that Mark Zuckerberg is the pioneer in gaming, in a sense that he brought gaming to 800+ million user.
>> Then to give Jobs the top honors over Gabe Newell (of Valve) and Shigeru Miyamoto (of Nintendo) is blasphemy, plain and simple.
The author is taking this all way too seriously. Who cares what a fan poll at a gaming conference says? I see this type of tunnelvision with video games/television/movie industry types all the time. Why do they think that their industry is so important? Oh my god, who gives a shit.
I have played computer games since I was about 6 years old, starting with an ancient text-based nethack clone called LARN.
I played (many) dozens of games on the C64 that was my next computer. The first game I bought was Civilization, for the PC. I have bought (a large proportion, at least) and played (many) dozens of games for the PC, everything from UFO: Enemy Unknown, to Populous 2, Black&White, Warcraft (1, 2, 3, WoW), Diablo (1, 2, 2X), Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 1/2/3, Dune 2 (and Dune 2k), C&C, Red Alert, Dawn of War, Total War, Total Annihilation, King's Quest, Space Quest, Flashback, Prince of Persia, Duke Nukem, Quake 1/2/3, Loom, the TSR/SSI rpg's (played through the whole Krynn series and the Savage Frontier series), Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, The Elder Scrolls Arena/Daggerfall, etc. I played them online and offline. I played MUDs till my social life withered to a pale, ghoulish shred of nothingness. I have never been much into consoles, but some of my friends have been, so I've played games (to completion) on the PS2, PS3, the original Xbox, the Xbox 360, and the Wii. I bought games on the XBox Live Arcade, and on PSN, and at the time (before the iPhone) I thought this was an awesome way to deliver games at the right price point, and it was the future of gaming.
I think I qualify as one of those "real gamers" - at least I did in the past.
Despite this long and varied history of playing games on many platforms, today, I own about 3 games on my mac (HL and clones, Trine, and Braid). I own about 40 on my iPhone and iPad.
Arguing who has the most influence is retarded. The unarguable fact is that the iOS platform is indeed having a huge effect on the games that I, a "gamer", play.
I look forward to the final annihilation of the console and PC gaming worlds when the Apple TV comes out.
I find your conclusion disturbing, to say the least. In what parallel universe is it a good thing to have one corporation control an entire market?
ESPECIALLY if the name of that corporation is Apple - doing its best to destroy customer and developer freedom while baiting everyone with aqua-glazed convenience.
It's all a tradeoff. I'm ok with giving up the freedom to install any random software off the web on my phone, if in exchange I get access to hundreds of thousands of apps that just work, are cheap, and do pretty much everything under the sun without screwing up my phone.
Not having to worry about being a sysadmin for my phone gives me more freedom to do the things I actually want to do. As the Linux world and its permanent state of "it'll be ok next year" have demonstrated, you can't have it all. Freedom to mess with the innards of your system, or freedom to forget you're using a "system" and just do stuff with it. Pick one.
I find your comment a little naive, with respect to the 'cheap' part.
I doubt the apps will be as cheap in a situation where there's a single company monopoly.
At the moment, it is in Apple's interest to keep apps cheap, to drive sales of hardware, and adoption of their platform.
If they ever got a stranglehold on the market, however, it would be logical to increase the price of the Apps, up to the price people were willing to pay.
This is exactly what happened with Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s. Nintendo took a cut of the sale of every cartridge - think it was around 30%
Video games became very expensive.
iOS is not Windows. It is much closer to the controlled channel that NES was.
Apple very much have the ability to narrow access to the walled garden, and increase prices, if they achieve such a monopoly that it becomes advantageous to do so.
Apple already take 30% of the apps' revenues, and they're not expensive.
Are they going to increase their cut? Doubt it. Why would they? Apps are not what makes them money: devices are - and they make a lot more money from having a healthy app ecosystem than they do from squeezing every penny out of developers.
Of course, Apple's ways are mysterious and unpredictable. But they have so far shown no interest in increasing their cut of app revenues. Much like iTunes, they're happy to leverage this huge library of "media" to boost sales of devices.
>Are they going to increase their cut? Doubt it. Why would they?
They could increase their cut. But they could also just increase the price per app, by reducing competition (e.g. only allowing 1 app of each sort). They would be incentivised to do this, to make more profit, obviously.
Seeing as games are being discussed, Nintendo used to do this by increasing the manufacturing cost they charged to make the cartridges (afair, Nintendo had a stranglehold on the cart manufacture), and hence you got situations like where Street Fighter 2 on the SNES was crazily priced - don't remember exactly, but something like £60 in the UK.
>Much like iTunes, they're happy to leverage this huge library of "media" to boost sales of devices.
If they had a device monopoly, they would no longer need the apps to be cheap to boost device sales, which is my point.
You really believe that Apple TV will annihilate console and PC gaming? That's adorable.
Of course arguing who has the most influence in the gaming world is not exactly useful, but arguing that Apple and Steve Jobs had the most is just protype retardyness.
The iPhone, despite (and perhaps because) the fact that it's not a dedicated gaming platform, has wiped the floor with the portable gaming industry. Only fringe people and parents of young children buy a PSP or DS these days. Taking stats from [this article](1), even a successful portable console like the DS has sold only 50m units since 2004. That's 8 years ago. That's 6 million units a year or thereabouts. The iPhone 4S approached that number by the end of launch weekend.
I can't imagine there are any gaming companies serious about portable gaming who don't consider iOS their primary market. Hundreds of millions of customers who actually buy apps. You'd have to be dumb to ignore that.
In the same way, I expect that if the Apple TV does deliver on basically the same sort of disruption that the iPhone delivered to the mobile phone industry, we will see consoles becoming, perhaps not extinct, but at least fringe. Why buy any console, even a Wii, when your Apple TV already supports thousands of cool games?
Of course, this makes a large number of assumptions about the Apple TV. But I don't think they're that far-fetched (though Apple may choose to go in a completely different direction, of course). So, if a disruptive Apple TV comes out, with its sights set on the TV industry as the iPhone had its sights on the mobile phone industry, you can bet your ass that consoles will be a barely noticeable casualty of this battle (in the same way that cheap HD cams, point-and-shoots, and a wide variety of single-purpose devices are being wiped out by the iPhone without even being its target).
Apple gets convergence. Any tech gizmo industry where you have to buy one device for each piece of functionality you want is in deep shit the moment Apple makes a move in their neighbourhood. Consoles are one of those industries.
Why do people bring up the mobile gaming market as evidence of Apple's move into gaming, when mobile gaming has always been a niche. It's a totally different world from living room gaming. So called "hardcore gaming" is not a niche. It is in fact the mainstream. Gaming stores have mid-night releases nearly once a month for a big title. Hardcore games have the same level of fan enthusiasm as an iPhone release. Let's at least acknowledge what they are up against.
Surely Apple is capable of getting into this market, but that product doesn't look like anything they are working with now.
Actually, in reading your post just now, I got an idea for a good startup based in mobile gaming to cut into Apple'e market. That's an excellent statistic, and one I see reflected in electronics stores like BestBuy. I probably wouldn't pursue a startup in mobile gaming myself, but I'm sure someone could, and it'd be quite lucrative if they caught Apple by surprise. The Android market isn't exactly accomplishing that grandiose task right now either - I'd still say there's room for growth. My point here being that instead of waiting for Apple to take over the market (and I could possibly see that with a gaming platform and Apple TV), you could invest in the opportunity presented by the market being displaced before the dust settles and it's much harder.
Steve Jobs re-invented shareware through the app store. People are now willing to buy titles from independent game developers. But having said that, I still agree with the author that it didn't get that much impact as much as Miyamoto did to the gaming industry.
Maybe that's what you'll get when you ask people to vote for their opinions. The popular candidate and not exactly the right one will win.
Every time I read something by this writer on Forbes, I get the impression that it's an angry rant meant to up his hit count so he gets paid more. (He did the same thing with Google Plus a few months back, when he clearly made some comments that showed he didn't understand how the service worked.) If so, mission accomplished.
Now how about you give us some real insight, Paul Tassi, instead of another rant about something that makes you angry?
It's not that I don't think your argument has some merit, Paul. You're right. Steve Jobs probably gets too much credit for a medium he only had a passing interest in. But you had an opportunity to correct the record, rather than simply ranting about it. A little context goes a long way. As a blogger, it's easy to tell people what you don't like. It's much harder to bring your argument full-circle. If you can succeed at that, it makes your writing essential, rather than a pit stop on the reader's long trip through his Google News feed.
I went to the article looking for some statistic or a factual observation. I had thought to myself "oh it's Forbes, it must be something reputable."
I was, um, mistaken.
Take the below snippet, seemingly the only piece of information the article is pinned against.
"The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken away after giving answers like these."
So it seems his entire article is based on the pretence that the combined thought of these 1,000 people is incorrect.. because he says so.
I don't think cantankerously written, for-hits-only articles belong on "reputable" sites.
I mostly agree with the points made in this article (I grew up on 8 and 16 bit Nintendo), but still I wonder if the majority of the folks at that conference are actually iOS game devs? Would not be surprised at all, the low barrier for entry and high potential for profitability compared to PC and console game dev seems much greater on iOS nowadays.
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.
My girlfriend is 27. She has never touched a console and doesn't own a personal computer. She absolutely loves Angry Birds and Tiny Wings on the iphone.
Whether or not Jobs should take credit for that is irrelevant. What's important is that a revolution is happening in video gaming and all smartphones and tabs, regardless of maker, are playing an absolutely HUGE part in it.
That was anecdotal evidence of what I thought was the pretty clear and relevant point that casual gaming, from Bejeweled to Farmville to Angry Birds, is bringing video games to a host of people who previously refused to touch a controller.
These people may easily outnumber what you refer to as the "gaming community" and, for them, Jobs was the face of the device they play on most of the time. In short, the article sounds as though it was written by someone living under a rock and/or refusing to acknowledge the revolution afoot.
Given how everyone seemed to be focused on comparing video game industry legends to one another, I thought it was a point worth making. Judging by the downvotes, though, guess not. Oh well.
This is just the Recency Effect. Jobs has been in the media a lot because of his death, so people think of him more, much more than those of even a few years past.
If Bill Gates had died instead, the poll would have shown the same kind of effect, as he would have been in people's minds as they took the poll.
Mostly I agree with the article. But I'm noticing a new trend now with Steve Jobs. For the first weeks after his death, he was excessively glorified (deserved or undeserved is not for me to comment here) by the media and by the grand majority of commentators. Now that some time is past, the new trend seems to be...not renegging on the earlier attitude so much as bringing to light why his innovations aren't quite so universal, or that they are "overstated" (again, while I agree with this article, I'd hardly call a lot of his contributions overstated). Perhaps I'm just being more selective in the posts I read, but has anyone else noticed this?
The survey results were indeed silly, but you have to forgive people a bit for being enthralled by the rapidity with which Apple has changed the game (pun intended). It's not just mobile vs console/PC -- Apple (and, to be fair, Zynga, though I personally despise their work) have also ushered in a new era of casual gaming that really appeals to the mass audience. And, let's not forget, to little kids.
With Crash we tried to channel Miyamoto's emphasis on simple game mechanics and fun for all ages. Nobody did more than Miyamoto to make games (industry-wide) fun. (As an aside, though, there are many largely unknown industry figures who have worked very hard in the same way, and have accomplished similar results; Mark Cerny, whom we worked with at Naughty Dog, and who designed or co-designed the gameplay for the Sonic, Crash, Jak & Daxter, and Ratchtet & Clank series certainly deserves a lot of credit as well.)
As a now-industry-outsider, it seems to me that Apple's resurgence has had the following effects on games:
1) casual gaming is again dominant; 2) it's no longer clear we need dedicated consoles in our living rooms; 3) one or two people can make a viable, salable game again
Naughty Dog has seen their budgets increase from around $1M for Crash 1 to many tens of millions of dollars these days. There will still be a big market for AAA titles with huge budgets. But what interests me most is that two coders in Laos (say) can now make a game that lots of people will buy. Sort of like in the Apple II era, when one or two people could create salable games (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli for a great example); this is a welcome change for aspiring game developers.
And I confess I'm happy about the return to casual gaming and greater emphasis on pure gameplay.
But if I were Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft, I would be very concerned about #2.