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Apple in the handheld gaming world
263 years ago
I was listening to the gdgt roundtable this morning, and they started talking about the iPhone / iPod Touch as a gaming device. Josh Topolsky insisted that Apple was trying to drink Sony and Nintendo’s milkshakes, while Ryan said that Apple is just going for the “value add” of having games.
This got me thinking about my iPhone and the experiences I’ve had using it as a handheld gaming device, especially compared with the Nintendo DS and the PSP. Granted, gaming on my phone has not been my number one priority, but I’ve download a few decent ones: Spore Origins, Tris (which I believe is now unavailable) and Tap Tap Revenge. But at the end of the day, was it more fun for me to play games on my iPhone than if I’d brought along the DS or PSP? Well, no, not especially. Was it more convenient to not have to carry a second device? Of course. Yet the overall experience quality is still going to be better on a standalone gaming platform. I just wonder if people really care all that much about having the absolute best experience… maybe they just don’t need it.
This brings me to another point on the podcast: do mainstream users really care about the nit-pickings of technologists when it comes to their buying decisions? Yes, there can definitely be a trickle effect of opinion that can sway people (“Oh, I’ve heard this phone is very buggy, I’m going to wait for the next version”). But what about mainstream gamers? Are games on the iPod/iPhone ever going to effect the number of handheld devices being purchased, and the amount they’re used? Is it just a nice added benefit to the phone, or a major selling point?
Developers are cranking out some beautiful looking games for the App Store, and I’m sure they’re enjoying the direct-to-buyer system (that is, if their app makes it through the approval process), but I wonder what other frequent gamers are thinking.
Do you think people will eventually buy the iPod or iPhone with the primary function of being their gaming device?
Image courtesy of Apple.com
A little iPhone organization would be nice
34
I made a Friendfeed post a while ago about this, and then I realized that microblogging is sucking whatever ideas I have for blog posts right out of my head and turning them into one-sentence blips in the social-networking ether…
Anyhow.
The iPhone interface is intuitive. However, this does not mean that it’s practical, especially when you have numerous icons to keep track of. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an interface for organizing your iPhone apps? You could decide which menu page your apps showed up on, or even separate them by type or alphabetically. It’s just a total pain that every single time your apps update (at least when you do it from the actual phone) that it dumps the updated apps to the very last page in the iPhone interface. Why don’t they just stay where I told them to go? Why do I have to manually drag them back to where they belong? That method is touch-and-go (heh!) at best anyhow — if you don’t get it just right, the icon just hangs on the edge of the screen, waiting to move to the next page.
Actually, it really would make sense to just build this directly into iTunes. We can already see all the apps that are installed on the Applications page. Why isn’t there some kind of sorting method right there?
And while we’re at it, how about trial periods for apps? I recently purchased Super Monkey Ball for $9.99, and it’s the most annoying game I’ve ever paid money for. I totally have buyer’s remorse. If developers could add a time limit into the DRM wrapper on the app, then it could turn itself off after a certain pre-determined trial period ended. I’m not an app developer, obviously, but this seems more viable than giving your app away for free for an amount of time and then suddenly charging all new customers for it.
Finally, while we’re on the subject of iPhones, my “iPhone Cubism” pool on Flickr has actually gotten some good coverage lately! We’re on TUAW, Valleywag and iPhone Savior (which, I learned, is 100% zombie proof. Nice work!). So if you’ve had an artful glitch on your iPhone, add it to the pool.
(Sorry about the dry spell here on the blog! I honestly think Twitter is killing my blogging… slowly, but surely.)
Fail of the Week: My New iPhone
121This post will be brief — I haven’t had a lot of time to scan my RSS feeds in the past week, so I don’t know how much of a widespread issue this is. My (16GB, white) iPhone is a giant pain in my ass right now, and it’s just solidifying the idea in my mind that I should have waited to pick one up until the bugs were worked out.
The main problem I’m having is this weird keyboard lag. Whenever I go to type a new text message or email, the keyboard takes forever to register that I’m trying to use it. Usually around 30 seconds or more, which seems like an eternity when you’re trying to fire off a quick note to someone.
Then there’s the battery life. I knew it was going to be worse than my old iPhone, because the 3G sucks a lot of life out of it, but holy crap… I had to charge my phone three times a day when I was at E3. And if you’re using applications with any kind of frequency, good luck. The worst part was this morning: I didn’t plug it in before I went to bed, and it was probably at a 75% charge when I last checked it. This morning? About 20%. I have never seen a gadget leak battery that quickly when it wasn’t in use.
I’ve heard through the Twitter-vine that if you restored the new iPhone from a previously saved backup it ended up less stable, and showed some of the symptoms that I’ve mentioned. I’ve also heard that it’s just a problem with the 2.0 firmware being released a bit early. No kidding. I hope that the next update makes it so I can enjoy using my phone again.
This post wasn’t so brief after all. Share your experiences in the comments and let me know how it’s all been working out for you.
My first iPhone apps
31Tomorrow the iPhone 3G comes roaring into stores, but we got a lucky break today when the 2.0 firmware was discovered online. The app store is also live in iTunes, so I took it upon myself to download a few apps (mostly free ones) to get a feel for them. Here are my first five:
(FREE) The one thing I’ve desperately wanted out of my iPhone was a chat client that worked on a non-jailbroken phone. I couldn’t find an app that would work like Adium or Trillian, which would cover all your bases in terms of chat. If you’ve come across one, let me know! However, the AIM app works really well so far, even if it’s missing some of the iChat sleekness. UPDATE: However, as Dave Zatz points out you cannot run apps in the background, which makes running an IM client a little more annoying.
(FREE) In lieu of purchasing an Amazon Kindle like I’ve been considering, I took the advice of many to wait for an eReader for the iPhone. Here’s the first incarnation of one that I’ve come across. You can download hundreds of books from sources like eReader.com and FictionWise.com, although I’d still rather have a larger screen for reading if it were for an extended period. My eyes are strained enough as it is! The page flipping is very cool, and I feel like I’m going to get a lot of use out of it.
(FREE) Math? Not so much my specialty, especially when it’s a large group and there’s check-splitting involved. There are serveral web-based apps for iPhone, but this one will come in handy at my favorite restaurant in town that for some reason never has cell reception. The interface is just about as simple as you can get, which will help expedite the paying process.
(FREE) Midomi is a wonderful little app for figuring out that song that’s been stuck in your head for days. Either sing a clip, or type in the few words you remember, and the app will bring up some matches. You can then purchase the tunes or watch them on YouTube. Folks on my FriendFeed are saying that Shazam‘s app works faster and more reliably, but I haven’t given it a shot yet myself.
($2.99) The one app that I’ve actually spent money on is MobileFlickr. I’ve made good use of the dedicated Flickr email for sending in photos from my phone, but this has a lot more obvious functionality built in. You can so just about everything on the mobile version that you can accomplish on the web, short of editing and organizing.
It seems that most of the big names have apps ready to go, like eBay, Twitterific and MySpace. There’s a good number of free ones to choose from already, and while I’d be hard-pressed to spend $9.99 on an iPhone application, the Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook does seem pretty tempting!