Jul 21
Monday
Tech : Duncan Riley
The new iPhone IS a gaming platform

As I drove my 5 year old son to school this morning in a wet, cold Melbourne winter morning, he sat in the car next to me playing Crash Bandicoot Nitro Card 3D on my less than 2 week old iPhone 3G. I only purchased the game yesterday on iTunes, before that his favorite game was Super Monkey Ball. I don’t play a lot of games (although I am on Pokerstars 3 or 4 times a week) but I found myself waiting in a chemist the other day playing games as well. Playing games on a mobile phone isn’t new, and I can remember way off into my commuting past, playing Snake and some memory matching game on a Nokia, but I never saw my mobile then as a gaming device. Today I do.

The new iPhone IS a gaming platform.

Om Malik over on GigaOM asked the same question this morning, and noted figures from Cellufun that iPhone users are playing games at a rate four times that of other mobile phone users. And why wouldn’t they? the phone is built for gaming. Full color, decent sized screen, easy to navigate a game by touch or moving the phone, as opposed to the cumbersome keying required by other phones.

Figures from Apple also prove the premise. 8 of the top 10 paid applications on iTunes are games. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D sits on top from Texas Hold’em and Super Monkey Ball. The ridiculously stupid iPint sits on top of the free applications list.

My own challenge at home is to balance my sons use out so it doesn’t kill my phone. As per my walkthrough the other day, I upgraded my old cracked iPhone to 2.0, and one of the driving reasons for that was to offer it to my son on occasion. I’m even considering the need for an iPod Touch just for him to play games, and considering the cost of games on competing devices such as the Nintendo DS, the Touch would be a bargain. Sure, iTunes doesn’t have the range of games available quite yet, but with such a strong uptake, expect a variety of additional choice as the year goes on.

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  • July 21, 2008 at 11:55 pm Zach Landes
    Cool stuff, but...what's a chemist in this context? Pharmacy?
  • July 22, 2008 at 12:08 am Duncan Riley
    sorry, Pharmacy. Must be an Australian term (we use both chemist and pharmacy)
  • July 22, 2008 at 12:51 am Frankie Warren
    My problem with the iPhone (or any mobile I suppose) as a gaming platform is, like you mentioned, the battery life issue. If I'm stuck in an airport for an extended amount of time, I feel fine blasting through a DS battery. However, I know I will need to use my phone later on in the day for something important so I find myself hesitant to "waste" the battery life.
  • July 22, 2008 at 12:55 am Duncan Riley
    Frankie, battery is an issue, I know that my iPhone is good for maybe 5 hours of non-stop gaming, nothing more, which is why I'm tossing up a touch for my son.
  • July 22, 2008 at 9:50 am Zach Landes
    Do you think you'd still be buying the touch if the iphone had a removable battery? I would guess that a lot more people are willing to plunk down the cash for a removable battery than for a whole extra touch (I did read about someone else in my friendfeed with both a touch and an iphone). Apple is hurting themselves with the lack of removable battery, I'd wager.
  • July 22, 2008 at 10:05 am wrecks
    A removable battery would not only be cheaper to replace, but would also give my the assurance I can reset the phone when it hangs, which it seems to do frequently.

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