The iPhone as a gaming platform

[Kouen]

I Was thinking and pondering this one, Would you consider the iPhone a viable Gaming platform in the same League as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.

As much as I dislike the iPhone and Apple itself I do think it could also be considered a 3rd portable Gaming Device in the same area as the other 2 portables, A friend of mine however disagrees and says it hardly a gaming machine at all due to the lack of non touch screen controls.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the Apple iPhone is or can be considered a Gaming Platform or do you think its just a PDA Phone with a few games that always make it to any platform.

 

[Kwaren]

I think... no

 

[LeonLethality]

It certainly is a gaming platform, there's no denying that. But I don't think of it as one to the same extent as the PSP and DS.

 

[Aura Guardian]

I Was thinking and pondering this one, Would you consider the iPhone a viable Gaming platform in the same League as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.

As much as I dislike the iPhone and Apple itself I do think it could also be considered a 3rd portable Gaming Device in the same area as the other 2 portables, A friend of mine however disagrees and says it hardly a gaming machine at all due to the lack of non touch screen controls.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the Apple iPhone is or can be considered a Gaming Platform or do you think its just a PDA Phone with a few games that always make it to any platform.

No way. It's a phone. People may use it for games, but when the battery dies and they realized that its a phone(happened to 3 of my friends. Each moment was funny).
Also, I LOVE your avatar

 

[Rauten]

Proper gaming platform? no.

Casual gaming platform? Probably, the things most played in iPhone (and thus will probably be the kinds in iPad too) are Peggle and Bejeweled.

But I would never consider it to be in the same league as the DS or PSP, I've yet to see a GAME store, or the videogames section of any other, that sells iPhones, or related products (cases and whatnot).

 

[Kouen]

No way. It's a phone. People may use it for games, but when the battery dies and they realized that its a phone(happened to 3 of my friends. Each moment was funny).
Also, I LOVE your avatar

Hell yea! Last Blade from the Neo Geo Pocket color!

I got a whole bunch of these as it goes from Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, SNK Vs Capcom MOTM, Samurai Showdown and Last Blade, hit me up on a PM if you want me to zip/rar and send em your way

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Well, it plays Street Fighter 4. And quite well. And has a enough good games that GamesRadar can do an i-Phone game of the day feature. I'd say it a gaming platform. Not to the extent of the DS and PSP. But it has a lot of good shit.

 

[Rakenar]

Well, I consider it to be a gaming platform, but not to the same "extent" as a DS and PSP, merely because the number of input you can do at the same time is waaay lower, and that touch controls are gimmicky at best. But take example the game "Dungeon Hunter" on iPhone, it's a nice little dungeon crawler in its own right, and you can play for a good while on it.

Apple's never been good at gaming anyway, multimedia has always been their strong point, and they should stick to it.

You do know that the actual games on the appStore aren't made by Apple, right?

 

[Steppin Razor]

Not in the same league as the PSP and DS, but it's still a decent little platform and can provide quite a bit of entertainment.

Besides, Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II are available on the app store, so there's way more than just flash game length stuff for it now too.

 

[Aura Guardian]

No way. It's a phone. People may use it for games, but when the battery dies and they realized that its a phone(happened to 3 of my friends. Each moment was funny).
Also, I LOVE your avatar

Hell yea! Last Blade from the Neo Geo Pocket color!

I got a whole bunch of these as it goes from Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, SNK Vs Capcom MOTM, Samurai Showdown and Last Blade, hit me up on a PM if you want me to zip/rar and send em your way

OOooh. All I have is Hibiki gifs from Last Blade 2. So underrated in the SNK world but damn was it great

 

[Armored Prayer]

I count its as a gaming platform but no where near as big as two main handhelds.

Some games are actually quite fun to play like PvZ.

 

[jerrrry]

It's absolutely a game platform. It may not target the same fan base as either the PSP or the DS (although both of those systems would love to capture some of the iPhone's gaming fan base), but there are many many games made and sold for it. Some of them are quite substantial as well. The arguments against it being a game platform basically come down to:

1. Of course not, it's a phone(or whatever you call it, but gaming is not it's main goal).
Gaming is not the reason PCs were invented, and except for hardcore PC gamers isn't really the main reason anyone owns a PC. Can it still be considered a gaming platform?

2. It doesn't have in-depth games, it's all just shovelware.
You probably haven't really done your research. While there is a ton of junk there, there are also some great games. At the moment, a lot of them are ports (civ rev is an excellent rather full-featured port, as are the final fantasy ports - I've played all three), there are some great original apps to be found to that re much deeper than your typical tower defense or pop-cap game. On a side-note, Nintendo and Sony have been trying for a while to duplicate the little cheapo play-for-a-few-minute games a lot for their portable consoles(DSi-ware I believe, and whatever Sony called their similar program).

3. It has no extra buttons, it's just a touchscreen.
Aren't there games on the DS that are really only played with the touchscreen? Aren't there games on the Wii that are really only played using motion controls? Isn't Microsoft creating a whole new whatever-you-call-Natal based on using visual and physical input and NOT buttons? Are none of these things games? Does an input system really define whether or not something could be called a game? Also, there are plenty of games that include on-screen soft buttons (yes, that limits usable screen real estate, but that sounds like a development decision to me).

4. I hate Apple/Apple sucks/random Apple flaming.
Really? No further comment needed here...

 

[Cryo84R]

Final Fantasy 1 and 2, Chaos Rings, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown wars, Street Fighter IV, Rock Band, Civ, Red Alert, Mass Effect Galaxy, Mega Man, and quite a few others say it's a gaming platform.

Hell, those are just the ones I own.

Also consider that there are 90+ million devices out there that run the iPhone OS, and games are the largest download group.

 

[Willwillwritehiswill]

The iphone's problem, what stops it becoming a true gaming device capable of being a notable competitor to the DS and PSP, is quality control. So many game apps that are tower defence games, simple tapping games and just poor quality stop the thing being taken seriously by many people.

But as has been mentioned, There are plenty of good games out there for the mobile platform and Square Enix's recent game, Chaos Rings, shows that developers can make iphone exclusive games that retain all of the quality and polish you'd expect from a PSP game.