The sometimes useful, often not, ramblings of stone

I will again start this post with what appears to have become a standard disclaimer for this topic. I’m not a big fan of Apple, I don’t like how they work, or most of what they do, and they seem to like annoying me, and so all of you can now rant about me and my hate and completely ignore what I have to say, which is this. A recent article on Digital trends lead with the headline “Apple’s Portable Gaming Emerges as Main Rival to Nintendo” and I found myself thinking, how can a company with no portable gaming device rival Nintendo at portable gaming?

More than that, how can a company with no games at all, be they portable or not, rival Nintendo? This statement will probably upset people as they throw some number at me saying that’s how many games Apple have on the App store, and I will ignore them. That isn’t what I said. I have said that Apple don’t have a portable gaming device, and they don’t have any games.

There is no Apple Games Studios. They do not make their own games for their own platforms, be it for a iMac/MacBook or for the iTouch/iPhone. I ranted earlier this year about how iPhone gaming was apparently “the future” of gaming and of the points I made then, no first party support, nothing over 99 cents sells and the lack of clear acceptance guidelines, have been addressed.

Now, I wouldn’t go as far as CNet did and call the iPhone the worst phone in the world, that would be far too big a claim, even for me, but I also fail to see Ars’ point about it being able to do both the job of a phone and the job of a portable gaming device well. CNet has some valid points regarding the iPhone’s failings as a phone and there are, as I pointed out, failings as a gaming device.

The iPhone is a smartphone. It’s a phone, it plays music, it goes on the internet and it plays games. the iPod Touch is an MP3 player with online capabilities, and it can play games. My Android phone is a smartphone. It’s a phone, it plays music, it goes on the internet, and it plays games. These are not gaming devices. There is a very distinct difference between a device that can play games and a gaming device.

Apple call their device a “Great Portable Game Player”. I’m not sure whether to agree here or not. The device has a secondary, maybe even tertiary, use as a games playing device. There are some OK-ish games on it, buried under the rubbish, it has some nice features, like multi-touch, accelerometer etc, but with no real controls I question its ability to handle some of the games that could make it great.

So contrary to what some press people may be telling you, Nintendo and Apple are not direct competitors. Apple does not have a real “portable gaming device” on the market. And we can all stop caring about the iPhone/iTouch being “the future.”

MTFBWY