Mobile gamer no more...?

I would love that to be true but F2P games rake in a ton of money with all the extra IAP's. Until people start voting with their wallet and buying games instead of waiting for price drops, begging for codes etc then we'll get more and more.

Gamings been popular for 30+ years, so to some of us 'oldies' when we see a game which someones raving about we often think 'oh yeah thats similar to one i played on an 8 bit computer in the 80's.

I'm not actually too bothered by original original games. Many are based on lots of old classics anyway

But to have so many of my favourites from the 70s/80s/90s and onwards all on one device so i can carry around with me is amazing. And the price ? Wow, a dollar or two for a game mostly, incredible.

 

I can't remember the last time iOS had something akin to BioShock Infinite, Skyrim, The Last of Us, Amnesia, The Witcher or Fallout 3. For every derivative Gears, God of War sequel or boring FPS there's an original, engrossing videogame that just pulls you in and never lets you go. iOS has no, zero, nada original titles that even come close to those games I just mentioned. And the best part? More are coming. Console's short term future looks bright: Watch Dogs, GTA V and many others are sure fire hits.

Then you haven't examined the numbers. F2P is the future of mobile gaming, like it or not. It will never die off, not with the millions RR3, CSR and Clash of Clans bring daily or weekly. At one point CSR was making over one million $ per day. Companies are in the business of making money.

 

Markets that were super successful for a time crash and burn all the time. The fact that some F2P games are big earners now doesn't mean they will be 6 months from now. There's already a bit of a backlash against them and that's going to grow over time.

Say JBRUu, you've got 6,000 posts on an iOS forum. If you hate the games so much why waste so much time here?

 

Yeah I'm with you. I love re-visiting classic games. One of my favourite things on a PC is MAME. Having hundreds of my favourite arcade games that used to eat all my quarters at my disposal any time is amazing. I also love the modern games that are designed with a retro esthetic - which is a great thing about iOS games. A bad game that has retro graphics is still a bad game of course, but a good game with a cool retro look is very appealing to me...

 

Never said I hate iOS games; don't put words in my mouth. I just recognize limitations of mobile and the ultimate direction the platform is headed in.

 

I recognize those limitations too ( see my first post in this thread). I just also recognize that there are things that are great about iOS games too. They can be great without being "AAA console style games."

 

The new iPhone is rumored to come out on Sept 18, when that happens the price of the 5 will plummet. Then you can afford to get both. Just a thought.

 

I agree with the OP that artsy indie crap gets more publicity than stuff like Aralon. I see people go nuts over Superbrothers SnS but no love for Crescent Moon.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that as console games become better and better people are going to become far more demanding on their wants for ios games therefore the ios games will in turn eventually reach the point if being near equals or close enough behind to matter remember in the last few years ios game quality has spiked whilst consoles have been around for decades therefore following this line of progression ios games could become equal in the next few years. Also I'm very hopefull that free to play games die they just pieve me off so much.

 

That's hardly a problem in this thread, where the argument being made was that mobile titles will never offer a console-like experience. We've already got rather striking evidence to the contrary, both in terms of the games that are currently available, and the simple progression of mobile gaming up to this point.

However, your position appears to boil down to the argument that the current state of iOS is also its future, and because we don't have game type X on iOS at the moment, we never will. This simply isn't logical. When Snake was all the rage, even a simple game like Angry Birds would have been a ridiculous pipe dream to most, and a scant few months ago somebody claiming XCOM and Deus Ex: TF would be coming to iOS would have been laughed at for spouting nonsense.

iOS is a continually developing platform, and iPhones/iPads are continually developing devices; their success as gaming handhelds caught Apple quite off-guard, and they were too slow to respond to that. In a year's time, though, the games we praise highly now will pale in comparison to the superior offerings that improved hardware and software can support, as has happened every year up to this point. There's no reason to believe we've hit any kind of wall in development or design.

That's a non-sequitur; you're conflating two entirely different ideas here. While games that rely on consumable IAP can and do make money, that doesn't at all mean games with an actual price tag can't or won't succeed. In fact, we've seen more than once that if a game has a serious price tag and never or rarely goes on sale, it tends to do much better than a $1 app mistakenly priced to "compete". You also seem to be assuming that all of the hundreds of free-to-play games are raking in millions of dollars, which is simply not true; only a relatively small number of them are in this position.

In fact, despite some of the complaining on TA (which grossly misrepresents wider public opinion in the first place), more people are willingly paying higher prices than they have been in the past couple of years, and just looking at the release threads here reveals that more and more games are starting off (and succeeding) at higher price points.

Nonsensical doomsaying: there's absolutely no evidence that the future is inevitably going to be free-to-play games. Simply looking at the money a relatively small number of companies are making and extrapolating that this is the direction in which all of them will go is faulty logic at best, and stands in direct contradiction to that which we've already heard from a number of major developers.

So now your argument is that mobile games will get deeper, but will necessarily stop progressing at an arbitrary point before they reach a level you consider to be "console-quality"? Either we'll see "console-quality" mobile games or we won't, so if you're arguing that we won't, where exactly is this hypothetical point at which mobile hardware and software are going to stop progressing in order to forcibly prevent this?

XCOM is a current-gen console/PC game, incidentally.

The premise was that mobile gaming "has no future" and "will never get quality games", which is utter nonsense, quite frankly. There's nothing about the iOS platform that means games on Apple devices must inherently be shallow "casual" experiences now, let alone that they must remain that way in perpetuity. We've already been provided with solid examples of what is capable on the platform right now, to say nothing of what will be done in the future as devices become even more powerful. Simply looking back at the releases from the past couple of years makes it clear how far things have come in a relatively short time.

"Never" was a ludicrous claim for the original poster to make, but I think he was aware of that. By that logic we should never have seen any of the iOS games we currently have, "quality" or otherwise. That a specific "game X" isn't currently available on iOS isn't in dispute, but the strange opinion in this thread that "game X" could never be available on iOS regardless of Apple's future developments in terms of hardware and software is something not a single poster has yet been able to back up.

All I'm seeing at the moment is a bunch of tunnel-visioned people playing Snake and scoffing at the suggestion that their device would ever be able to play anything more involved. It was short-sighted and wrong back then, and is short-sighted and wrong now.

 

Wow, congrats EP, don't leave us too!

 

Appletini, you're kind of attacking the wrong guy here. I mostly agree with everything you just said. I agree that the games are and will continue to get deeper and will offer an experience that approaches more of a console type of experience in many ways. There will I suggest though always be some fundamental differences related to the interface and so forth. But as you noted, there already are lots of games offering lots of depth for the iOS market...

 

Yeah, this thread started off ok, and now seems to becoming another console vs pc vs ios flamewar again. Sigh.

Before it gets any worse, can I just say, go icade joysticks and the Apple Joystick will be coming out, so ios will be becoming consoles soon enough, just you heed my words.

Ok, carry on all, peace out.

 

Great post Appletini. I disagree with most of the points you made, but for the sake of time and the thread I'll concede the parting volley to you.

 

Wow, that post was really long.

But really every platform has benefits and cons. Why argue over it?

Ios is portable, it is a phone, it is a tablet. It can act somewhat like a pc or console.

Other than that, who cares, I don't. Want to play the very best games of course ios isn't best. But for the above reasons it is good. And if one has a lot of money to spare buy them all and a Bugatti Veyron to boot.

 

I'm slightly agreeing with you but Ravensword 2 requires a iPhone 4S/4 (I think) , but pixelated games don't have high requirements (iPod 3?) so they have a bigger audience because most devices will support it and there are more potential sales , also most are cheap. I think these are the reason for the gap in sales.
Also pixelated games are not artsy indie crap as you say, and this is from someone who didnt have a console when games were pixelated

 

Sorry, but unless those joysticks and icades are included out of the box with the iPhone the touchscreen will always remain the primary control interface and games will always have to be designed to work with that interface first and foremost which leads to some fundamental design decisions that are different from consoles and PCs.

It's similar to Gran Turismo on the PS3. It has to function with the DS3 controller even though it is ideally suited to a wheel and pedal set because most of the people playing are not going to buy a wheel to play it. Hell, I do have a wheel but rarely use it because its a pita to have set up all the time and more often than not I don't bother.

 

Well, right now no one knows about joysticks cause Apple doesn't want you to. Apple won't even allow manufacturers like icade to say icade joystick support in itunes.

The apple joystick will be on tv, news, commercials, ads, itunes descriptions, Etc. Plus I too will volunteer to be President of the Apple Wireless Joystick Defense Squad.

And since this thread is kinda getting to be a console, pc, ios gaming flamewar, I just mentioned joysticks on ios cause it is the only positive thing I really care to talk about. These console vs pc vs ios flamewars just get a little old, well maybe just for me.

It's like cars, if I said a Bugatti Veyron was the best, would you be sitting there saying that a Toyota Camry is the best?

And girls, if I said Megan Fox was the best looking girl in the world, would some of you say thay Anna Nicole Smith or Kim Kardashian was?

Or heck, how about which are better cats, dogs, lions, whales, or even dinosaurs?

To each their own, I like my ipad and iphone, I was one of the top people on the xbox scene long ago, I still like my ipad better mainly cause it is portable, has a touchscreen, ipad retina screen, great games for a buck, and where the heck is Ninjackid here to say "Is this thread worth a buck???"

Flame away.

Signed,
Connector -> President of the Apple Wireless Joystick Defense Squad

 

We're to blame. Aralon or ravensword comes out and there must be a lot of people who faint at the 4.99 or so price. I love RPGs but the market seems to push for even freemium RPGs. Look at sadly DH 4

I have hope though as expensive AAA games like xcom or koror have been very popular so there must be people spending lots on these

Still think they're brilliant devices which can do so much