What a load of nadgers. How many people's mums do you know with a PSP? And how many with a DS? When you say "adults" there, what you mean is "pompous tech-fixated teenage boys who desperately WISH they were adults".
I just don't get why people say things like that, all devices have their range of age, but DS just actually gets marketing for it's casual games so it is more noticeable. Go to gaming websites and the DS is constantly praised for it's "hardcore" (lol whatever makes people seem cool for having a PSP).
Rockband Unplugged on the PSP has downloadable content. Around 30 songs at the moment. Also, the iPhone won't ever compaire to DS or PSP games, because the only people who can afford to take it seriously are indie developers (Its hard to make money when you can hardly sell a game for $5). Which doesn't sound bad, but that means you'll almost never find a full featured game, and if you do, chances are its a port.
Wow. That might just be the most ignorance I've ever seen someone cram into two sentences. There's barely a single word there that isn't flat-out drivel.
Agreed, that was complete bull. Have you played Rolando 2? Real Racing? And while they're ports of other phone games that weren't as good, don't Zenonia and Gangster count? What so bad about ports anyway? Oh, and the dsi market is picking up and the psp is still cranking them out, so lets face it. The iphone won ever be a full blown handheld device. That doesn't mean it isn't as fun though! Either way, its still fun and cheapish. Also, it would be stupid with a controller, it defies the pull-out-of-your-pocket-and-play-a-game-for-a-minute purpose.
Tho I think the iDevies are now moving into the online gaming which will set it apart from the PSP and the DS. Right now iDevice has Krazy Kart Racing, iMech and at some point ngmoco's FPS game. I have never seen an online game for PSP or the DS. You can correct me if I am wrong and name the games that offer similar experiences.
Feel free to tell me whats wrong about it then. I'm not saying every game on the iPhone fits that description (otherwise I wouldn't even be on this website), but the overwhelming majority does. PSP/DS gamers think Gameloft games are some of the worst on their systems, when iPhone gamers consider them some of the best, that alone shows you the difference of quality between the games on each of the handhelds. And developers have been quoted on multiple occasions saying that the App Store has a really ****ed up system, only allowing people in the top 25 to make much of a profit. And go look at the top 25, only 5 of them are even $5. Absolutely NONE are more than $5. Do you honestly think that doesn't scare away larger developers? Because only making such a small profit is not worth their time. There are online gamer on both the DS and PSP, I know Mario Kart, Metroid, and Tetris have online on the DS. And so does Metal Gear Solid on the PSP. Rolando is a knock off of Patapon on the PSP, and Gamgstar is a knock off of Grandtheft Auto, which has better versions on both the DS and the PSP, do you really think those are helping out iPhone gaming? I will give you a thumbs up on Zenonia though, good game. And ports are bad because they don't offer a new experience.
I find that defending my points just gets me in trouble. Very briefly, because I'm playing poker: - big publishers being scared off? Well, that's obviously a load of cobblers. EA, Konami, Taito, Namco, Capcom, Square Enix, Ubisoft... most of the biggest publishers have major App Store presence and commitment. (And even if they didn't, I'm not sure that'd be a bad thing.) - can't make money outside the top 25? And? In "real" videogame publishing you can't make money outside about the top 6. App Store publishers get 70% of retail. Boxed games in shops make the publisher about 30%. - small profits? App Store games offer by FAR the greatest profit/cost ratio of any current game system if you get a hit. Even if you don't, the potential loss is tiny compared to investing $10m in a game that stiffs on the PS3/360. - who thinks Gameloft games are the iPod's best? Nobody but idiots. I foolishly spent 99c on Castle Of Magic today and gave it a one-star review because it's total garbage. People are stupid, that's not the iPod's fault. - Rolando is NOTHING LIKE Patapon, except in visual style. And you mean Loco Roco anyway. - and what does "full featured game" mean anyway? Flight Control has all the features it needs. You just mean pointless unnecessary bloat and fetch quests.
If by "major app store presence" you mean terrible games with the name of their franchises (Metal Gear Solid Touch - Horrible, Silent Hill - Horrible, Capcom's Megaman 2 - Abysmal, Resident Evil 4/Degeneration - Horrible, Square-Enix? Oh, you mean the spin-off FF game?) then I agree with you.
-EA gets special treatment from Apple (They showed off both of their larger games, Spore and Sims 3), Namco has only made one game on the iPhone that isn't a port. Capcom has made zero games that are not a port. Both of Square Enix's games are available on other consoles. And all of Ubisofts games are the Coaching series, which are all on the DS. How does that show "commitment"? -Wrong, tons of console developers out there make money off of their releases, even smaller releases. Look at games sales some time. -My point was that its really difficult to get a hit, and that even good games are overlooked on the App Store. And the "Greatest Ratio" thing is wrong, some games on consoles sell millions of copies, even if they only make ~$20 a copy, that's more than they would ever make on the App Store. -I agree, but look at the Modern Combat topic, there are many people who look forward to their games, despite them being blatant rip-offs of games that other developers actually made. -Yeah, I meant Loco Roco, my bad. -By full-featured I mean a game that has attention to detail, more than a few hours of gameplay, and an overall good quality. While there are some of these on the App Store, it's nothing close to what the DS or PSP offer. Also, go to a gaming forum that isn't dedicated to iPhone gaming and try to make a post about an iPhone game. Most of the time they won't even take you seriously. And if gamers don't take a console seriously, believe me, developers won't feel the need to either.
It shows that they haven't been scared off. And describing the iPhone version of Resident Evil, say, as a "port" is ridiculous. Ha ha. I've been a videogame journalist and developer for almost 20 years, and I could count the number of times I've heard people say anything wronger than that on the fingers of one hand. 95% of money in the mainstream console industry is made by 1% of games, and everyone else struggles for crumbs. That's why there are almost no small publishers left any more. Define "really difficult", compared to the tiny proportion of mainstream console games that are hits. Evidently you don't grasp the concept of a ratio. And any publisher (with the possible sole exception of Nintendo) would laugh a hollow black laugh in your face at the idea of making $20 profit from one copy of a game. That's just your opinion. I've spent far more time playing Drop7 than any PSP game in all the years I've owned my PSP. The DS still has a better catalogue overall, but then it should have - it's been out for years longer. Also, it's not a fair comparison. DS/PSP games cost about 40 times what an iPod game costs, so if you're counting play hours, you should be measuring the time spent on one DS/PSP game against the time spent on 40 iPod games for the same money. Entirely true. Entirely false. The Wii (and the DS, come to that, which all the "hardcore" gamers said would be crushed by the PSP) would appear to crap all over your argument from a great height.
Well, technically they are ports. Resident Evil: Degeneration was originally released for the Nokia N-Gage and the iPhone version of Resident Evil 4 was initially released on Japanese mobiles a while back.
-Both Resident Evil games are ports from Brew (on a Japanese cell phone). And it does show that they are scarred to actually put money in developing a new game on the iPhone. -By really difficult, I mean that there are thousands of games on the App Store, and many of them aren't even recognized. And while I do agree that not every console game is a hit, a game doesn't have to be a hit to make money when its on a console, they make way more money for each copy sold. And even if smaller developers are bought out (IE: Rare and Microsoft), they are still around. -I do understand what a ratio is, and $20 was just an example number, my point was that they still make a lot more than a copy sold on the App Store (Seeing how there is a 30/70 split, $1 games only earn $.70, and $5 games only earn $3.50). Kotaku has a list of average developer salaries, seeing that game studios have tons of programmers, artists and ect., they must be making a decent ammount per copy sold. http://kotaku.com/5233490/so-how-much-do-game-developers-make -I said there are some on the App Store, just not as many. Also, Minigore and some of Gameloft's popular games are being put on PSP's store, with others probably to follow, which means even the iPhone exclusive games aren't staying exclusive. -Skipping this one. -There are still tons of hardcore Wii gamers, Super Smash Brothers, Twilight Princess, and Mario Galaxy are all best sellers on the Wii. I think Smash Brothers is the best example of this, gaming forums went crazy over it, NeoGAFs largest topic ever was for Brawl, and it was the most active board on Game FAQs, IGN, and tons of other websites. Not to mention it, and Mario Kart had midnight releases everywhere, which they don't do for casual games.
You really, REALLY don't understand the way the videogames business works. Roughly 5% of games on mainstream consoles break even or make profit, the rest make a loss. And while a flop iPod game might cost the developer a couple of thousand bucks, a flop 360 game will likely put a small publisher out of business. But hey, what do I know? I've only been in the business 20 years.
