The fate of the mobile gaming world has just been shaken up again by this new salvo from Sony, landing them smack dab in the middle of this growing turf war. As connected devices become more and more omnipresent, the battle for mindshare and dollars is heating up, with Apple especially skyrocketing in popularity over just a short period. While the latest from Nintendo is out in the open and many details of Apple's iPad mkII and iPhone 5 are floating about, what predictions can be made in this rapidly evolving market?
State of the Market
I fall into what I would imagine is a common pattern among this generation of gamers--I started with a GameBoy Color and lived with Nintendo through my youth, playing GBA and DS in all the inappropriate places I could have--then hopped onto the iPhone platform in 2007. What I realized as I downloaded my first game from the App Store, and what we all know now, is that Apple's pervasive iOS ecosystem is a legitimate contender in the handheld gaming space. By approaching their competitors from the MP3 and phone markets, Apple essentially allowed their new platform to tap into a huge wealth of new customers. Developers then flocked to the platform, its huge installed base and instant, centralized distribution system encouraging a whole new regime of mobile gaming.
I believe that in the wake left behind Apple's huge leap forward, there has been a fundamental change in the hardware, and therefore the games, that people WANT in their hands, on the go, all the time. Clearly this trend has affected the design of the NGP--the touchscreen says it all. In a time when even our old friend the Blackberry is catching up by tacking on a touch screen, shouldn't your PSP? Sure, Nintendo got out ahead of that one with the DS, but what does the NGP signal for the market in the years to come?
There is no monopoly on Innovation
From purely a hardware perspective the NGP is highly impressive: the possibility of a quad-core CPU powering a 5" OLED screen right in your hands is going to be leaps and bounds ahead of anything Nintendo or Apple currently have coming. As a company known for building powerful consoles, Sony holds up in that respect. But generally Sony is not known for driving innovation, that's something typically left to Nintendo or Apple. That, most of all, is why I find the specs of the NGP to be so awe inspiring. The sheer geeky joy I get from imagining the games created for this platform just titillates me.
What I mean to address primarily is not the hardware itself but the innovation displayed by finally implementing a rear touch-screen on their device. The ability to include such a technology has been around for years and now Sony has finally embraced the technology--in a huge way, nonetheless. Including it as a feature on their new flagship handheld, in a mobile gaming space where Apple is steadily sucking in consumers and Nintendo remains largely unaffected thanks to their younger audience, shows that Sony has stepped up to the plate and is planning to challenge their newest competitor at their own game. The NGP is more than Sony's entry into the world of touch gaming, what this move represents for Sony is an attempt to change the game itself, moving the battle from the world of hardware innovation, in which Apple has reigned supreme as of late, to a battlefield where Sony has a potential royal flush: developers.
Use what you've got: Developers
Apple has thus far made huge inroads into mobile gaming where others have failed: they have gotten their devices in more pockets than anyone else. The factor that will end up winning the war, though, is not the hardware but the games. Apple's innovative new input methods certainly help, but what has contributed to iOS's gaming success most of all is the revolution in casual gaming. The continued success of games like Angry Birds or Doodle Jump shows developers and consumers alike that Apple has a winning formula, one which others like Microsoft are trying to replicate. For instance, the Windows Phone 7 platform does show promise with its similar caliber of games, even drawing on Microsoft's Xbox developers, but the platform is virtually identical to iOS in most respects--there certainly aren't any WP7 games that couldn't exist on iOS, the hardware is after all very similar. Even the integration of Xbox Live has not made much of a lasting impact for Microsoft. Of course, it's not like anyone plays iPhone games for the social networking (Game Center, I'm looking at you: Get useful please).
In every sense, then, I think the fact that Sony is approaching the NGP from this innovative angle means that it is serious about challenging Apple for consumers' hearts and dollars. An example: nestled among the list of games in devlopment for the NGP is Flight Control by Firemint. What exactly does that mean? The crossover of a casual developer for iOS (and to be fair, virtually every other platform) potentially means that Sony will begin this round of the battle on equal footing with the iOS behemoth. This sort of phone to console crossover among developers, in addition to the PSP's loyal base of fans, certainly gives Sony a fighting chance.
In fact, what I think is the most important news out of the NGP announcement, and what I think gives Sony the greatest advantage over Apple and virtually anyone else, is the list of exclusive titles the NGP will be sporting. I was actually pretty floored when I heard that titles like Uncharted, Littlebigplanet, and Resistance would be coming to the mobile space. I thought for a second how cool that would be, just in general, but then realized that I won't be able to play those games on my iPhone. That realization was in fact the impetus for me to write this article. I find the possibility of a truly competitive, modern, game franchise laden, dedicated gaming console coming to invade our pockets to be an electrifying possibility, one that I would welcome with open arms.
Conclusion
The impact that this ends up having will depend on the details like price of course, but I think it's high time Apple takes notice that its competitive advantage in the mobile gaming space is not exclusive by any means. Factors that gave Apple's mobile gaming presence its start, like its touchscreens, app store and weight in our pocket at all times can and will be replicated by competitors soon enough. I can foresee a device like the NGP poaching some of Apple's potential gamers in the near future, but what Apple really needs to watch out for is the NGP2 which makes calls, comes loaded with vanilla Android 2.5, and boasts specs that will put anything Motorola, HTC, or Apple has ever built to shame. It would be silly to bet against Apple in the mobile space today, I'm sure they have something up their sleeve, but if some sort of stopgap isn't introduced soon, developers and their loyal fans may begin a shift away from our endlessly innovative iPhones towards a more content-rich gaming platform.
Questions
1) When is the real PSP Phone coming? Why hasn't it been announced yet? (I feel that Sony would have announced it alongside the NGP if they knew what they were doing. I'm a little worried that some sort of botchjob Xperia nonsense is going to kill their chance at uniting Android and their loyal PSP fans)
2) What can Apple do to encourage exclusivity among developers similar to Sony's high budget game franchises? (While they already have a great number of exclusive mobile games, most are due simply to the lack of a worthy competitor)
3) Can Apple turn a focus on gaming into anything other than catering to a niche crowd? Is there some greater mobile gaming revolution to be had when all smartphones can play games as graphically intensive as, for example, the Uncharted demo shown at the NGP press conference?
Sources
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/playstation-ngp-round-up-price-battery-hardware-and-games.ars
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