London Game Conference survey result on top gaming contributors

[Shifty Geezer]

...effectively making them more important than core gamers in a relatively short period of time.

Important in terms of numbers and a target for thousands of indie devs, maybe, but not important for finanically supporting the gaming industry. Gaming - business types might be affording the mobile games sector too much importance, like the old internet explosion. Too many people too quickly, the bubble burst, and we settle down to normality with each market supporting its relevant share. Hence the impotance of iOS might seem huge now but might end up fairly niche in a few years (unless consoles go Android or the like).

So he "fixed" it by introducing a new platform that doesn't support anything else. Seriously?

Isn't that what consoles did, versus fragmented computers (8 bit) or hardware issues (PC)? A large, homogenous market is ideal.

 

[hoho]

A large, homogenous market is ideal.

It is good but it's far from homogeneous. i-stuff makes up at best 30% of the mobile market.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But its growth was because iOS was homogenous. Now there are rivals, in the same way Windows offers a unified development platform for vastly varying hardware such that game developers can target PC as easily as any console, but iOS was a significant catalyst in growing the mobile sector by offering a single, large platform for developers to target, while being open enough that lots of indies could afford to give it a try unike the traditional consoles.

At this point it wouldn't be unfair IMO to claim iPhone and iPod did for the mobile gaming market what Nintendo did for console gaming post-crash.

 

[Nesh]

Still...it's a good indicator of how quickly things can change in games and how the old kings can be totally forgotten or left behind. Say what you want about Steve Jobs but he created two standardized platforms (phone + tablet) that have had a huge effect on casual gamers effectively making them more important than core gamers in a relatively short period of time.

It didnt have an overall positive impact in gaming except if you isolate it purely on money generated by cheap (mostly bad quality) games on portables which is a pretty narrow view. The overall picture shows that it cannibalized quality and bigger budget titles and threatens the profitability of other better gaming portable devices and those better quality games

When we refer to casual gamers or hardcore gamers the terms are pretty generic. Casual gamers always existed and always had games available to them. But now due to the overpriced (hence cost of acquiring) tablets and iphones and the inconvenience of carrying a phone/tablet and a portable gaming platform at the same time made people reluctant to buy another portable and prefer to settle with the experience of carrying convenience than a better gaming experience.

Also what they did was to make people that werent and arent really gamers, to buy some games because they are dead cheap anyways and have the "why not throw a few pennies, its almost free" mentality for some software. Even casual gamers that otherwise dont care about crap games will throw some pennies or download free games just because they cost nothing even if they wont even bother to play much out of them. They are infested with zombie software that generate money.

And for those people it doesnt matter if its a game, some other application, or some abomination that tries to be a game.

Whereas other personalities and gaming products had a very CLEAR positive effect in our gaming experience, grew the industry and opened them up to more people the tablets and iPhones affected a segment of the industry which cannibalizes and bastardizes

 

[RudeCurve]

Shovelware existed long before iOS...in fact it started with the introduction of the Atari 2600..which ironically was a major contributor to the gaming industry. As for having a negative effect says who?

 

[Arwin]

I do think that some of the perceived effects are skewed, in that a lot of casuals that play games on iOS devices already did so as browser/flash games. Now it gets the (significant) enhancement of being playable on the move, but I currently think games played on stuff like the iPad take over primarily from on the one hand tabletop games and browser/flash on the other, and not nearly as much as people think from handheld game devices. At least so far - it surely has the potential to do so still of course, but above all I think hat we'll just see more of these devices overall, not a shift per se.

 

[snarfbot]

well 2 out of 5 aint bad

 

[Cyan]

It is good but it's far from homogeneous. i-stuff makes up at best 30% of the mobile market.

Apple didn't invent all the products that made them so successful because it was Creative Labs who created the backbone of the iPod, when they invented the mp3 player. Something similar happened with the tablets, but it could only be Apple the company which would make them popular currently for many reasons.

 

[joker454]

It didnt have an overall positive impact in gaming except if you isolate it purely on money generated by cheap (mostly bad quality) games on portables which is a pretty narrow view. The overall picture shows that it cannibalized quality and bigger budget titles and threatens the profitability of other better gaming portable devices and those better quality games

I don't really agree with that. Before the iOS platform it was almost impossible to make a proper business making mobile games. I know of at least two friends that tried various mobile business back in the day and between stuborn carriers, a million device varieties, tons of tools/technologies to support, etc, it was simply impossible. iOS had a huge positive impact here in that they created a common standard platform that was easy to support and casual gaming is better because of it. From personal experience, I have a a pc and 360 that I game on but if I tally up how much time I spend on games most of it ironically is on the iPad. I say ironic because I don't consider myself a casual gamer and I play hardcore games, but there you go most of my gaming time is now spent on iPad.

I don't think it cannabilized quality either, what would you use as proof of this? Hardcore games are as hardcore as ever (see Battlefield 3, COD, Skyrim, etc) and mobile games are better than ever. iOS had a positive influence here as well when they made their tablets and phones use the same os. That created the tablet gaming market almost overnight, again a huge positive. That in turn forced for example Microsoft to think the same way to where their upcoming tablets, phones and future consoles will all merge. I don't think it cannabilized devices either, standalone portable gaming devices are a total dead end, economies of scale will ensure that phones will eclipse them in power and kill them off. Personally in 10 years I think consoles will be obsolete as well. If Win8 tablets ship with standard wireless gamepad support on day one and offer tv out, then mark my works next gen of consoles will be the last. No more buying a portable game player, game playing console and tablet. One tablet in 10 years will do it all even for the core gamers, far less for the rest.

Yes iOS has extreme amounts of shovelware but the positives far outweight the negatives and I personalyl think the entire games market is better because of it. I really do think a shakeup is coming, and we'll look back and find the idea of buying all these devices comical when one devices will do it all. iOS was the catalyst that started it all, but feel free to check this post again in 10 years and we'll see if I was right Next gen consoles will hit the "good enough" mark for visuals, and a few years after that the same tech will get scaled into tablets. Then it's game over for consoles.

 

[zed]

I'ld include the stamper brothers as well in any top 5 list

some of 'their' titles

atic atak
jet pac
knight lore // a revolutionary title that was the first in history to display a detailed 3D world using an isometric perspective
GoldenEye 007 // started the shooter craze on consoles
Donkey Kong Country
Banjo-Kazooie
Battletoads

just some of the stuff they done (some they done all design, programming,art,sound comapre that to say Miyamoto where its mainly just design )
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,51948/
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,51914/

the 5 ppl
Stamper brothers
Gabe Newell (co-founder and managing director of Valve)
Shigeru Miyamoto (developer of Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda)
-carmack?
?

for hardware I'ld include the atari 2600, the first 'real' console that launched the home console craze
also perhaps 'space invaders console' which started the videogame craze off (before that they existed pong etc but they were a curiosity, but when that hit it went mainstream)

 

[Gubbi]

Personally in 10 years I think consoles will be obsolete as well.

I'm not really sure.

From a business point of view, iPhone and iPad are already consoles. The vertical integration of Apple allows them to subsidize the hardware with software sales. Not that they are doing that right now, but they could if they wanted to (or had to).

From a gaming point of view, iPhone and iPads are equivalent to a PSP, a handheld gaming device with network capability. The portables didn't make the big, hot, loud boxes under the TV go away.

The advantage of consoles is the very long hardware upgrade cycle which results in very big install bases, which are then leveraged by developers to create huge AAA games.

Phones and tablets have much shorter release cycles.

For phones, that actually don't matter that much. There will be a very large install base with hardware less than 2 years old. Developers can target slightly-less-than-state-of-the-art and reach a huge market.

Tablets are different. They are basically simple, user friendly PCs for the coffee table. I don't see people upgrading their tablets nearly as often as they upgrade phone. So you end up with more hardware configurations to support (PC gaming all over again).

Cheers

 

[AlphaWolf]

The advantage of consoles is the very long hardware upgrade cycle which results in very big install bases, which are then leveraged by developers to create huge AAA games.

Phones and tablets have much shorter release cycles.

This.

You can't replace consoles with hardware that has a 2 year expected shelf life, it's dead before a AAA title gets to the shelves. So as long as there is a market for games like gears of war, COD, mass effect etc, there will be consoles. Maybe someday cloud can replace it, but I don't hold a lot of hope for cloud as long as ISPs have any say.

 

[joker454]

The advantage of consoles is the very long hardware upgrade cycle which results in very big install bases, which are then leveraged by developers to create huge AAA games.

Phones and tablets have much shorter release cycles.

For phones, that actually don't matter that much. There will be a very large install base with hardware less than 2 years old. Developers can target slightly-less-than-state-of-the-art and reach a huge market.

Tablets are different. They are basically simple, user friendly PCs for the coffee table. I don't see people upgrading their tablets nearly as often as they upgrade phone. So you end up with more hardware configurations to support (PC gaming all over again).

That's true but the engine makers like Epic, etc will be all over that to more easily support scaling across a few generations of devices. It won't be as bad as on pc's where you have myriads of drivers, hardware configurations, os's in various states of patches, multiple gpu vendors, etc. It will be simpler like supporting iPad1, 2, and 3 which is far easier to do since the hardware is fixed and because they are being made to be backwards compatible with each other. We're already seeing that with various games that look and run better on iPad2 compared to iPad1, and likewise I'll wager you'll see three stages of performance when iPad3 comes out where the game will look at it's prime on iPad3, then a bit worse on iPad2, and more downgraded on iPad1. Phones will be the same, you will have games that look their best on iPhone 4gs, a bit worse iPhone 4, then worse yet on iPhone 3gs. Developers already do that now with pc version at the top and then scaled back console versions, but doing this on iOS is much simpler. Supporting three generations of iOS devices with todays tools isn't that hard, and cross supporting iOS Phones/Tablets likewise isn't that hard either, one would even say relatively easy compared to supporting pc + console today.

 

[patsu]

So he "fixed" it by introducing a new platform that doesn't support anything else. Seriously?

He fixed it by selling millions of uniform devices and making it easy to develop on them, and brain dead to consume.

Prior cellphone software should be portable to iOS since it's OpenGL based. The fragmented volume was small anyway compared to the potential on iOS alone (See AngryBird early days). Or you can use full blown HTML, not one of those heavily gimped cellphone HTML paper specs.

For the record, I'm not saying dedicated game consoles will go away. I suspect they may just take a different form. It's possible that a segment of users still demand for a dedicated entertainment device (like me !)

 

[AlphaWolf]

That's true but the engine makers like Epic, etc will be all over that to more easily support scaling across a few generations of devices. It won't be as bad as on pc's where you have myriads of drivers, hardware configurations, os's in various states of patches, multiple gpu vendors, etc. It will be simpler like supporting iPad1, 2, and 3 which is far easier to do since the hardware is fixed and because they are being made to be backwards compatible with each other. We're already seeing that with various games that look and run better on iPad2 compared to iPad1, and likewise I'll wager you'll see three stages of performance when iPad3 comes out where the game will look at it's prime on iPad3, then a bit worse on iPad2, and more downgraded on iPad1. Phones will be the same, you will have games that look their best on iPhone 4gs, a bit worse iPhone 4, then worse yet on iPhone 3gs. Developers already do that now with pc version at the top and then scaled back console versions, but doing this on iOS is much simpler. Supporting three generations of iOS devices with todays tools isn't that hard, and cross supporting iOS Phones/Tablets likewise isn't that hard either, one would even say relatively easy compared to supporting pc + console today.

Backwards compatibility just means the new hardware can run old games, not that the old hardware can run the new games. So are you writing software that doesn't make use of the improved performance of new hardware, or are you orphaning last years users? Most console owners want no part of an annual upgrade cycle.

 

[RudeCurve]

I do think that some of the perceived effects are skewed, in that a lot of casuals that play games on iOS devices already did so as browser/flash games. Now it gets the (significant) enhancement of being playable on the move, but I currently think games played on stuff like the iPad take over primarily from on the one hand tabletop games and browser/flash on the other, and not nearly as much as people think from handheld game devices. At least so far - it surely has the potential to do so still of course, but above all I think hat we'll just see more of these devices overall, not a shift per se.

Funny you mention this because I'm pretty sure the opposite is equally true ie there are millions of people who game on iOS devices that have never played any type of flash games on computers or other devices. In fact I myself wasn't even aware that some of the iOS games were ports of flash games for computers until I visited the developer/publisher sites.

As a hardcore gamer and someone whos owned, Pong, Atari 2600, Vectrex, NES, SMS, SNES, Genesis, TG16, ,TurboDuo, SGFX, PS1, DC, GC, PSTwo, X360, GB, TurboExpress, DS, PSP, GBA I can honestly say there are valid reasons why iOS games are so popular. No need for excuses.

1. Easy to buy from App store, most games can be purchased and downloaded immediately wirelessly straight into the phone in only a few minutes no matter where you are as long as you have a cellular signal.

2. Games are small in size and are not physical so you can have over 100 games on the device without having to carry around "cartridges".

3. Games are cheap and some are free with ingame ads. Some non free games can be had for free via Free App A Day type sponsors. Just because they're free or cheap doesn't mean they aren't fun. If they aren't fun people wouldn't be playing them they'd be moving on to something that is fun.

4. Games are easy to pick up and play and don't take tons of time to get familiar with complex controls.

5. Many games are made to be playable using only touch and motion so you don't need dedicated bulky controls on the device.

6. Games are simple yet addictive because they have classic gameplay mechanics and most support HD resolution so they also look great. Sound quality is great too when using headphones. A lot of people overlook this.

7. Online multiplayer, leaderboards, achievements, social networking etc.

8. No need to carry around an extra device just to play games. Also since these games don't require lots of time to play they don't drain the battery so much, so if you're gaming on your iPhone there is little concern when you want to make a phone call.

Of course there are drawbacks too but they're irrelevent for the type of gaming that people do on these devices. For example no dedicated controls for traditional non touch games. This to me is irrelevent because it adds complexity, bulk and just doesn't make sense on a device so small. I leave those complex games to my home console. Before iOS people didn't have a choice, if they wanted to play games on the go they had to choose between Nintendo or Sony dedicated portables. Now that there is a third choice the other two becomes less of a requirement.

 

[joker454]

Backwards compatibility just means the new hardware can run old games, not that the old hardware can run the new games. So are you writing software that doesn't make use of the improved performance of new hardware, or are you orphaning last years users?

Neither actually, there are games that work on both old and new, and offer improved experience on the newer hardware. Asphalt 6 for example, I have it and it works fine on my old iPad 1 launch model, but it looks and runs best on the iPhone 4s. Some more details on that:

iPhone 4s version

So that game has three levels of graphics right now. Baseline would be running at 480x320 on an iPhone 3gs. The next step up is on iPad or on an iPhone 4 which gets you higher resolution. The third step up is iPhone 4s which gives the extra improvements shown in the article above. I think Dungeon Hunter 2 is the same, and there are others. iOS games still have relatively small budgets, that's the only reason we aren't seeing more and more of this. But they will come as the platform grows, and once Win8 tablets come out you will see it even more.

 

[joker454]

For the record, I'm not saying dedicated game consoles will go away. I suspect they may just take a different form. It's possible that a segment of users still demand for a dedicated entertainment device (like me !)

Yeah I'd agree with that, they would become boxes that watch tv, movies, and play the same content as your tablet and phone do. I don't think they will be this totally different sku though designed specicially to play new games with new tools and code, they may just be a version of a tablet with a hard drive thrown in, and prolly using the same flavor of os as the tablets do with the same ui. I believe Microsoft is heading in that direction.

 

[rpg.314]

Backwards compatibility just means the new hardware can run old games, not that the old hardware can run the new games. So are you writing software that doesn't make use of the improved performance of new hardware, or are you orphaning last years users? Most console owners want no part of an annual upgrade cycle.

Meh.

New games detect old hw at runtime, load poorer assets and then it just works. The sw platform's homogeneity across versions is top notch on iOS side.

GLES 1.1 was there for 2 generations.

GLES 2.0 has been there for 3 generations and counting.

OS versions/revisions are VERY linear and old devices get all the sw upgrades.

iOS platform is easily ~90% of a console, I'd say.

 

[rpg.314]

I'm not really sure.

From a business point of view, iPhone and iPad are already consoles. The vertical integration of Apple allows them to subsidize the hardware with software sales. Not that they are doing that right now, but they could if they wanted to (or had to).

No. The App store sales run at break even. There is no non-trivial profit there.

The 30% model is locked in. There's no changing that.

From a gaming point of view, iPhone and iPads are equivalent to a PSP, a handheld gaming device with network capability. The portables didn't make the big, hot, loud boxes under the TV go away.

Everybody already has a phone which plays games. That is the baseline, portables cost extra. Which is going to kill the portable consoles.

The advantage of consoles is the very long hardware upgrade cycle which results in very big install bases, which are then leveraged by developers to create huge AAA games.

Consoles sell 50M in 5 years. iPhone sells 100M/yr and still growing exponentially. What is going to attract more AAA efforts? Smaller screens will mean less effort needed into asset creation (May be??? Perhaps a pro artist can help here).

Consoles will die as everyone is going to have a pretty good gaming machine with them all the time. Who is going to care about a big noisy machine that looks just as good.

Tablets are different. They are basically simple, user friendly PCs for the coffee table. I don't see people upgrading their tablets nearly as often as they upgrade phone. So you end up with more hardware configurations to support (PC gaming all over again).

Not with iOS. The hw configurations are pretty locked down and pretty linear.