The Myth of iPhone Gaming

As I stated in my previous post, I love my iPhone, but Apple is boasting how its iOS devices are the leading gaming platform out there? Please. As far as I can tell, there are two types of iPhone games:

• True games that were designed to take advantage of multi-touch, gyroscopes, compasses, etc. These games are typically easy to pick up, quick to play, and encourage short games, from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. These are ADHD games, loaded with interrupts like phone calls, text messages, and calendar reminders.
• All other types of games from console/computer history, being shoehorned into the iOS ecosystem. These are the classic games.

The true iPhone games are quite fun. Some of my favorites are Flight Control, Galcon, Labyrinth, and Angry Birds. Each of these games uses iOS features in a beautiful way, they are fun, easy to understand, and you can play any level in under a minute or two. I typically play these games a lot when I have a few minutes to burn.

The other games are those which I buy but almost never play because of the interface. Any side scrolling game, racing game, street fighter game, and basically any console game designed with a controller in mind will fail to respond to the quick gestures required to play them. Sure, they have these nice on-screen controls, but I lose 25% of my screen to my two fingers pressing things and I can't respond fast enough to the inputs. Imagine if you had Street Fighter on the iPhone playing over some wireless means to another person playing on a console with a controller, and let's assume they are on equal skill levels. The iPhone player can't win, period. The console controls are so fast and responsive that the iPhone guy is going to be sweating trying to keep up.

I think the market is ripe for a Sega, Sony, or Nintendo to step in with an iPhone/iPod controller that mates to your device, provides a directional pad with 4 buttons on the right and 2 overhead, maybe with a start/select button. Think the SNES controller. Maybe it provides some extra battery power. Now imagine playing that Street Fighter game again to the guy on the console -- you'd be on equal grounds now.

But Apple probably won't be doing that anytime soon, as they think their short ADHD games are the future.