Games on the iPad: What it Means for Real Gamers
Just because a person has played a couple of rounds of Snake and Tetris on a mobile phone does not make them a gamer (neither does “finishing Sims” as listed by a poser on a video game forum). Gamers are players who are really into their games. Casual players who simply play games for amusement are not part of this market.
But when it comes to business, it is not a matter of who is hardcore and who is not; it is a matter of tapping into a larger market for bigger profits. This is why the iPad is marketing it large library of games from the iPhone. Simply put, the casual gaming market is significantly more profitable than the market of real gamers.
Even if the iPad never gets its epic, story driven and original titles like games found in console systems or on the PC, it will still make millions from its library of over 100,000 thousand apps worth of casual games.
To say that the iPad will redefine gaming is misleading, because it will not change the video game industry the way Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s Playstation Portable did when those devices debuted. What the iPad will affect is the world of mobile games. Mobile games are rarely in-depth (though there are several notable exceptions), and are often graphically simple –made to be played within the constraints of existing mobile technology.
The iPad goes beyond the hardware limits of mobile phones, the demo of the iPad showed a 3D racing game running at an excellent quality. Certainly a lot better than many other racing games on mobile phones, but hardly anything compared to even the first Gran Turismo. Still, with the support of the right developers, the iPad might just get some good games.
Do you believe that games are the iPad’s Killer App? –read about it from the Telegraph.
Tags: Apple-iPad
