Apple’s made quite the resurgence in the last few years. I remember when Apple Computers were the cheap, ugly computers the schools had that they bought a million years ago in some bad deal, and were now trying to teach computer use on obsolete machines. Now, their systems are the favourite of latté sipping dorks in coffee shops the world round; almost everyone has some form iPod be it nano, video, touch, or the virtually functionless shuffle, and the iPhone is just a wonderful piece of technology that is pushing the limits and expectations of what a phone can do.
I was on a bus today with my buddy and after a few minutes we’d both downloaded apps for our iPhones after seeing it demoed by the other guy. This made me realise how clever the apple system is – digital distribution, not really fully adopted by most companies, is a key part of apple’s entire business model. Just look at iTunes and the app store. In only minutes you can spend money, sometimes only a dollar at a time, and be rewarded with a new software. I myself, being cheap, have only downloaded the free ones, but imagine how quickly bills can get run up for the pay-to-use software.
The Nintendo Wii is another perfect example of digital distribution. They have a large catalogue of games from past system available for generally 5-15 USD; I’d imagine these are cheap to port over, and then relatively free to sell on their existing virtual console network. That’s practically pure profit. Naturally I thought, what if Apple did gaming? How would they approach it?
The Apple iPhone is such an amazing piece of tech – for me it completely reinvented how you use a phone. Since I purchased it, I’ve used it on a daily basis for e-mail, texting, internet surfing, gathering news, and even gaming. I hardly ever even use it for the phone. But think about the market the iPhone has; it already has a gaming base developping in its platform.
If it transferred this to a dedicated console, what would it be like? Apple has already proven how they can rethink existing markets. Touchscreens? Tilting controllers? Motion sensors? These are in the iPhone already. Imagine a console that integrates Apple’s computing systems and software, with the genius of iPhone’s technologies, and combine it with more iTunes distribution. You could have a real machine on your hands. Not to mention the ‘niche cool’ factor that Apple has going for them.
So come on apple, make the iGame.
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“the virtually functionless shuffle” … hilarious, I love it!
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