The iphone really has the first point but the second is gonna be so hard to achieve.
The iphone is the hot gaming platform out there from a developer point of view. Everybody want to do some 8bits conversion sold 3.99$ and become Apple’s bitch millionaire games on it.
The iphone is more powerful than others portables gaming platform, it’s a friggin’ Dreamcast!
Well Sega how can you manage to get a Super Monkey Ball with a framerate that ain’t worth a shit? i love katamari? HAHAHAHAHAHA. I love how Kotaku seems so sure about a thing:
“Hopefully the game’s crippling issues are the result of sloppy programming, not the limitations of the iPhone itself, and Namco Bandai can issue an update to fix the thing.”
I don’t know. I am with some friends trying things making prototypes on the iphone and man, the limitations are here. The graphic hardware is good but you are very limited in what you can do with it. Saying bad framerate -which is on 90% of the games I saw on the phone- is the result of sloppy programming is childish, please show some respect to professional people who actually are trying their best with a platform so hyped that it seems that nobody can handle the truth:
The iphone is a phone. It’s not a gaming platform. The graphic power is really cool for little apps but if you think that it’s a matter of time to see beautiful rock solid 30 fps-ish 3D games, you’re stucking your head into the sand.
The only game I saw with solid framerate (the framerate is the feeling) is Touchgrind from Illusion Labs and as you can see, there’s almost NOTHING on the screen except your skate and some textures.
You think it’s just a design decision? Well you know… Yeah, you could tell that but truth is even with very good coders (sweden people are known to be good at it), the iphone is fucking limited.
So no, it’s not a Dreamcast because it has a powerVR chip Sega WTF.
There will be others mobile platform with better graphic specs, maybe it’s gonna be with an open distribution platform. Just wait another year.
the rise of the audio feedback… \o/
The multitouch capabilities are what game developers want to try and play around with. I really want another platform to do so and a cheap one (eee multitouch trackpad? eee top?). I still can’t believe there’s not an 8″ multitouch screen tablet out there, it would sell like crazy (Kindle2?). I mean come on, even on Youtube you can see a student doing it what HP DELL and manufacturers are waiting for???
I hope patents are going to be clarified so that manufacturers like Asus and co could spread the multitouch way faster than Apple and its products can. The technology is cheap, the demand is here.
Bullshitting about a phone is not helping. Well, just saying!
One reply on “Input is king, feeling is queen”
Comme d’hab, très bonne analyse mon cher H. !
Auquel je voudrais (si tu le premets) rajouter la mienne ; Rentrant crevé d’un diner hier soir après une semaine marathon, j’ai tout de même machinalement checké les derniers jeux sur l’AppStore (dingue comme ça peu être adictif ces trucs).
Après en avoir essayé deux qui semblent avoir un mimimum de réputation j’ai réalisé une chose qui m’embete plus que le framerate : les interfaces des "applications" iPhone/touch ne sont pas pensées pour la taille des doigts, du moins pas aussi bien que l’interface générale elle-même.
Là où le génie d’Apple a été d’adapter entièrement l’interface à la taille du doigt humain pour correspondre à ce nouveau type d’interactivité (les icones de l’écran principale qui ont pile la taille d’une empreinte, les largeurs des déroulants -date et heure-…), la concurrence continue de foncer dans le mur en proposant des interfaces avec des icones ridiculement petites en regard de la morphologie humaine en se disant que plus ils en mettent, plus ils rivaliseront avec Apple (mais on en fait pluuuus qu’eux, on a plus d’options/d’appli/de compatibilité), sans comprendre que l’accessibilité est là clé.
Et donc pour en revenir aux applis non développées par Apple directement, beaucoup même les plus fameuses ne prennent pas en compte ce postulat de base et se retrouvent avec une jouabilité bancales, des mouvements de doigté acrobatiques et des éléments passant sous le doigt sans qu’on puisse les lire.
*désolé pour la francisation, j’ai réalisé qu’après avoir fini de rédiger le comment :p *