Why the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and AirPlay are killing dedicated gaming devices (Maxim Bange shared items on The Old Reader (RSS))

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[Time Published September 09, 2013 at 06:15PM]

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The intersection of people who love mobile and who love gaming is significant enough to have generated a ton of commentary surrounding the idea that traditional, dedicated gaming devices will be cannibalized by the likes of the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and AirPlay. Horace Dediu had a couple of interesting posts on the subject this weekend. In Third to a Billion, which included the above graphic, Dediu plots which platforms have reached a billion users and how long it took each to do so. From Asymco:

Android is the third platform to reach a billion users[1] . The first was Windows and the second was Facebook. Apple sold around 650 to 700 million iOS and is expected to be the fourth to a billion sometime next year.[2]

He notes Android is based on activations, but should correlate to users, that Windows took more than 10 years to reach the number, that both social (Facebook) and mobile (Android and iOS) have been much faster, and that iTunes accounts aren’t curving off, at least not yet. What this shows, relative to mobile’s impact on gaming, is the subject of a second post, Game Over. Asymco

That is where mobile is the clear winner. More people will hire mobile devices for their primary gaming activity. And as mobile devices get inexorably better, they will be hired for use in the setting where consoles have been king: the living room.

The implications are that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are beyond the point of no return in this industry. Gaming, as a business, cannot be sustained as a platform independent of a general purpose computer. Like other “applications” that used to have systems built around them conforming to their needs[3] the dedicated-purpose solutions came to be absorbed into the general-purpose platforms. And the modern general purpose computer is the smartphone.[4]

There he notes that dedicated word processors, calculators, video editing boxes, music players, etc. faced the same challenge, and were reduced to niche status or subsumed entirely. PCs, on the other hand, couldn’t do to gaming what mobile could because they were neither extremely portable for on the go, nor projectable for the living room. iPhone and AirPlay are.

As mobile devices get more powerful, and projection technology gets even better, the pressure on dedicated gaming devices increases. We’ve seen that story play out before. Sony a least produces mobile devices of their own, though their efforts to tie in real PSP-level gaming into their Android handsets have been kludgy at best. Microsoft, now buying Nokia, is positioned to do likewise but they’ve failed to even attempt to launch an Xbox portable and Windows Phone gaming has lagged a generation behind where it should be. Nintendo knows both console and portable, but has no experience in general purpose computing.

Apple and Google, meanwhile have shown no signs of “getting” gaming but managed to fall ass-backwards into their growing mobile gaming dominance. That shouldn’t give game platforms hope. That should scare the hell out of them.

Source: Asymco, Asymco

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[Source Maxim Bange shared items on The Old Reader (RSS) http://www.aivanet.com/2013/09/why-the-iphone-ipad-apple-tv-and-airplay-are-killing-dedicated-gaming-devices/]

Game of the month: Darksiders

Hey all, this is Bonsai_Tree giving you this month's game of the month: Darksiders. As this came out in September, I know it's kinda late to give my own preview and it's to early for a review, so this is going to be a "view".

The full name of the game is Darsiders: The wrath of War. War, not as in a fight between two groups, but War as in the first rider of the Apocalypse. This is the character you will be playing. As legend has it, War is the first rider, but also the messenger to announce the Apocalypse. Or, well, that's what game says. Anyway, the first time yo play War, in a kind of tutorial level, where War still has all his abilities, after this level you will lose them and need to earn them anew. The Apocalypse is already there and, well, mankind, also know as the Third Realm, is screwed, demons and angels are fighting on the face off the earth, everywhere molten lava seeps through cracks in the ground and between all this you start your game. As I said angels are fighting demons and War, as one of the four horseman, only answers the charred counsel, a council made to keep the Balance, the balance between Heaven and Hell. So as War you get to kick some demonic, but also angelic butt. This is a nice change once in a while, that your character isn't on the evil (however fun that may be) or on the good s

ide. Normally after an Apocalypse the four horseman are set loose after the Seven Seals are broken, they ride the earth to restore the Balance and make another truce until the next Apocalypse. But this time something went wrong, as War is summoned to the earth before the Seven Seals are broken. By the way, War already went berserk one time before and that is when he lost his left arm (cut of by Death, also one of the four horsemen). So at the end of the tutorial level, you get your ass handed to you by the Destroyer, don't worry this is supposed

to happen, and you find yourself before the Charred Counsel to explain yourself. When you get sent back, without any of your former powers, it's about a century later and all of mankind has died. You meet up with some demons you would like to overthrow the Dark Prince or simply because they want the souls you collect with your sword, Chaoseater. So you venture out to restore the Balance, punish those responsible and kick lots of ass while doing so.

It's a fun slashing game, with a nice variety of monsters and fights. The boss-fights are nice and not to easy and they all end with a sort of finishing move. If you want to play this game on a PC rather than on a console, I suggest you buy a Xbox 360 controller for your PC. Because with it the game is a whole lot easier then with keyboard and mouse.

This was the Game of the month by your friendly neighbourhood gaming guru, Bonsai_Tree.