Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jug6ernaut 4725 days ago
Honestly, i could not disagree with you more. Here's why.

Games that can be played on an iphone/android can almost always be played on a 3ds/vita. Games that can be played on a 3ds/vita can almost never be played on an iphone/android. Is the mobile phone market exploding? Absolutely, but that doesnt mean its taking away from the mobile console market. Frankly it never will. They are two different mediums, there is some overlap, but very little.

This mainly comes down to controls. Because phones are primarily limited to touch screens, so is the kind of games you can effectively play on them.

Phones are great for casual games, but move to anything that require even the smallest amount of control and they start failing bad.

1 comments

That's only true until Apple produce an official spec [1] for iOS controllers.

[1] http://kotaku.com/also-touched-on-during-todays-wwdc-keynote...

It's not about the controller, it's about software quality.

"The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks" and "Kirby: Canvas Curse" are Nintendo DS games that are using touch controls for about 99% of the the game. From a hardware perspective, there's nothing stopping a developer to create a game as good for iOS or Android.

And yet, imho, there are none. I've tried out about 2k iOS games in the past 5 years. There are about 10 or so that are pretty good (Carcasonne, Real Racing 2, Sword & Sworcery, Orbital, Cut the Rope, Dark Nebula, Beat Sneak Bandit, Hundreds, Infinity Blade, The Room, Horn, Ridiculous Fishing, Tiny Wings), but _none_ of them really reach the breadth and artfulness of Super Mario 3D Land, Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 7 or Spirit Tracks. They're not even in the same league.

It will be really interesting to see, if Apple can emulate the Nintendo 3DS experience with a bolt on controller for the iPhone. And if the game developers are willing to compete in a much smaller market of iPhone users who actually have, and are willing to carry the controller with them. And games that, go both ways, won't be able to compete with games designed for D-pad + buttons control.
You think? I connect controllers to my Android devices on occasion, it works beautifully. Still I don't do it that often unless I'm sitting at home. That's been an option for Android users for years, I just don't see it taking off unless the controller is built into the device.

On public transit, or an airplane, I tend to use my 3DS for gaming.