3rd August 2011, 1:43 AM
In the long run, you're probably right. I don't think we're there yet though. I think the right price for handheld games should be more around the $30 point. The thing is, that's what I'm willing to pay for a game that invests a lot of talent into something genuinely fun.
Speaking of, I looked into that game GR. It looks like a cheap simulation. I'd rather get a high quality simulation.
Here's what mobile phones/tablets need to become a serious gaming device and bring us from "not quite there" to "there". Buttons. If I'm flinging a bird at a wall in a sling shot, touch screen is probably the best interface for that. However, if I'm going to play a platformer or shooter, I've gotta have tactile feedback. I'm not going to get myself killed countless times because my fingers, unknown to me, have kept slipping off the on-screen buttons.
There's countless ways to work buttons into a handheld. Tablets have plenty of space along the thick edge to stick them. Phones can use either a clam shell design or a sliding design. The Sony Xperia thingy uses that, and it seems to work well. Most phones stick a keyboard there, which are buttons, but the layout is too crowded and small to work for games as well as a nice button layout. Anyway, stick some buttons on those things, make it standard. Then, make the phones themselves standardized. I don't want a billion phones with their own exclusive dev kits and complete dependence. The market could only barely support two portables when the DS and PSP were on top (DS the clear winner and PSP niche). If phones are going to be the dominate portable game devices, they need to start working together to consolidate a standard. Japan already does this. That's why the mobile market already exists there with some actual decent games from, mainly, Square Enix every few years. Ideally, just get to work to join Japan's standardization group so it's a world-wide standard.
Lastly, cut the phone companies out of the decision process. Let the phones be used on whatever provider there is, and be bought independently.
There's work to be done. Yes, you could say "progress has it's price", but not a single one of the problems I listed is an inherent part of this particular "progress". All of them are solvable, right now.
Speaking of, I looked into that game GR. It looks like a cheap simulation. I'd rather get a high quality simulation.
Here's what mobile phones/tablets need to become a serious gaming device and bring us from "not quite there" to "there". Buttons. If I'm flinging a bird at a wall in a sling shot, touch screen is probably the best interface for that. However, if I'm going to play a platformer or shooter, I've gotta have tactile feedback. I'm not going to get myself killed countless times because my fingers, unknown to me, have kept slipping off the on-screen buttons.
There's countless ways to work buttons into a handheld. Tablets have plenty of space along the thick edge to stick them. Phones can use either a clam shell design or a sliding design. The Sony Xperia thingy uses that, and it seems to work well. Most phones stick a keyboard there, which are buttons, but the layout is too crowded and small to work for games as well as a nice button layout. Anyway, stick some buttons on those things, make it standard. Then, make the phones themselves standardized. I don't want a billion phones with their own exclusive dev kits and complete dependence. The market could only barely support two portables when the DS and PSP were on top (DS the clear winner and PSP niche). If phones are going to be the dominate portable game devices, they need to start working together to consolidate a standard. Japan already does this. That's why the mobile market already exists there with some actual decent games from, mainly, Square Enix every few years. Ideally, just get to work to join Japan's standardization group so it's a world-wide standard.
Lastly, cut the phone companies out of the decision process. Let the phones be used on whatever provider there is, and be bought independently.
There's work to be done. Yes, you could say "progress has it's price", but not a single one of the problems I listed is an inherent part of this particular "progress". All of them are solvable, right now.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)