Apple announced recently that iPhone and iPod users had downloaded an impressive one billion programs from the company’s online App Store in a mere nine months. Meanwhile, 15 of the 20 most popular paid downloads since the service opened have been games.
Apple
These two facts are not unrelated. Apple hasn’t been this relevant in video games — and video games have not been so relevant to Apple — since the early 1980s, when the Apple II was a major platform for computer games.
It is about time. Even as Apple has spent most of the last 25 years trying to cast itself as the creative, youthful alternative to dour, dowdy Microsoft, it is Microsoft that has become a dominant power in video games, through both the Xbox and Windows. By contrast, Apple has historically acted as if it were embarrassed to be associated with gamers.
I should know, because I was a Macintosh loyalist who tried to hold out as top game after top game went to PCs, only arriving on the Mac months or years later, if ever. I finally capitulated about 10 years ago and bought my first Windows computer.
So when I heard last summer that Apple was extolling the iPhone’s new ability to download games, I was skeptical, skittish and fearful of being burned by Apple again. Yet by this spring the buzz in the industry about the potential for iPhone games had become so strong — with some evangelists for Apple claiming that the iPhone is a better game machine than even Nintendo’s hugely popular DS line — that I submitted to the hype and got an iPhone.
After carrying it around for several weeks, a few things are clear. At its best, the iPhone delivers a casual, often delightful, frequently whimsical gaming experience. Most of the best iPhone games, like Flight Control from Firemint and Pocket God from Bolt Creative, use the device’s colorful touch-sensitive screen in the service of intuitive game play accessible to almost anyone.
(In Flight Control that means using your finger to trace the flight path of planes and helicopters landing at an airport. In Pocket God that means using your fingers to “grasp” one of the inhabitants of the island kingdom you rule.)
Yet purely as a game machine, it would be ludicrous to compare the iPhone to the DS series or even to the Sony PlayStationPortable. Those searching for a deep, meaningful, narrative-driven experience will generally have to look elsewhere. And because of its design, control options and, perhaps most significant, its outrageously bad battery life, the iPhone cannot possibly replace a DS or PSP in the bag or pocket of anyone who actually plays games on the go more than a couple of days a week.
But perhaps it is not meant to. Perhaps it is sufficient for the iPhone to be the best phone for gaming rather than the best overall portable game console. What the iPhone offers that the DS and PSP lack is its huge library of downloadable games among the more than 35,000 total programs available on the App Store.
Most of the top games on the iPhone cost less than $5 and can be downloaded in a matter of minutes. They are designed, like arcade games, to be consumable in bites of only a few minutes each. And as in an arcade, if the iPhone user gets bored, it is easy and cheap to find another momentary diversion.
In that sense, the iPhone represents gaming as a notional activity rather than as a destination activity. Rather than playing games while sitting in a cafe, iPhone users could just as easily be checking Facebook or the latest sports scores. Browsing the App Store for a new 99-cent diversion, they could just as easily buy the Moron Test as a game like StickWars (two of the top paid downloads this week).
By contrast, DS or PSP users are usually going to a physical store, paying $20 or $30 and then spending dozens of hours over many months exploring their new game.
For those players, extra features like being able to edit pictures and manipulate music on Nintendo’s DSi are secondary to actually playing games.
Not that the iPhone is capable of delivering sustained mobile game play anyway. Because it does so much, the iPhone 3G that I have been using cannot last even one full day of intensive use without being plugged in, which for me sort of defeats the purpose of a mobile device.
For example, I can sit down on a plane to California with my DSi with every confidence that I will be able to play Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars the entire time if I want to. Yet while downloading and playing games on the iPhone, I hardly made it in a car to Woodstock, N.Y., barely two hours and 100 miles from Times Square, before the battery conked out. That’s when I started noticing that iPhone devotees always carry chargers with them.
Yet the battery is typical of the iPhone’s few shortcomings: they only highlight how I want to use it more, not less. The real question is not whether the iPhone can replace a DS or PSP. The real question is whether the iPhone provides a unique, unparalleled gaming experience for a phone, which it surely does. After Apple’s many years in the gaming wilderness, it is a pleasure to say welcome back.
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Some parents feel that the video games available now days are just a bit too graphic and violent for their young, impressionable children, so they are spending time trying to find a place that offers fun games to children, without all of those negative influences. If you are one of the many parents concerned about this type of thing, you should know that there are plenty of places on the internet where you can go and find many different appropriate games for your young children to have fun playing. These games are not just fun but are also very educational and will provide your children with the knowledge that can help them in any areas that they might be having trouble with in school or just to strengthen many of their other developments.
If you hop on the internet right now and do some research, within just a few minutes you will have the opportunity to browse through many of the educational and fun games for your young children that I am talking about. You will find that there are so many to choose from and your children will really thank you for finding these for them. They will have a blast and you can rest assured that there will be no negative influences, only wonderful, positive, fun, educational experiences for them to enjoy playing. This is a great way for them to learn because when you add fun to learning, it really seems to get their attention, every time! Another great benefit of finding online educational games for your young children to enjoy playing is that most of them are free. You do not have to worry about trying to afford the many different video games that would be appropriate for your young children. Anytime you can save some money, it is always a great thing!
Most families now have computers in their homes for many different reasons, and by owning one, you have an open door to endless information that can be truly helpful, along with a great amount of fun for your children as well. There will be times when your children are sitting around the house bored, this is a great way to help pass that time. This will also help to keep them out of trouble because you know children, when they get bored, they typically get into some kind of trouble don’t they. It will also give you the opportunity to sit down with your child and interact with them by playing their online educational games with them, either helping them out or just watching them play and enjoy themselves. So you can take a break away from cleaning the house and hang out with your kids as often as possible, they will really enjoy that as much as you will. Video games have gotten a bad rap by many people but if you are wise, you could get on the internet and download some free educational games for your young children, so that you do not have to worry about the negative stuff that sometimes goes on with other video games.
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As we all know, video games are very popular and more and more families are enjoying them on a daily basis. It is true that some of the video games that are available to us, might not be appropriate for young children, because of the violence, graphics and language. It is up to you to keep your kids free from those type of video games. However, there are many that your children can enjoy, without all of the negative images that some do depict. The thing that I have found from playing video games is that, no matter what type of video game it is, you seem to get in some sort of trance when you are playing them, kind of like an outer body experience to be quite frank. Video games are so much fun and you can disconnect yourself from everything else going on around you and kind of just drift off into dreamland for a moment, it can be nice once in awhile. These video games have taken over the world, they have become so popular that almost all households owns atleast one type of video game, for the children and the adults as well.
Video games are highly addictive, so you better watch out, you could become a victim of video game addiction if you are not careful. It is very ok for you to enjoy all of the amazing video games and even let your children enjoy the ones that are age appropriate for them as well, however, you and your children could become like so addicted that you find it so difficult to ever pull away from them, once you get so very involved. This is what you have to watch out for. You do not want to spend so much time playing the video games that the rest of your responsibilities are just left, being put on hold, until you come out of your coma. It is fine to enjoy these games but you just have to know that there are limits as to how much time you or your children should be spending playing these video games. Do not go overboard with it or before you know it, you have put on a few extra pounds and you have gotten behind in your everyday duties around the house or at work.
You have many responsibilities in your life and so do your children, so getting away from it all for a while is very necessary, just do not let yourself get so caught up that the rest of your world sort of disappears, for entirely too long. It is apparent that you have a problem when you are not cleaning your house, or feeding your children or if the children begin not doing their homework because of playing their video games. This is when it will be time for maybe a family meeting, a little pow wow to go over the rules of playing the video games in your home. Set a good example for your children, if they see you letting everything else slip because you are spending so much time playing video games, then they too will also begin to let certain things slip, which is not what you want for them or yourself.
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