The article Apple's iPhone Takes Aim at Nintendo, Sony is a prime example of main stream media misinterpreting new technologies.  For those who have not read the article, it revolves around the idea that Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch will become major competitors in the handheld video game market.  Reasons given for this is the cartridge cost for Nintendo DS and Sony PSP games, and how this is a large stepping stone for smaller companies to overcome.  This is very true, although I would not be surprised if after these small startup companies make a name for themselves on Apple products, then move over to the DS or PSP. 

The article also talks about Neil Young, a former executive of Electronic Arts, and how he quit in order to create an iPhone gamming startup.  The article attempt to pass this off as a mass surge of movement from traditional video game design to this new frontier, when really this is an isolated incident within the industry.  All major studios are still creating games for all current systems, but they have started developing for Apple handhelds as well, but not moving all resources to this cause.

What this article fails to speak of is the monetary side of things for the consumer, because although developing for the DS or PSP may not be as cheap as Apples products, this does not necessarily mean that the product will sell to the consumer.  What I am talking about is the entry point for each system, the DS Lite (the newest iteration of the DS) costs $129.99, the PSP model 3000 (newest iteration) costs $199.99, the iPhone 3G costs $199 (newest iteration) with two year contract, and iPod Touch 2G (newest iteration) costs $299.  The two dedicated gamming platforms are cheaper in upfront cost, although you will be paying more than $10 to $15 for games, at the same time though many may be turned off by the higher costs of the Apple products.

Another important number that developers and producers look at is unit penetration.  As of September 30, Nintendo has sold 84.33 million DS units, as of August 20, Sony has sold 41 million PSP units, so we are looking at a total of about 125 million units between the two.  Apple has sold 13 million iPhones to date but I was unfortunately unable to find a number for the iPod touch.  I am willing to guess that 99.9% of DS and PSP owner have bought or received their systems to play games, where as iPhone and iPod touch owners are more likely a much smaller percentage.  This mean that although 500,000 copies of Super Monkey Ball has sold, according to what little information I could find is the best selling paid iPhone app, the best selling DS game is New Super Mario Bros, with almost 16 million units sold as of September first, the PSP’s best seller is Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G with about 2.5 million unites as of the same date.

At the same time don’t believe that digital distribution, a la online store, is something that Apple’s products have access to that the DS and PSP do not.  With the release of the PS3, Sony launched an online store for both systems, also within the last few months the store can now be accessed through the PSP system.  With the recently rereleased Nintendo DSi, the system also has an online store that can be accessed via the system.

The last point I would like to talk about is the fact that in the past Apple has been very hands off with gamming on a Mac.  If you wanted to play a game on a Mac you would have a very small list of games to choose from, from a very small list of developers.  With the advent of Boot Camp, Apple made is so that if you wanted hardcore gamming, a user could go buy Windows XP and run that on a Mac.  Things are slowly changing though; EA, the world’s second largest video game producer, is now creating most games for both PC’s and Mac’s.  A major problem gamming on Apple products will have to overcome is the fact that Apple does not actively support gamming on their products, and haven’t made any announcements or moves that would help show anything to the contrary.

In an attempt to end this I would just like to say that I own an iPhone and have purchased two iPod Touches for family members.  I enjoy the app store; I have downloaded many free apps and have paid for one, Enigmo.  I am not saying that the App Store will fail and that Apple will never make any headway into the gamming sphere, but I do belief that many are over hyping the ability and the current potential of the iPhone and iPod Touch.  If Apple really wants to move in on the handheld market there are certain things they will need to do, but that is another topic for another post.