iPad 2: Thoughts from a first time tablet user
paulstamatiou.com
paulstamatiou.com
Graphics? Yes it's better (in fact better than all other tablets) but were you really able to see the difference. What about the average folks? Do you think they will be able to see the difference. I am picky but not that picky.
Duo Core? Big deal. Many other tablets are featuring the same. The one I played with at Best Buy had all the popular apps loaded. Angry Bird was not so smooth with swipe action. Home screen swipe was fine. Still not so buttery to me.
Thinner? Yes but it's not as impressive as Kindle or Nook. If it was that thinner I would be like oh yea.
2 cameras? Isn't this about time? Apple is behind on this. Most of the Android tablets had them from day one.
Having said all that, it is still a nice toy. It definitely changed our mobile experience. Netbooks look so dead or even Laptops look so outdated compared to the tablets these days. I don't see it as a game machine. Instead, it will be another entertaining in it's space. We will browse sites, take notes, look up howtos, share stories, photos, videos, listen to audio books and read books to our kids like never before. Android or something similar will lead the market space eventually unless Apple becomes open. However, iPad will still be seen as the trend setter for a while.
Don't get me wrong, it's a lucrative market to be in, and it seems much easier to break into for most developers (although indie PC gaming is also a good size scene) than traditional console/handheld development. I just really, really am not convinced that they'll kill off console games. I've never heard someone who's actually a more hardcore "gamer" entertain the notion, and that makes me think that most people making these claims don't understand the market for them whatsoever.
There's farming games on Facebook I guess, but to read the devs blogs you'd think it was a never ending series of the playing field being moved all the time, and dodgy APIs.
To monetize their skills most of the Flash devs I know went to work for ad agencies, or switched to a different language and Flash became a hobby.
I think this is one of the "eleven secret herbs and spices" of iOS development, why they had an absolutely massive number of devs and apps, because there was this pent up demand from the indie devs, and no really good or easy way to fulfill it.
--
You say "perhaps they (the iOS and Android games) will encroach on the handheld market (PSP, 3DS)"
I'm confused, didn't that already happen? Haven't the handhelds been in a death spiral since the iPod Touch took off big time?
1. Already the graphics on the iPad 2 are pretty good. I would argue they're sufficiently good and only getting better (with better software and successive generations of hardware);
2. 3D realism has I think overshot the mark. Nintendo has proven--and continues to proven--that you don't need the latest and greatest 3D engine to sell consoles and games. Remember too that many people are nostalgic about arcade games and systems from the 80s and 90s;
3. Increased realism in games has really blown out art costs. I would argue that art now constitutes the majority of even big budget titles. The more realistic games get the higher this cost. Improved tooling has mitigated this somewhat but the cost continues to rise.
There is significant economic incentive for game producers to curtail art costs by developing on lower-spec platforms.
3. The iPad is a multi-purpose device so, ultimately, more people are likely to buy it or devices like it than consoles (IMHO). Console makers continue to stretch the capabilities of consoles (adding VoD services like Netflix, etc) but ultimately it's still a TV. The iPad is a computer (albeit one with limitations). This will however take time.
I've been saying for the last year--and I continue to say--Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft should all be scared about the iPad.
You could put the iPad on a table or hook up the output to a TV and play it like any console. All you need is the controller and a driver.
I'd say the Apple TV is a much better contender for this market. But still isn't really technically able to push the blow-out titles that the gp is talking about. Not even close, since both the iPad and ATV are on low power ARM processors, while modern high end consoles are basically full-fledged desktop PCs.
Sure, it's not going to be as good as a $299 PS3, but it will be much better than the PS3 at things like email, browsing the web, and doing computer related functions. When you get home, drop it in the dock and watch Netflix, or play some games.
"The OnLive Game System is only available for sale in the contiguous United States. " so not much use -- but still very cool.
The big problem with the iPad is that it is not an enjoyable multiuser experience yet. Nothing beats having friends over and playing Madden on a big TV. This is one reason why I think PC gaming never really took off in a big way. Playing a game on a PC is basically an isolated experience (mitigated by online play).
As for the cost, they are cheaper but I don't necessarily see that as being structural. What I mean is that that there is that as capabilities expand, so will what producers can do with that platform. The cost will go up with this. This will, in part, be mitigated by increasing market size.
Or possibly publishers will finally learn that if games are cheap people will buy more of them, a lesson that has been consistently proven true from Steam price cuts (where selling a game for $5 made more than the original IIRC).
The second good point you make, which I missed, is the multi-user aspect of games like Madden. This is mainly because I've never been this way inclined. I haven't been much of a console gamer at all really. I'm more of a PC gamer that likes turn-based strategy games.
But I have bought and played a plethora of "casual" games on my iPad (and now iPad 2).
I see tablets as being fundamentally personal devices, not really something you play a game on with multiple people (unless they each have their own).
Still I see a huge potential market for games like Madden where each person has their own tablet as a control.
What about where the Apple TV (a future iteration) plays one view and each player has their own control so it looks like a real football game?
The other weekend I sat down and looking into a very similar question. My detailed "report" can be found here:
https://github.com/icefox/tablet_tv_games
Summary: There might be some killer idea out there, but it seemed you could always do better without the TV. Also that in person (like football) multiplayer or coop tablet games are an untapped market.
The one I played made me think ... WOW ... goodbye console wars.
Though the games are indeed more expensive the up-front cost is a major player in decision making for leisure time purchasing.
Looking at the same screen works well for some games, but not so well for others.
I suspect Apple have plans for iPads, iPhones, AppleTV's, and your big plasma that'll make the Wii/PlayStation/XBox look positively primitive.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/207358/world_of_warcraft_subs...
Nothing more than an outlier exception, I'm sure.
We must be living in different worlds. I've seen PC gaming surpass movies as the dominant cultural product with ease, and at least in this part of the world (east Asia), no console game comes even remotely close to pulling down the revenues that World of Warcraft does or getting the TV time or tournaments that Starcraft II does.
While the iPad improves, consoles/PCs will also improve, but you nail it by questioning whether people want it enough to pay more for it (another wii-like example is the popularity of casual flash games); and that prices will increase due to art costs (absent unforeseen algorithmic generation techniques...), which would seem to be limited by cinematic quality. If so, when the iPad matches that, there will be no reason to get a console/PC for gaming (assuming HDMI & controller sockets).
Big budget titles seem to spend the majority of their budget on marketing and promotion. I was astonished by ~40-50mm (development) vs ~200mm (marketing) figures for Modern Warfare 2 (http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2009/11/19/modern-warfare-2...). Even if other titles' budgets aren't that skewed, it's still a huge ratio.
"I would separate out the true independent developer vs. the hobbyist," says Fils-Aime. "We are absolutely reaching out to the independent developer."
"Where we've drawn the line is we are not looking to do business today with the garage developer. In our view, that’s not a business we want to pursue."
Potential market for people willing to try on a whim that bird game the whole office has been talking about?
Serious gamers will probably always stick with the most advanced gameplay and technology. But there is a _huge_ market for people who have a few minutes to kill on trips, during commute, in front of the tv etc. As games are increasingly made with cognitive reward cycles in mind, one could argue, that the percentage of people who never play will shrink ever more.
It's Nintendo's hold of the portable market with this week's 3DS that seems most tenable and vulnerable to the proliferation of gaming on phones and tablets; I think we're a long way off of MSFT being worried about the 360.
That same buddy now works at Microsoft. Do you realize that MS doesn't make money on hardware, on the xbox units themselves? I think they just started breaking even on the hardware in the last few months with that. That's 6 years of a top-selling product that they have lost money on. Meanwhile, they make something like $1.5 billion a year just on Xbox Live subscriptions, and more money on the licensing fees for games. I don't have any numbers for that.
Now also consider, as of April 2010 MS had sold 40 million Xbox 360's (http://kotaku.com/#!5522559/xbox-360-40-million-sold). That's over the course of 5 years. Meanwhile, Apple has sold at least 50 million iPhones in 2010 (http://www.macstories.net/news/47-million-iphones-sold-in-20...), 15 million iPads in its first year (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/20results.html) and another 1 million iPad 2s in its first week.
There have been 47.9 million Playstation 3's sold since November 2006 (http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_sale_e.html). Taken separately, the 2 popular consoles have taken 5-6 years to rival the number of units sold by Apple in a little over a year. If we take into account the number of iPhones and iPod Touches sold in previous years, its a safe comparison to say that Apple alone has an equal or larger number of units sold compared to consoles, at least in shear numbers. To top that off, estimates are that iPads alone will push 50 million by the end of the year, and who knows how many iPhone 5's will sell when it launches.
So the market almost always wins. Developers go where the money is. On the one hand you have the existing console market that has, for the sake of argument, 100 million units worldwide. On the other, you have the iOS combined platform of roughly the same or more number of shear units.
Consoles:
1) Expensive games ~$60 USD
2) Locked into your house. e.g. You can only play in front of your tv.
3) Limited utility, games, movies 4) Better controls for first person shooters. Crappy controls for Angry birds.
5) Amazing, if expensive, graphics. Sometimes. In fact, lots of $60 games kind of look like crap.
iOS (iPhones, iPads, iPod touches):
1) Inexpensive games $0.99-$10 (averages)
2) Portable. Can take it anywhere
3) Lots of utility. Phone calls, text messages, games, camera, video, GPS, shopping, movies, music, etc.
4) Crappy controls for first person shooters. Perfect controls for Angry Birds.
5) Median graphics. Not Crysis or Farcry level. But high-level of quality control and the best games look pretty good.
There's a lot of other reasons I can go into, but basically I'm trying to demonstrate that "better controls" have nothing to do with it. Better graphics have little to do with it. You can buy like 10-20 games on your iPhone and/or iPad instead of 1 game on your xbox or playstation. And you can take them with you anywhere. And the market is a hell of a lot bigger, so you can sell more $5 games than you can $50 games.
1) Its cheaper to develop for iPhones/iPads/Android devices than consoles
2) There's more iPhones/iPads/Androids out there to sell to. Lots of people that aren't interested in consoles buy smart phones and tablets. Everyone loves to play games.
3) MUCH lower barrier to entry to make apps and games for iOS and Android then Xbox or Playstation.
The same effect can occur for iOS devices - and their graphics will get better each year (9 times faster this year...)
I think this is a problem that has long been embedded in tech journalism. We go all breathless over an extra 10% mega this or giga that, but 99% of the time that extra 10% doesn't matter.
But if they weren't getting excited over the latest fraction of an increment, what would they report on?