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).
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.
I suspect Apple have plans for iPads, iPhones, AppleTV's, and your big plasma that'll make the Wii/PlayStation/XBox look positively primitive.
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.
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.