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aresant

To finish the exercise include iPhone / iPod Touch sales vs. the biggest consoles ever released and the point is made.

eg: ~100m iPhones (most recent data I could find was through Q4 2010 for aggregate):

Then compare to the top gaming platforms ever shipped:

PlayStation 154.59 million

Nintendo DS 147.86 million

Game Boy/Game Boy Color 118.69 million

Sony PlayStation 102.49 million

By that measuring stick iOS wins big vs. obscure consoles, but it also wins vs. the biggest and best.

ref - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter.s...

ref - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_conso...

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I think your logic is somewhat off, as you are considering playstation 1,2,3 to be different, while iPhone 1,2,3,4 are in the same bucket. Also consoles are generally a one per household thing. Phones aren't.

You make a good point, but PS1, PS2, and PS3 had different developer and third party ecosystems, and iPhone 2/3/4 do not, to the same extent. There's a confounding happening here to be sure, but it would not be accurate to square iPhone 4 off against PS3, iPhone 3G/3GS against PS2, etc.

It wouldn't be too far off - for example the PS2 can play PS1 games, and PS3 could play PS2 games (for a short while). But the first iPhone came out after the PS3 was released, and there have been no new standalone console generations since. (There were several Nintendos however, so those comparisons hold.)

Comparing portables to standalone consoles is problematic anyway, for various reasons. Not least, more than one person can play on a standalone at once...

While true on the Playstation platforms, the view of the iPhone ecosystem is extremely inflated. Either all iPhones offer a similar experience across the entire platform or not.

Most of my friends, with iPhones, have upgraded with each iteration of the iPhone. They would each be counted three times, were we to consider each iPhone iteration a separate platform. However, if we're being honest about the experience being compatible across the iterations, is the triple dipping really fair? Frankly, most of the same friends upgraded because they could (afford to) and need shiny objects and that phone-dropped blemish gone -- "The Apple Way."

I think you were going there, but I had to spell it out.

What happened to their old iPhone? If they sold it to someone who did not have an iPhone already, it seems fair to still count it.

That's fair, but I don't have a tone on that pulse -- guesstimate is they upgraded their wive's iPhones or have no interest/knowledge/time to make a few bucks on eBay. However, the premise of the argument is that there is too much grey area. It is disingenuous to rank all iPhone sales against a gaming platform; anecdotal results would lead me to believe a majority of smartphones are not used as gaming devices.

iPhone 1/2/3/4 are evolutionary devices, better hardware of same kind, same software, same software ecosystem. PS1/2/3 are different hardware architectures, different software and different software ecosystems.

Can you run the latest OS on an iPhone 1? Can you run the original OS on an iPhone 4?

I can see how they're not as different as PS 1/2/3 but they're definitely not the same device. Steve Jobs would slap anyone who dared say that iPhone1 and iPhone4 were "hardware upgrades with same software and software ecosystem"

You can't run the latest OS on an iPhone 1 because that would hurt Apple sales so they won't let you. There's no fundamental technological reason for why this can't be done. Same for the other way around. iPhone of all generations share the exact same hardware architecture, they are no more different than a PC with i7 and a PC with Core2Duo.

Different generations of consoles are completely different hardware architectures completely incompatible.

I am confused... the point is made more clear by comparing game consoles to phones? How? Not to mention you're comparing 4 iterations of the iPhone to arbitrary console life cycles.

If we're talking about pure numbers here, there are more substantive comparisons to be made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_pho...

You can write games for iPhone, therefore it is a gaming platform.

Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible.

Can you upgrade to ios4 on an original iphone?

Listen to Marco's podcast sometime when he talks about the support burden for Instapaper owing to older iPhones. Sure, you can't bring an iPhone 1 up to iOS 4, but he can't cut loose all the old iPhones either.

Aren't phones effectively on a 2-3 year subsidized schedule anyways? I know a minority of people do buy unsubsidized phones at full price, but that minority is tiny.

(Finally, remember we're talking iPads here, not iPhones. Two very different markets.)

was asking because the parent wrote "Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible." I didnt believe that statement :)

You can write games for iPhone, therefore it is a gaming platform.

A valid point, and I think when you're talking about today's hand-held gaming devices vs today's mobile phones, you've got a meaningful comparison because the consumer can reasonably substitute a phone for a PSP or similar, but I'm not sure what is meaningful about comparing the lifetime of Apple's work in the mobile sector to one or two iterations of various gaming consoles across various timeframes.

Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software

Not true in many cases. Consider that the first two iPhone models can't even run fully featured firmware because of hardware limitations.

Had to view your source to differentiate the two Playstations you have there. The top one is PlayStation 2, with 154.59 Million.

should be iPads, not iPhones/iPods, to keep with the spirit of the OP

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