When we speak of portable gaming, the first companies that come to our mind are Sony and Nintendo. They have been developing handheld consoles for good period of time now and it's only fair that we think of them first. Their devices provided us with endless hours of fun and entertainment that might have been devoid in our lives because of our hectic schedule. But despite being the first on thought, are these companies truly dominating the portable gaming sector?
As much as we would like to believe that the practical definition of portable gaming has not altered over the course of years, it has and it is something that we as gamers have grown into. More often termed today under the banner of "casual" gaming, portable or mobile entertainment has taken a new face and form and somehow it does not seem to be based on the consoles which were specifically made for this purpose.
Casual gamers today account for a great part of the gaming crowd and the fact that a massive amount of this very crowd carries a mobile phone but not a gaming console is what makes a company like Apple be a strongly competitive hardware provider for mobile gaming. But here’s the funny part – Apple might not be doing this intentionally.
Apple products such as the iPhone, iPad and the iPod Touch were primarily designed to deliver services to entirely different streams but the features and power that comes with these gadgets allow video game developers to create and provide rich content when put on the mobile gaming scale.
The ability for iOS devices to provide not only interactive gaming but also simple social gaming on a multi-purpose device is the reason behind the massive number of software units (1.5 billion) sold for the platform despite the hardware itself having sold much lesser than the PlayStation Portable (256 million) or the Nintendo portables (718 million).
With mobile phones growing more powerful and sophisticated by the day, all we can wonder is, how long will it be before they begin to shadow the single purpose gaming handhelds? Maybe long, but it’s inevitable considering the current flow, growth and track
As much as we would like to believe that the practical definition of portable gaming has not altered over the course of years, it has and it is something that we as gamers have grown into. More often termed today under the banner of "casual" gaming, portable or mobile entertainment has taken a new face and form and somehow it does not seem to be based on the consoles which were specifically made for this purpose.
Casual gamers today account for a great part of the gaming crowd and the fact that a massive amount of this very crowd carries a mobile phone but not a gaming console is what makes a company like Apple be a strongly competitive hardware provider for mobile gaming. But here’s the funny part – Apple might not be doing this intentionally.
Apple products such as the iPhone, iPad and the iPod Touch were primarily designed to deliver services to entirely different streams but the features and power that comes with these gadgets allow video game developers to create and provide rich content when put on the mobile gaming scale.
The ability for iOS devices to provide not only interactive gaming but also simple social gaming on a multi-purpose device is the reason behind the massive number of software units (1.5 billion) sold for the platform despite the hardware itself having sold much lesser than the PlayStation Portable (256 million) or the Nintendo portables (718 million).
With mobile phones growing more powerful and sophisticated by the day, all we can wonder is, how long will it be before they begin to shadow the single purpose gaming handhelds? Maybe long, but it’s inevitable considering the current flow, growth and track
