Who’s afraid of the iPhone

So, I got an iPhone on Monday. I wasn’t one of the rabid queuers on Regent Street, but picked one up Monday morning at a regular Carphone Warehouse. I’m not going to waste precious finger-tapping (and eyeball scanning) by inflating the bloated media-blimp that is iPhone coverage on the internet, but suffice to say it’s a beautifully crafted (albeit slightly flawed) device that does a few targeted activities particularly well (maps, media, email, phone, web browsing).

But, as a device with potential its really quite absurd. I’m definitely interested in the dev side of things – and seeing how people have got a few emulators, games and tools running pretty quickly, I got digging around looking to see what the state of development was, and what libraries are available.

Apple have announced that there will be an SDK available in February, but people have already taken the steps of creating their own toolchain with the ability to link to Apple’s frameworks.

One thing that I wasn’t previously aware of was that the iPhone has a 3D graphics processor embedded, the PowerVR MBX – which explains the smooth transitions for effects such as cover flow (without the nasty aliasing you get on the new iPod nanos). It also includes the OpenGL|ES framework (the baby brother of OpenGL).

Obviously,one of the first thing that struck me about all this is the huge potential for games. We’re starting to see a few original games released to take advantage of the hardware, such as Labyrinth which uses the tilt functionality as well as hardware rendering via OpenGL. Lets take a look though at what the iPhone/iPod touch has to offer, and why it could be a real contender in the games market.

Graphic display
Big, high-res (480×360 – compared with 480×272 for the PSP and 2x 256 x 192 for the DS)

Interaction
Multitouch touchscreen and tilt sensors (versus 50% touchscreen and standard buttons for DS, analogue stick and buttons for PSP). The iPhone also has a microphone and camera.

Connectivity
54mbps Wi-fi, backed up with EDGE/GPRS and Bluetooth on the iPhone (versus 11mbps on the PSP/DS)

3D acceleration
Not sure how it compares in terms of power with the DS/PSP though, but sure its not too dire.

Distribution channels
Potential support via iTunes – also has a built in browser which could potentially allow you to browse and download games directly from the internet. (versus traditional retail distribution for DS/PSP, fledgling downloadable games market for PSP). Installer.app already does this.

Open platform and development
How open is yet to be established, but I imagine that you will get access to a large chunk of the phone/ipods features, just maybe cutting off enough so that you can’t create Skype-like apps. Compare this to the officially closed platforms of the DS and PSP. While the mac has a very low-key games development scene, larger players like EA and Harmonix are starting to work on original iPod games – you can bet that they are already working on some titles for the iPhone.

All the homebrew dev seems not far off OSX development, using Objective-C, C, C++. I imagine that XCode integration will come with the SDK

Storage
With a guarantee of 4Gb/8Gb/16Gb storage on the device, you have enough room to store a LOT of games or game data. With a lot of DS roms weighing in at 64Mb/128Mb theres enough storage space to satisfy a lot of applications.

Obviously specs are one thing, but imagine some of the potential games that could be developed:

• A high res, fully touch screen electroplankton with poking, pinching dragging and the ability to use all of our music collection from your iPod and ability to upload and share songs you create over the internet.
• A tiltable locoroco game.
• Brain training on the iPhone/iPod touch would work perfectly.
• A Habbo Hotel client wherever you are.

But I think most of all the reason it will work well is because people will buy it anyway - there is the potential for many millions of these units to be bought, and without Apple even MENTIONING games. Its not yet being pitched as a contender in any way, but they could easily turn round in February and announce an incredible line-up from EA, Ubisoft, Harmonix. It almost seems like a stealth move, as this has the potential to be the greatest handheld gaming device on the market. To be honest, I’m glad they haven’t gone down the N-Gage route of touting gaming as a major feature - consumers of any games on the device are likely to be very much casual gamers, and shifting the focus from the core features of phone/ipod/web would likely reduce its appeal to the people that they are trying to sell to.

Whatever happens, I think next year could be very interesting for this device.

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