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Games on iPod

September 12th, 2006 (Visited 4804 times) Tags:

It doesn’t seem to have been noticed too much yet, but $4.99 games for download are coming to the iPod alongside the new movies initiative that Apple is launching.

Image from Engadget

A lot of folks have been wondering when Apple would try doing a game device. But this tactic is much smarter — just stick with the iPod and it’s truly mass market audience, and slip some games in there.

The sorts of games, of course, are Bejeweled, Pac-Man, Tetris, and golf — what is today the mass market gaming experience.

Now, picture adding WiFi — what’s more likely to actually lead to handheld connected gaming, this or PSP?

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[...] Links: TechCrunch, Uninnovate, jkOnTheRun, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, paidContent.org, Guardian Unlimited, Download Squad, Read/WriteWeb, Thomas Hawk’s Digital …, ReveNews, Between the Lines, Michael Gartenberg, InsideMicrosoft, TechBlog, Delicate Genius Blog, The TNL.net weblog, Business Filter, Random Culture, IP Democracy, The Apple Core, Things That, PVR Wire, Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2. Blog …, CrunchGear, seattleduck, The Digital Music Weblog, Bag and Baggage, HD Beat, Epeus’ epigone, Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog, michael parekh on IT, The J. Botter Weblog, eHomeUpgrade, O’Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog, dailywireless.org, MocoNews.net, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Paul Colligan’s …, PSP Fanboy, broadbandreports.com, Slashdot, Zatz Not Funny, robhyndman.com, Logic+Emotion, Raph’s Website, Paul Boutin, Incremental Blogger, digg Technorati Tags: Apple Disney iPod iTV Mac [...]

Reader Comments

Michael Chui said on September 12th, 2006 at 12:24 pm:
Two reactions:

1. Graphics aren’t bad!

2. Now the iPod is becoming suspicously cellphone-esque: feature overload. In the beginning, MP3s were all it did, with playlists and a couple different organization methods. Then came the video iPod. And now we have games? (Granted, my iPod has a game, too… Brick. But it’s about three years old and B&W. I don’t use it.)

I realize they’re not particularly major add-ons, but if it’s a sign of feature creep, that’s not so good.
Grimwell said on September 13th, 2006 at 6:15 am:
Provided that the feature creep isn’t based on interface changes, or cost increases, is it really feature creep to the average person out there? Yes, the iPod can definitely ‘do more’ than it could at release, but the gateway to the masses is the interface, not the function. The average person out there can still buy an iPod and only use it as an MP3 player and they will experience no extra funny buttons to get confused over.

I’m very biased in that I officially believe in the iPod as a mass market device. My mother finally upgraded from a Shuffle to a Nano and grasped the basics of loading it from her CD collection and playing it (even with an external speaker) independantly. While that may not sound like much, it’s HUGE. On the same day that I had to teach her how to use the Nano, I had to explore why her laptop would not recognize any device from her USB hub (both provided by her work place, or she’d not have them). When I looked at the physical connection, the USB connector was pushed into the laptop’s Ethernet port…

It seems simple to us… to the unwashed masses it’s all confusing… the fact that Mom can load her iPod and then find and play the tracks that she wants is a huge thing. Huge. Putting games on the iPod (and other features) helps it stay relevant, and as long as they don’t change the interface radically, it stays a mass market device.
Michael Chui said on September 13th, 2006 at 9:03 am:
I don’t keep up with the cellphone biz, but I haven’t noticed any interface changes or cost increases from the feature overload in cellphones. (But I admit that I’m not the one who bought my cellphone or my plan; I never cared enough. It’s more accurate to say my dad appeared one day and handed it to me and said, “Use it.”)

the USB connector was pushed into the laptop’s Ethernet port…

*wince* =P
Rhyssa Fireheart said on September 13th, 2006 at 1:08 pm:
I’d buy a game like Cubis or Zuma for my iPod in a second. Only $4.99? That’s a great price, and if I only need my click wheel, even better. Mostly because those are great time waster games for when you on commuting on the train, or taking a trip. And if it were possible to listen to music while playing? Even better.

There are some cases where feature creep makes no sense. For me, it’s adding music (or games as well) to a phone. IMO, that makes no sense because because the medium (phone) just isn’t very user friendly. The keys aren’t easy to use for that sort of thing (at least my phone isn’t). And unless it’s a Blackberry device, or a PDA-type device, having web capability is a bit much as well. Those add features that the majority of people will probably never need or use.

If new iPods automatically came with all sorts of games on them (outside the.. 3? that are on mine), then to me, that would be feature creep. But giving me the option to get those games because I wanted them? I don’t see that as counting because I choose to get the games.

I tend to see feature creep as packing more and more “stuff” into an item just because it’s cool to have, or some people might want to use it once or twice. Giving options without the option of opting out. I haven’t specifically looked lately, but how possible is it to get a cell phone -without- a camera anymore? Or one that just makes calls and nothing else? It may be cool a few times to use that nifty video option on your camera enabled phone, but after the first few times, how many people keep using it?

That is feature creep.

Besides, if I spend the day listening to my iPod or playing games and the battery goes dead, I still have my cell phone. But if I’m listening to my iPod/mp3 cell phone and kill the battery, then that emergency option just went away.

What was the question?
Brask Mumei said on September 14th, 2006 at 7:17 am:
It always seems weird to me to be asked to purchase games that I could just as easily write if the firmware were open. I can’t bring myself to purchase Tetris when I could write it in a day, and have fun while writing it.

I’m surprised the DS doesn’t get a mention for handheld connected gaming. Is it because it is too inexpensive? While I’m on the DS tangent, why aren’t the $100 laptop people just retrofitting DSes? A platform that already has wifi, touch screen, engineered for long battery life and ruggedness. All you need to do is attach a multi-gigabyte flash drive to it and you would seem to be set to achieve all of their objectives.