Of all the tech news this year, nothing beats the announcement of the iPhone 5. As the next great contender for the modern era of casual gaming, it has the ability and power to become the next seat for a style of gaming that is anything but casual. Why? because sometimes, we're just, "Gamers-on-the-go", so to speak.
A lot of people are going to be
concerned with its implications for their mobile experience – how
they talk, watch & record video, pictures, send data, check their
email, stock, work and personal related content, on the go. However,
that's of little importance in the world of gaming. Whether you're
an Angry Birds, or Farmville kind of player, or an Infinity Blade master, it's fair
to say, mobile genre has its appeal, where it is about the quality
of the experience, rather than any other host of features available
on that platform, affecting your purchase decision.
The first thing that is going to hit
gamers, is the ability to have better precision, responsiveness, and
timings when it comes to their ability to control a situation in
their mobile games. It is rough-going to know you blocked, but nothing
happened, or you crashed into that wall at 105MPH, because your
screen touch control just couldn't feel that hair turn. Better
precision means better controls, and that means a lot more investment
for players across the board.
In addition, you've got more 'finger
space' as the screen has increased to almost 4 inches, or morespecifically, 176 pixels,
giving us a nice HD format, at the standard 16:9 layout. A lot of
games on the iPhone have virtual buttons, overlaid right on the
screen. With that smaller space, you've got a portion of those
controls taking up your screen space. Less cramped area is always a
nicer feature, and so is the elimination of letter box.
Even among these incredible
revelations, there's still some amazing things going on that have an
impact for gaming. In fact, three things: the change in LTE and
wireless 4G, superior sound quality, and lastly, the A6 chip. Three
reasons why these are amazing: The improved 4G networks LTE, allows a
greater range of data to be ferried, faster, which could potentially
lead to a kind of multi-player experience that you generally only see
on console or PC. Systems like the Nintendo DS and PS Vita have this
ability – generally directly with other handhelds in vicinity.
However, imagine being able to play, with anyone, anywhere, across
this network – as anyone knows, real multiplayer is the hot trend in gaming the last few years
and it shows no sign of slowing progress.
It's almost impossible to find games that don't have multi-player as a
feature, so having this, is a great feature.
Sound quality is important, as well.
Music and video is much better when the quality of your sound is
improved, yet the quality of your games become that much better, when
your sound stage is increased – something the iPhone 5 promises
with its 5 piece sound system, three microphones and
noice-cancelling, as well as their "wideband audio,"
creating a purported larger frequency base, which improves the range
of sound. Anything to better hear those zombies, or experience the
deep narration of games like Bastion, or the all-sound
masterpiece, Papa Sangre.
Finally, the A6 chip, from Apple,
promises us double the processing power and graphical performance,and incredible energy efficiency –
something any gamer and developer can get behind. Gaming can take a
chunk out of your battery life, and when you've only got an average
of 8 hours (just talking), using all that sound, video, and wide
band, can really take it to you, especially in the long run of your
battery's overall life.
So, ultimately, we've got a product
coming, giving us a lot of promises. We've heard them before, time
and again, and it is hard to say whether or not things will pan out.
One thing is for sure: everyone will be waiting to see, just what the
future of gaming-on-the-go, really has in store, not just for the
gamers, but for the potential innovative capabilities of designers in
the future.
2 comments:
Hey TaFari,
A console in your hands, and as you say "gamer-on-the-go"...so true. It truly is amazing the steps that have been taken to enhance gaming on our phones, the new A6 chip is pretty amazing in terms of capability on such a small device.
From the Apple iPhone 5 Event today at the 25 minute mark they bring the developer of Real Racing 3 out to present the possibilities with the newest Apple device...WOW! The level of dynamic detail challenges consoles in terms of quality of graphics and physics, but the most interesting thing for me dealt with the "Time-Shifted Multiplayer". Acting like sort of a Words with Friends, play when you want to multiplayer concept, I thought it was incredibly cool. Having the ability to race a friend on the same track that he may have raced on yesterday, but jostle and affect their track time in my race, hours later, sounds so fun.
You hit all the major points of this launch event, and you are so right...the potential for innovation is definitely set. Very very exciting stuff!
Hey, Chris!
I honestly can't wait to see how it pans out, especially after giving developers a good 6 months of work around the products enhancements, and any changes to future models by that time, could really spell some quality mobile gaming. And, now, with the Iphone5 Launch status selling out in less than 1 hour, it's probably a good sign that people can't get enough, of the next "best thing"!
Post a Comment