Casual Games Console?
Big announcement today from Apple. Along with all of the nice enhancements to the iPod line, and to the iTunes software/store, Apple made two announcements that stood out to me. First, they announced that you can now download games to your iPod. Second, they announced that in early 2007 they’ll release a settop box for your living room.
Games on the iPod isn’t too surprising, and actually I’m a bit surprised they haven’t embraced that before now. Sure, they had a few very simple games, even on the early iPods, but they couldn’t compete with the even the trivial games on my mobile phone. Apparently, the 5G iPods (iPods with video) have enough muscle for some custom versions of very popular casual games, such as Zuma and Bejeweled. Looking at some “animated screenshots” of the games, it appears that they translate very faithfully, even including Bejeweled’s cool level transitions (though I suspect they’re video clips on the iPod, whereas on the PC they’re 3D tunnel effects, but I’d love to be wrong). Of course, the games have been tweaked for the clickwheel interface. I’ve yet to find any more details, such as whether Apple will be opening up the iPod to other developers or what their future catalogue will look like.
Update: Apparently, some folks have already done a bit of reverse engineering on the games…
I’ve also not yet found any details on what the processing power of the 5G iPods are. Sure, they can play some pretty high quality video and decompress various codecs on the fly, so they’re doing better than my old 286, but they’ve likely got specialized chips optimized for decompressing streaming data — chips that are likely not appropriate for general purpose software (much like the vector units on a PlayStation2). If anyone has any pointers to some specs, I’d be interested (the Apple site, not surprisingly, is crawling right now).
The settop box is very interesting. Very small profile (half the thickness of a Mac Mini), and it eliminates all the “clutter” normally associated with media center devices. There’s no powerbrick, and the network connection is wireless (with an optional wired connection). I assume it has the same electronics inside it as a video iPod since it can do all the same stuff and doesn’t require a powerbrick or fans. I’m curious as to whether they used a standard harddrive instead of the smaller drives used in the iPods to save some money (but it is pretty small!). The price is great ($249), and the usability looks to be flawless (as expected). I look forward to grabbing one, particularly if the iTunes movie service really picks up. (I’m crossing my fingers that they do some kind of rental option, or Netflix-like subscription service.)
But let’s put two and two together… they’ve got games on the iPod. Great casual games, fine-tuned for the super simple click wheel interface. And soon they’ll have a settop-iPod in the living room, hooked up to your TV, controlled by a little white remote with the same click wheel interface. While Steve Jobs didn’t mention playing games on the “iTV” … I can’t see why one couldn’t! It looks to be the same hardware (or at least equivalently powered hardware).
So, my question is this: will Apple bring casual games to the living room? Microsoft is trying to do that with Xbox Live Arcade on Xbox360. And sure, the Xbox360 has all those media center elements like the iTV will. But, this is Apple, and the footprint is significantly smaller, and the interface more dedicated. Could we be seeing the birth of the casual games console?
(Grins)
I knew this would be announced three weeks ago after blizazzin with my neighbor. It makes perfect sense, people are willing to play casual games, but not for $400. $250? Perhaps.
Whats most interesting is the nature of the interface device. If they’ve got something more analogue, like the Wii controller, then they may be a nice alternative to the 360.
[...] Apple Makes a Splash: Apple has announced quite a few new products, and upgrades to old products (Engadget has a blow-by-blow of the presentation). Troy Gilbert also has a good analysis of the game side of things. He speculates that Apple could very well be entering the home console market (at least with casual games). I agree with his analysis. What I find interesting is that Apple is doing the whole thing a bit on the sly. If things don’t pan out (which I doubt), if their games don’t sell, or consumers aren’t very enthousiactic about, then they can pull out, no harm down, and very little investment lost. On the flipside, if people start gobbling up the games (which I predict they will), Apple can expand, and suddenly they have another new income stream, and a massive market they can spread to. It’s ingenious really. I’m sure they will continue to keep a low-profile when it comes to games, as to not alarm the other big console manufacturers, but Sony, MS and Nintendo would do well to keep an eye out. [...]