My Skepticism Towards the Apple Tablet
January 27, 2010 by JP Sherman
Filed under Video Game Marketing
Firstly, I want to say that I’m a platform agnostic. I enjoy both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. When the blue slot lights up on my Wii, I remind myself that I have yet to have a bad experience on that little bugger.
I have a badly damaged iPhone that still works and more because it’s a point of pride, I still use the damn thing. It refuses to die.
However, since I’m out of contract, I’m seriously considering a new droid phone, yet not terribly happy about having to lose so many good games I’ve got loaded.
This is what happens when you let your 4 year old play games on your iPhone
So, with all that said, I’m not really a fanboy of a particular brand… but I love new technology that works, that makes my life simpler, more fun, more organized and more connected. Mobile gaming touches me on two of those points. The games I’ve put on my phone have given me countless hours of fun and connection with friends. And most of the time, it works well.
So, when Flurry, a phenomenal mobile analytics service, released some information that the major focus and use testing were for video games, naturally, that set my heart fluttering just a bit more.
Flurry used their mobile analytics to identify categories of the application usage on the Apple tablet.
However, there’s been something that’s been pulling on my brain about the Apple Tablet, it’s failed to capture my attention in the way that the iPhone did. The iPhone was called the Jesus Phone, it took the reality of living a digital life to a new and amazing level, for that, I’m loathe to ditch my iPhone. Yet, I think this is the crux of my skepticism towards the Apple Tablet.
The iPhone felt new, unique and exciting.
The Apple Tablet doesn’t strike me yet as revolutionary.
Mobile games have become a huge business, capturing the core-gamer and casual mom-gamer demographics expertly and almost completely. However, my trepidation rests in the feeling that the Apple Platform will raise that bar only in scale and not connectivity, functionality and immersion. I understand that the tablet, as a reader, could be superior to the Kindle or the Nook, I understand that the Tablet wont just be a big iPhone… all of these things I know.
However, if the primary use of the table will be gaming, as Flurry’s data suggests, it has to revolutionize gaming. It can’t be just bigger, prettier, higher rez and have better multi-touch features, it has to force game development companies to truly change the way that games are made again… in the way iPhone games added a new element to gaming, the iPhone forced gamers to perceive and experience games in a way that hadn’t really been done before.
So, as it’s released today, I’ll be interested to see how they’re planning to take gaming to the next level, to change the game again and how they’ve not been satisfied to just make a bigger gaming platform, but how they can connect it with people, reinvent the way we play games again, force developers to take risks in the new functionality and ultimately give gamers and consumers a new way to experience games.
This is a case where I hope my skepticism is unwarranted, I want innovation, I want to buy the tablet and I want game companies and gamers to be surprised with how good it can be. As for now, I’m not really seeing anything game changing about it. Of course, I could be wrong… and we should all know by the end of the day.
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JP old friend, good insights, but I (unsurprisingly) beg to differ slightly
What was innovative about the iPhone wasn't the physical device; touch screen smartphones had been in the market for *several* years prior to it's introduction
The hardware specs were/are at-market, not bleeding edge state-of-the-art;
The real innovation in blessed 20/20 hindsight, is that it fundamentally changed our consumption patterns of data & media. To Apple's credit, they didn't really push this aside from some Steve delivered hyperbole. They focused on usability and usefulness ("There's an App for that"). However, look back at your ownership of an iPhone and think about how much and what kinds of content you now consume habitually on *phone*. And don't forget that Apps (and games are apps too), are essentially Content. The Kindle reader app… delivers content. The NYTimes app… delivers content. The built-in YouTube app, and on and on and on.
There's an old adage in product design & marketing that the mass market will never recognize they need and thus will not demand, truly innovative products. I would challenge anyone to argue that they would have specified in some 2006 survey or focus group that what they *really* wanted was the kind of capabilities/functionality an iPhone user takes for granted (nay, is *addicted to*) on a daily basis. Design by committee doesn't work here.
Another point to consider is the revolution of ease of use that is so subtle, it's taken for granted. Case in point is your son's use of your iPhone. EVERY SINGLE PERSON who's let a child (even as young as 3 y.o.) handle an iPhone/iPod Touch has witnessed this. They. Just. Get. It. Within seconds. The learning curves so small as to not even register as a speed bump. And add in voice processing and it's even more natural. (anecdote: Google's implementation on Android 2.1 is the benchmark Apple will have beat in iPhone OS v4, but even today I find myself speaking to my iPhone — a very natural act of course — more & more thanks to Apps like Jott, Dragon, Google Search, et cetera.
This naturalness of these human-machine interactions is what is revolutionary — particularly when scaled up to a more general purpose device, with a bigger screen, with greater touch resolution.
I have tried a number of pen & tablet based computers over the years. The problem was that they all tried to cram a desktop OS experience into a naturalistic UI. Fail. Just like I craved the non-existent Crunchpad for simple couch-computing, I now immediately recognize that it needed to do *more*.
I spent way too much time yesterday contemplating back on my own usage patterns of my computers, particularly when traveling, and realized that 90% of my "computing" time has become consumption, not creation. Even my email responses have become briefer, thanks to smartphone training, where I just don't want/need to type long missives. In fact, this response to your post is probably the longest block of text I've composed all week! Given this realization, a device like this is revolutionary in that it recognizes this change in behavior, and is engineered towards it.
On to gaming…
My diminished expectations were blown away with the frame rates and resolution of EA's demos yesterday, and I can easily see the iPad becoming a big, big part of my gaming repertoire. However, the true innovation will not come from Apple, but from the studios & publishers. It's sad to see the big guys simply cranking out the same old stuff, with some touch-UI specific stuff retrofitted and slathered on, almost like an afterthought.
For an insight into the future of gaming as it relates to devices like the iPhone and ultimately the iPad, take a look at ZenBound, one of the most amazing "games" out there, that truly takes advantage of the new UI paradigm afforded by the iPhone. Given this, I'm genuinely excited as to what new innovations some genius game developers will envision for the iPad
I am unconditionally looking to watch for the iPad from Apple, and I am excited to see what sorts of gamez and applications will be created for it. I just don’t figure out some of the nitpicky criticisms in this website. Size of the bezel?? OMG!
I can say for a fact that I never mentioned the bezel in any of my critiques of the iPad.
However, to be fair, I think that Thom's point is a critical one to know. The iPad is all about consumption and connectivity, what will make the iPad a critical gaming piece of technology is how game companies will utilize the unique aspects of the device.