When Apple announced plans to release an SDK for the iPhone platform I knew they had a secret plot. The iPhone itself is a great device, seemingly ubiquitous here in Los Angeles, but it’s still the younger sibling of the much, much, more popular iPod. The iPod has had an exciting 9 months with the launch of the SDK and App Store, the swarm of games available for it and the shift from the best iPod yet to the ‘funnest’. Since then, many have called it a DS killer and I conceded, it had the potential, the specs and the image. But where are all the games? Right now the App Store has plethora of games but, none of them truly exploit the hardware, none of them have the polish or feel of a retail product. The iPod is a success but it’s not a gaming machine. What a difference 9 months can make.
Yesterday I downloaded a game called Rolando. Rolando is brilliant in its simplicity; get your circles to the exit. But this isn’t match three simplicity, this has the essence of a triple-A title. It has excellent art and music (provided by Mr Scruff), it has achievements, its credits are a level, it quicksaves your game as soon as you exit. That may sound like a boring list of features but it’s actually the details that make an already fun game an A+ production. Understanding those types of details is a prerequisite to making good games. Yet It has the fit and finish of a $30 DS game and this breed of game could turn Apple into a bona fide gaming outfit.
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Rolando is tailored to the player; on an iPod, gamers might play for as little as 60 seconds so Rolando is instantly rewarding. Few iPod owners are gamers so Rolando’s developers gradually introduce mechanics while they avoid neutering a gamers enjoyment. It’s the kind of understanding of the user that smacks of Nintendo, and who else should Apple want to target? Nintendo has already fired back at the iPhone by creating the DSi; a DS with a memory card, camera, ‘online market’ and media playback capabilities.
Prices on iPod touches will drop and the DSi will never compete with the iPod as a multi-purpose device. But Nintendo is untouchable when it comes to software. Even something as intuitive and platform specific as Rolando might easily get lost in the herd of shovelware that lives on the App Store plain. What Apple needs is a way to brand their hardware with their software and the solution is to become a first party developer/publisher.
Apple’s latest MacBooks, which are also Apple’s most popular laptops, now include a low-end gaming GPU and I bet Valve knows how many Macs are playing TF2. Apple has slowly and now more vocally been positioning their hardware as a vehicle for games and the time is right. They just need to capitalize on Steve Jobs’ exit and their billions in liquidity. Come on guys, just grab your balls and create the next Mario.