Samsung Galaxy S4 game pad: blurring the lines between core and casual

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...d1-610x343.jpgThe Samsung Galaxy S4 arrived in New York on Thursday in a blaze of glory that did its utmost to hide the fact that this new phone, although probably establishing itself at the top of the phone world for a while, was by no means going to blow our minds.Of course, as those that have been following Apple for any length of time will know, it’s not easy to blow people’s minds with a phone: there’s only so much you can crow about a new processor, a different material or a bigger screen.Which means that manufacturers are turning to other areas to try to convince us that their shiny slab of silicon, aluminium and glass is better than another’s.One of the big things showcased by Samsung for their Galaxy S4 was a gaming peripheral called the Game Pad – an uninspiring chunk of white plastic and garish buttons – which will turn your no-longer humble smartphone into a games system.If you are rolling your eyes at this then you may well not have been paying attention to the changing landscape of phone gaming. With Ouya, Nvidia’s Project Shield and GameStick all leaning heavily on Android, this is a platform that is transcending its casual roots and showing the green shoots of a sophisticated gaming system.Yes, it’s early days – but let’s remember that these phones are perfectly capable of the kinds of graphics and raw processing power that wouldn’t have seemed out of plave on a desktop PC only a handful of years ago.The S4 has an octo-core processor, 2GB of RAM and a HD resolution screen. If you put those stats on a mythical Xbox Mobile, games players would be champing at the bit to get their hands on it.There are drawbacks, of course. Not being a dedicated gaming device brings its own set of issues, not least the ever-present spectre of battery life. It’s still okay for your gaming device to die after a strenuous gaming session, less so your primary communication device.These problems, though still relevant, are becoming less so. As devices become bigger and more powerful they have more redundancy and that creates room for gaming. When you only need a tiny percentage of your handset’s power to work as an actual phone, you start to think about other things to do with that extra power.So when Samsung is pushing a Game Pad, it’s clear that the company is well aware that its mobile devices may well begin to compete for gamers’ attention.And it doesn’t stop with the S4. For those that think (just under) 5 inches of Super AMOLED screen is simply not enough for their portable gaming, you’ll be pleased to know that the official site suggests that it will work for devices with a 6.3 inch screen. That’s almost certain to be Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 – a pocket-busting device that won’t even be announced until later this year.With PS Vita not setting the world alight, dedicated gaming handhelds are not guaranteed to have a strong future, but mobile gaming certainly will, and phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 will surely blur the lines even further between core gaming and casual.

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