Next-gen can wait: why iOS games scratch the itch that Big Console Games can’t

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...ews/ipad_3.jpgI don’t plan to buy a PS4 or Xbox One, because I already own the most vibrant game platforms out there right now. iOS games are cheaper, more immediate and they seek to satisfy quickly; increasingly, they reflect how we play games now – there’s an older generation of players who simply cannot take their TV hostage for hours on end for what is a solitary, almost selfish pursuit.There are countless weird, interesting, exciting, abstract games on the App Store, and most lie tragically underappreciated and undiscovered. Some have sold enough to keep their creator going for another few months, and a tiny, select few have gone through the stratosphere; iOS success stories are few and far between, sadly, but when they break through, they really break through.There are so many that haven’t, and it’s an ongoing tragedy. It continues to frustrate me that prodigiously talented, original thinkers like Simogo (creator of the daring Device 6, wonderful Year Walk and toe-tapping Beat Sneak Bandit) get so few column inches. Some games receive a little recognition, and earn decent money for their creators – games like Super Hexagon, Super Crate Box, Joe Danger Touch, Triple Town, Drop7 – but not as much as you might think.So why the lack of recognition in the games media? There’s still a lingering sense in some quarters that they’re not ‘proper’ games if they’re on mobile. More obviously, mobile games coverage doesn’t get much traffic. It’s a hard sell. I can look at Comscore right now and tell you, the loyal Edge reader, that our reviews of mobile games don’t get nearly as many pageviews as anything we cover on console or PC. And yet we’ll keep commissioning them; we believe in this strangely neglected slice of the game industry, especially when, for me personally, Xbox One and PS4 are doing so little to excite right now.

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