How Is The iPhone Different From The DS & PSP?

[wraggster]

Easy. It's a phone. But hey, like I said, that's easy. For a more complicated answer, why don't we see what VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing Greg Joswiak has to say.

In a departure from some of the company's more boisterous, were-gonna-git-you-DS claims, Joswiak tells Edge that the DS and PSP are from the past. And the iPhone? You guessed it. It's from the future.


I think if you look at devices like the DS and the PSP, in a lot of ways, they’ve defined the past in handheld gaming, and I look at a product like the iPhone with the App Store, and I think it has the opportunity to redefine the future, from everything to how you acquire games – not to mention updating apps.

How do you update a cartridge? You can’t. But you can update the games here via the App Store and that’s an automatic process. Not to mention not having to carry around a bucketful of cartridges. You can store as many games as you have space for. Everything about the iPhone suggests where the future’s headed, and I think a lot of the other guys are trying to scramble for what they do in response.

He may be right! After all, the PSP is quietly moving to a digital distribution model for many of its games.

Then again, people don't appear to be holding off on purchasing a DS because of the back-breaking labour involved in carrying "a bucketful of cartridges" around.

http://kotaku.com/5130899/how-is-the...om-the-ds--psp

[alanparker05]

I've said a million times a psp phone is the ONLY way to compete with iphone, the psp is a good piece of hardware but iphone owners blindly ignore it's obvious weaknesses just because it's the latest fashion accessory, untill Sony can bring psp out of the more hardcore gamer market it will just stagnate and die

[Veskgar]

Is there honestly a close enough comparison to have these articles? What am I missing? There are games, emulators, and advanced homebrew for the iPhone that rivals what you can do on the PSP?

I'm skeptical.

[the_eternal_dark]

A phone as a gaming device that will redefine the future of gaming??? I think not. I'm thinking that since other phone manufacturers are making a better product than the iPhone, Apple will be forced to change its hardware yet again. Seriously, pick up an HTC Touch HD or the Touch Pro and tell me that the iPhone was better designed and is more customizable, I'll have to laugh at your statement.

And the iPhone as a gaming platform is almost as funny as the Wii being entertaining for more than 20 minutes (unless you are 5 years old or in a retirement home, or just incredibly fat and believe that jumping around like a fat fish out of water is getting you into shape). I'm not saying the iPhone is bad, I'm saying, that like the iPod before it, it has been out done many more times, but is only popular due to the brain beating that apple gives us with their unrealistic commercials. Remember kids, Sprint is the fastest network in the US, ATT is the fastest if you INCLUDE Europe.

[alanparker05]

You just gotta realise what apple is doing with the iphone, they deliberately restrict the features so they can release a better one next time, like the 3g, then like sheep they will upgrade and because it's iphone people will buy however lacking the features are, i'll put money on the next one having a better camera and be called something like iphone vision

[mike_jmg]

A phone as a gaming device that will redefine the future of gaming??? I think not. I'm thinking that since other phone manufacturers are making a better product than the iPhone, Apple will be forced to change its hardware yet again. Seriously, pick up an HTC Touch HD or the Touch Pro and tell me that the iPhone was better designed and is more customizable, I'll have to laugh at your statement.

And the iPhone as a gaming platform is almost as funny as the Wii being entertaining for more than 20 minutes (unless you are 5 years old or in a retirement home, or just incredibly fat and believe that jumping around like a fat fish out of water is getting you into shape). I'm not saying the iPhone is bad, I'm saying, that like the iPod before it, it has been out done many more times, but is only popular due to the brain beating that apple gives us with their unrealistic commercials. Remember kids, Sprint is the fastest network in the US, ATT is the fastest if you INCLUDE Europe.

A phone will never be a gaming device, remember the N-gage failure, at least it looked like a failure from my point of view.

In what crazy world does apple people live in?, that they think they can compete with the DS and PSP as portable gaming systems

and I totaly agree on the Wii statement.:rofl:

[malgora]

yeha i love me psp ... if my phone was a gaming device i wouldnt have a phone .. the battery would always be dead from me playing games on it .. hell my phone battery know only last like 3-4 days ... i need that battery life. but i dont want to be called names for having a i*** every1 i know gets called that .... not compleatly sure how it came along but yeah. so yeah ... i think keep games and phones different .. some games like the good old snake was great on phones ... lol but the iphone .. too many crappy games.... but i spose the psp cant talk with its fortune of crappy games that were released .. but still anyway thats all ..

[the_eternal_dark]

A phone will never be a gaming device, remember the N-gage failure, at least it looked like a failure from my point of view.

In what crazy world does apple people live in?, that they think they can compete with the DS and PSP as portable gaming systems

and I totaly agree on the Wii statement.:rofl:

The N-gage was a failure, and as terrible as it was as a phone, it was equally terrible as a gaming device, but it had some decent homebrew.

The whole world of Apple/Mac is full of delusions, like how they justify charging so much for inferior specs, or how they humiliated the BSD community for buying Darwin BSD and proceeded to $#@! it with insane DRM practices and system specific lock-ins.

Give it time, the new Android phones will give the iPhone some well needed kicks in the balls. :thumbup:

yeha i love me psp ... if my phone was a gaming device i wouldnt have a phone .. the battery would always be dead from me playing games on it .. hell my phone battery know only last like 3-4 days ... i need that battery life. but i dont want to be called names for having a i*** every1 i know gets called that .... not compleatly sure how it came along but yeah. so yeah ... i think keep games and phones different .. some games like the good old snake was great on phones ... lol but the iphone .. too many crappy games.... but i spose the psp cant talk with its fortune of crappy games that were released .. but still anyway thats all ..

Agreed, but the PSPs strengths are located in it's homebrew community.

[Broadus]

FROM THE FUTURE? LIKE TIME TRAVEL!!?!?!??! :O WOWEE

But seriously
The PSP and DS are completely different as game consoles. They both have BUTTONS, opening them up to a big crapload of kinds of games. Plus, they're priced appropriately as game consoles, which is to say cheaper than an iPhone.
But I guess, in the department of how you actually get the games, they are different.
I like physical forms of games, though. You buy them, and they're yours forever, and you can move them around as you please. There's no restriction on how much you can play them, and you can move them from console to console with ease and share them with people. When you download a game from somewhere, they usually give you limited installs, or they're restricted to whatever system you bought them on, or whatever.
I have never bought and downloaded a game from PSN so I dunno' how it works, but I have to say the best game-downloading system ever has to be Steam 'cause when you buy a game, it's yours forever as long as you log into that account and you can download and install the game anywhere at any time.

[SkyeDarkhawk]

It's nice that all the article wasn't linked universally across all the news sections...

Anyway:

DSi, the new version of the DS that's been out in Japan and rumored to be coming to the US in April of this year offers downloadable games and an SD expansion slot.

For the PSP, with PS3 connectivity, you can download games in that direction.

The iPhone/iPod Touch can store Apps both on the device, and your computer.

DSi and the iPhone offer touch screens, the iPhone scores higher for multi-touch surface. Need buttons? Place a few hotspots on the screen and you have your buttons. Toss in a few motion gestures and you've got Wii like gameplay thanks to the built in accelerometers in the iPhone. So far there are only two games for the current DS that offers motion-sensitivity: Tony Hawk and the game that bundles with it. The PSP currently lacks any sort of touch feedback.

Visual quality of the games? The DS is lacking, it's basically a portable N64 for most 3D games, but it's 2D is just about on par with everything else, not that it's hard to do or anything. I won't say that the PSP and the iPhone are just about equal graphically, as it varies from developer to developer, and even game to game when it comes to the overall appearance of the games, but there are some really great looking 3D games for the iPhone, and there are a LOT of great looking games for the PSP.

And since this is a Homebrew community; each device is only limited by the developers behind it... and the hardware limitations, but nearly everything you get on one device, you could more than likely get on the other two as well; there's really nothing stopping anyone from porting between the systems. Each system has Wi-Fi, so self-updating games are possible on all the systems (unless the software is on a UMD, but that's going out of style anyway), the iPhone has just a smidgen of an edge due to the cellular connectivity, but that's not always a reliable connection.

Oh, quality of the games is another thing. Right now... most iPhone games pale in comparison with just about every game for the PSP or the DS. Hopefully that will change with time.

Price-point? DS is 129 new, DSi should be around 179. PSP is 169 by itself, 199 bundled. iPhone is 197 for the 8GB and a 2-year agreement for 69.99 for a single line and 89.99 for a 2 line family plan (included 30 iPhone data plan). You could terminate your contract early, shell out another 175, then the iPhone would be around 372 bucks at least. They all seem to be narrowly priced, and there's the huge rumors of an iPhone Nano that might have a price-point of 99 bucks, way cheaper than any of the other handheld consoles, but it's still just a rumor.