

Steve Jobs and Apple's Influence on Gaming Massively Overstated - drey
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/11/04/steve-jobs-and-apples-influence-on-gaming-massively-overstated/

======
dmbaggett
I helped create Crash Bandicoot at Naughty Dog back in the late 90s. I've been
out of the game industry since 1998, but find the industry changes catalyzed
by iOS and the app store fascinating. It must be very unsettling for those
working in the industry.

The survey results were indeed silly, but you have to forgive people a bit for
being enthralled by the rapidity with which Apple has changed the game (pun
intended). It's not just mobile vs console/PC -- Apple (and, to be fair,
Zynga, though I personally despise their work) have also ushered in a new era
of _casual gaming_ that really appeals to the mass audience. And, let's not
forget, to little kids.

With Crash we tried to channel Miyamoto's emphasis on simple game mechanics
and fun for all ages. Nobody did more than Miyamoto to make games (industry-
wide) fun. (As an aside, though, there are many largely unknown industry
figures who have worked very hard in the same way, and have accomplished
similar results; Mark Cerny, whom we worked with at Naughty Dog, and who
designed or co-designed the gameplay for the Sonic, Crash, Jak & Daxter, and
Ratchtet & Clank series certainly deserves a lot of credit as well.)

As a now-industry-outsider, it seems to me that Apple's resurgence has had the
following effects on games:

1) casual gaming is again dominant; 2) it's no longer clear we need dedicated
consoles in our living rooms; 3) one or two people can make a viable, salable
game again

Naughty Dog has seen their budgets increase from around $1M for Crash 1 to
many tens of millions of dollars these days. There will still be a big market
for AAA titles with huge budgets. But what interests me most is that two
coders in Laos (say) can now make a game that lots of people will buy. Sort of
like in the Apple II era, when one or two people could create salable games
(see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli> for a great example); this
is a welcome change for aspiring game developers.

And I confess I'm happy about the return to casual gaming and greater emphasis
on pure gameplay.

But if I were Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft, I would be very concerned about
#2.

~~~
feralchimp
Thanks for sharing Mark Cerny's influence here...Jak and Daxter really
rekindled my love of "fun" games vs. FPS.

------
bpolania
There's a lot of truth in this article but that didn't surprised me at all.

What did surprise me was the arguments against the author, specially those who
said that Steve Jobs was more known that other options in the list. Under that
-and many of the other- premises the top spot would definitively belong to
Bill Gates, since for a long time the best games ran almost exclusively in PC,
or because BASIC -that had the snake game or the one with the gorillas
throwing bananas- came with MS-DOS and was the first development environment
offered free for anyone who bought a PC, with no $100 annual fee and no big-
brother curation.

Also I can argue against the notion that the future of gaming is mobile, I've
been in the (mobile) industry for many years and I came to the conclusion that
mobile gaming will always be a niche for a casual gamers, but heavy gaming,
the one that pushes the technology to its limit, will be for a long time the
realm of the consoles and PC's. The future of gaming is virtual reality, EEG
controlling and motion sensors, not virtual potatoes spamming people's email.

And this illustrates very much the reality of Mr. Jobs, his products were in
many cases very innovative from the consumer electronics point of view, but
not necessarily from the technological point-of-view, even the iPod, by far
his most breakthrough product, was developed from parts he bought off-the-
shelf somewhere.

Saying that mobile is the future of gaming is like saying that the iPad is the
future of computing.

------
michaelpinto
The child who wrote that article is clearly too young to realize that the
Apple II was a HUGE gaming platform back in the day:
<http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/>

"In the 1980's (and into the mid 1990's) the Apple II computer series was one
of the premier game systems in the computer industry. Despite it's graphical
and sound shortcomings (especially with the 8 bit series machines),
programmers always found ways to make the best games possible for the II
series. In it's heyday, Apple II supporters claimed the Apple II had some
10,000 programs for it and many of those were games."

~~~
blub
If Apple was such a HUGE gaming platform, why was the company completely
ignored when it came to major titles? It's only recently that studios have
started investing in Apple ports, and so far the ports are late compared to
the premium platforms (consoles or PC).

In conclusion, Apple II's popularity is an interest factoid, but not relevant
to the article. It is barely a blip on the radar of gaming history.

~~~
napierzaza
You realize that the Apple 2 was CLI and predates Windows right?

~~~
blub
How is that relevant to the discussion? Let's recap: X says Apple II was a
huge success in the gaming community, I say that the success was all but
forgotten today and it couldn't have had an impact in the poll.

------
chao-
While I entirely agree with the thrust of the article, including that his
criticism is all-the-more necessary given that poll was of industry
professionals, this really points out the weakness in moment-to-moment opinion
polls more than anything. Much like day-to-day polling of presidential primary
candidates, an even-handed, reflective consideration doesn't seem to be the
dominant force in this type of measurement.

To actually consider the point at hand (influence of iOS on the game
industry), it's fair to note that this battle is far from concluded. The
advance of video games targeting new demographics, as led by the Wii,
smartphone and social network games, and how they will play out versus sales
of tried-and-true genres on PCs and consoles, is far from over. One could be
forgiven an ambiguous stance on the matter.

Personally speaking, as a recently retired gamer (that is, I plumb don't have
the time these days), my hat is in the ring with Gabe Newell. Game
distribution following a publishing model is flawed, and while the industry is
just barely waking up to this, Valve seems to be in the best position to adapt
as time goes by.

------
dhugiaskmak
Did no one here own a Mac prior to the introduction of iOS? It's a plainly
undeniable fact that Jobs refused, year after year, to do anything to make the
Mac a viable desktop gaming platform despite developers and publishers begging
him to do so. (Valve's Source games [HL2,TF2,L4D,etc], which came out nearly
six years after the first PC release, is the exception that proves the rule.)

The reason that games are a success on iOS is due to the fact that the
graphics support was already there for other purposes. If an extra chip was
required in order to enable that level of gaming Jobs would almost certainly
have killed it.

------
apaitch
I think mobile games are opening up a new market, not taking over an existing
one. The fact that X% of gaming is taking place on i-devices / Facebook
doesn't necessarily imply that people don't play AAA devices anymore.

The wave of mobile games allows people who don't play games to start - and the
fact that you can play off a mobile device means all they have to do is buy a
$1 game off the App Store instead of spending $250 on a PSP/DS. It also allows
gamers to take their games on the go without bringing along ANOTHER device. So
in this way Apple probably did influence gaming more than any other company.

That said, it was NOT Apple that got the industry to where it was before the
iPhone came out. It was NOT Apple that developed video games from their
infancy to the art/science it is today. And at this time, Apple still hasn't
interfered into the console/AAA market, which is, in a sense, the foundation
of the industry. Apple is popularizing casual games and carving out a new
market, which is good. Apple is providing a good way for indie developers to
distribute their games to a mass audience, which is also good. But at this
point I think it's too early to give Apple so much credit, and rankings like
these ones are definitely unjustified.

Note: While unjustified, the rankings are understandable, given the craze
about mobile/"social" games in the industry.

------
teamonkey
The first thing you have to ask when faced with a survey like this is: who
conducted the survey and to whom?

The London Games Conference is a high-level biz-dev and marketing conference.
The questions were asked to readers of MCV - a games industry business and
marketing magazine who are also sponsors of the show.

Says the editor of MCV:

“LGC is the only event dedicated to examining the ways connected gaming has
transformed video games – we will be welcoming 300 industry professionals to
head great leaders speak and discuss hot topics including how smartphone games
are transforming the world.”

[http://bastion.gamespress.com/link.asp?i=2097&r=7899&...](http://bastion.gamespress.com/link.asp?i=2097&r=7899&r2=5750)

------
Samuel_Michon
Not that I think Steve Jobs was the most influential person in gaming, but it
would've been nice if the author had mentioned that Jobs worked for Atari,
where he and Woz built Breakout. Also, let's not forget the Apple ][, which
was wildly popular with gamers -- Apple sold millions of them, before anyone
had a IBM PC.

~~~
beernutz
Actually, WOZ built Breakout. Steve (as usual) stole his work, and lied to him
about the amount of the payout.

~~~
mayanksinghal
The missing citation:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29#Histo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29#History_and_development)
:)

------
ebabchick
> treating him like some sort of god who invented anything with an on switch

actually, he never invented anything with an on/off switch; he claimed so in
one of those 60 minute interviews because it reminded him of death

~~~
Samuel_Michon
That is incorrect, plenty of Apple devices had an on/off switch. The original
Macintosh and LaserWriter, to name a few [1][2].

The quote you were referring to:

"ISAACSON: I remember sitting in [Jobs'] backyard in his garden one day and he
started talking about God. He said, "Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I
don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been
thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of--
maybe it's 'cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it
doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives
on. The he paused for a second and he said 'yeah, but sometimes I think it's
just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He said—and paused again,
and he said, "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple
devices."

[1] Original Mac on/off switch:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/AnOrigina...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/AnOriginalMacintoshBackCaseUNALTEREDMACINTOSH.jpg)

[2] LaserWriter (on/off switch is on the left side):
[http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-
content/gallery/gallery_jo...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-
content/gallery/gallery_jobs_inventions/laserwriter_f.jpg)

~~~
dylangs1030
I find it hilarious he managed to put a little Apple tag-line on an
existential crisis (and it worked), "marketeer" indeed. Ups for the stat.

------
shocks
What about John Carmack? He's not even on the list, and certainly has
contributed more to gaming than Jobs.

------
jasonjei
From a developer standpoint, the App Store did eliminate the barriers to entry
for mass distribution. In order to distribute for Sony, Nintendo, or XBox, you
had to go to large publisher. Just as it is with iTunes, any studio, big or
large, is capable of distributing on the App Store. Even if Steam isn't
difficult to get published, the App Store certainly has the perception of
being easier.

------
zerostar07
What can you say, the man knew how to market himself, period.

------
mun2mun
If Steve Jobs is that much serious about gaming then he would have taken the
acquisition offer from Bungie first time, not after hearing that Microsoft
also wants to buy Bungie. Source
[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-
down-...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-bungie-
at-first-how-microsoft-burned-apple.ars) .If they bought Bungie then there was
a chance that Mac would have been a gaming platform not PC or XBox.

iOS devices emerging as a popular casual gaming platform is a side effect
imho. The credit goes to casual gamers who plays games for time passing. By
that same logic one can easily say that Mark Zuckerberg is the pioneer in
gaming, in a sense that he brought gaming to 800+ million user.

------
swombat
I have played computer games since I was about 6 years old, starting with an
ancient text-based nethack clone called LARN.

I played (many) dozens of games on the C64 that was my next computer. The
first game I bought was Civilization, for the PC. I have bought (a large
proportion, at least) and played (many) dozens of games for the PC, everything
from UFO: Enemy Unknown, to Populous 2, Black&White, Warcraft (1, 2, 3, WoW),
Diablo (1, 2, 2X), Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 1/2/3, Dune 2 (and Dune 2k), C&C, Red
Alert, Dawn of War, Total War, Total Annihilation, King's Quest, Space Quest,
Flashback, Prince of Persia, Duke Nukem, Quake 1/2/3, Loom, the TSR/SSI rpg's
(played through the whole Krynn series and the Savage Frontier series),
Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, The Elder Scrolls Arena/Daggerfall, etc. I
played them online and offline. I played MUDs till my social life withered to
a pale, ghoulish shred of nothingness. I have never been much into consoles,
but some of my friends have been, so I've played games (to completion) on the
PS2, PS3, the original Xbox, the Xbox 360, and the Wii. I bought games on the
XBox Live Arcade, and on PSN, and at the time (before the iPhone) I thought
this was an awesome way to deliver games at the right price point, and it was
the future of gaming.

I think I qualify as one of those "real gamers" - at least I did in the past.

Despite this long and varied history of playing games on many platforms,
today, I own about 3 games on my mac (HL and clones, Trine, and Braid). I own
about 40 on my iPhone and iPad.

Arguing who has the most influence is retarded. The unarguable fact is that
the iOS platform is indeed having a huge effect on the games that I, a
"gamer", play.

I look forward to the final annihilation of the console and PC gaming worlds
when the Apple TV comes out.

~~~
blub
I find your conclusion disturbing, to say the least. In what parallel universe
is it a good thing to have one corporation control an entire market?

ESPECIALLY if the name of that corporation is Apple - doing its best to
destroy customer and developer freedom while baiting everyone with aqua-glazed
convenience.

~~~
swombat
It's all a tradeoff. I'm ok with giving up the freedom to install any random
software off the web on my phone, if in exchange I get access to hundreds of
thousands of apps that just work, are cheap, and do pretty much everything
under the sun without screwing up my phone.

Not having to worry about being a sysadmin for my phone gives me more freedom
to do the things I actually want to do. As the Linux world and its permanent
state of "it'll be ok next year" have demonstrated, you can't have it all.
Freedom to mess with the innards of your system, or freedom to forget you're
using a "system" and just do stuff with it. Pick one.

~~~
feral
I find your comment a little naive, with respect to the 'cheap' part.

I doubt the apps will be as cheap in a situation where there's a single
company monopoly.

At the moment, it is in Apple's interest to keep apps cheap, to drive sales of
hardware, and adoption of their platform.

If they ever got a stranglehold on the market, however, it would be logical to
increase the price of the Apps, up to the price people were willing to pay.

This is exactly what happened with Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s.
Nintendo took a cut of the sale of every cartridge - think it was around 30%

Video games became very expensive.

iOS is not Windows. It is much closer to the controlled channel that NES was.

Apple very much have the ability to narrow access to the walled garden, and
increase prices, if they achieve such a monopoly that it becomes advantageous
to do so.

~~~
swombat
Apple already take 30% of the apps' revenues, and they're not expensive.

Are they going to increase their cut? Doubt it. Why would they? Apps are not
what makes them money: devices are - and they make a lot more money from
having a healthy app ecosystem than they do from squeezing every penny out of
developers.

Of course, Apple's ways are mysterious and unpredictable. But they have so far
shown no interest in increasing their cut of app revenues. Much like iTunes,
they're happy to leverage this huge library of "media" to boost sales of
devices.

~~~
feral
>Are they going to increase their cut? Doubt it. Why would they?

They could increase their cut. But they could also just increase the price per
app, by reducing competition (e.g. only allowing 1 app of each sort). They
would be incentivised to do this, to make more profit, obviously.

Seeing as games are being discussed, Nintendo used to do this by increasing
the manufacturing cost they charged to make the cartridges (afair, Nintendo
had a stranglehold on the cart manufacture), and hence you got situations like
where Street Fighter 2 on the SNES was crazily priced - don't remember
exactly, but something like £60 in the UK.

>Much like iTunes, they're happy to leverage this huge library of "media" to
boost sales of devices.

If they had a device monopoly, they would no longer need the apps to be cheap
to boost device sales, which is my point.

------
danso
The author seems to miss the point. The iPhone has had a massive impact on
gaming, like it or not. The iPad will too. This is why the new Nintendo and
Sony devices may be DOA.

I do think that giving Steve Jobs credit as a person is wrong, though. He
didn't seem to care much for games. And according to the book, he was against
the App Store originally.

~~~
llambda
Exactly. The hardcore PC/console gaming crowd is in for an unwelcome wake up
call: the future of gaming is mobile. In fact, it isn't even limited to the
future, it's already happening.

I think it's fair to say that devices like the iPhone and iPad will be seen as
the originators of this revolution. So maybe that group of avid enthusiasts is
a little more insightful than the author is willing to give them credit for.

~~~
moomin
I agree: mobile gaming is the wave of the future. But if you want to know who
has affected gaming most since its inception, the answer's pretty much got to
be Shigeru Miyamoto.

The problem with this poll is that it works just like "greatest movies of all
time" polls. People have the attention span of mayflies.

~~~
danso
Agree completely with you. And to my shame, I didn't read the poll question
well enough. I had thought it was about what had the greatest impact in the
last 15 years or so.

But given that the responses were:

    
    
      iPhone: 17%
      Wii: 7%
      Xbox Live: 3%
      PlayStation One: 3%
      Steam: 2%
    

All of those are relatively modern. I would easily put the original Nintendo
and/or Gameboy before most of those. The poll question is terrible and the
respondents have too short a perspective.

Then again, if you're an avid fan and/or professional, you ought to be polled
on things looking forward. Much respect to the original game developers, but
anyone who is in the industry today who is going to focus on the great
accomplishments in the 8-bit era are going to find themselves in the same
trouble as Nintendo's current revenue trend.

~~~
ohashi
Nintendo DS units shipped: 149 million

Nintendo Wii units shipped: 89 million

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_game_conso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_game_consoles))

As of March this year, Apple sold 100 million iPhones.

So let's put things in perspective, Nintendo is an absolutely amazing company
in the gaming space and has outsold all their competitors (with the exception
of Sony PS2) and has sold far more than Apple across their product lines. I am
not saying mobile gaming isn't huge (And perhaps handhelds like GameBoy/DS/PSP
should be given their credit here), but to give Apple and Steve Jobs credit
for shaping the gaming industry more than the real titans of gaming who have
actively shaped it for 20 years? Bullshit.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
As of October this year, Apple sold 250 million iOS devices (That’s iPhones,
iPod touches, and iPads.)

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/250-million-ios-devices-
sol...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/250-million-ios-devices-sold/)

~~~
mun2mun
How many of them bought iOS devices for gaming purpose only?

~~~
pbreit
Probably close to zero. But the number who play games on the device is
probably close to 250 million. I'm not sure what the point is.

~~~
talmand
You can't properly compare sales numbers between two products whose major
purpose is quite different. Nintendo's products are for gaming only, they
serve very little purpose otherwise. Every one of those was sold as a gaming
unit. Most people bought their iPhones for purposes other than gaming. Sure, a
large number, if not all, of iPhones users play games on their device but
that's not a fair comparison since that wasn't always the reason for the sale.
The fact that Nintendo has sold so many devices with one purpose as compared
to the iPhone which has far more uses is the impressive part to me.

It's close to the same logic that a pirated game equates to a lost sale, which
it does not.

~~~
pbreit
I don't think the product's purpose is as relevant as how the product is
actually used. If we want to take it to another extreme, I have an iPhone,
iPad and iPod Touch as well as a Wii, Playstation and Xbox. Guess which three
are used to play games every day and which have not been used for anything in
over a year.

I don't really understand the piracy analogy.

~~~
talmand
What I meant by the piracy analogy is that you are assuming.

I'm not exactly comparing their purposes but the reasons people buy them. To
do a proper comparison you would have to ask every single iOS device owner if
they bought the thing for games, as the main reason for the purchase, to
compare them with a device that is only good for gaming. You cannot assume to
compare purchase numbers between two devices if people buy them for different
reasons even if some features of the two products overlap.

It's the same comparison that people keep doing with PCs and consoles.
Everybody buys a console for gaming (which is slowly changing, granted) while
not everyone who buys a PC does so for gaming.

~~~
pbreit
Mostly disagree. For comparison purposes how the device is actually used is
much more indicative than what the buyer thought the primary purpose would be
at purchase time.

In fact, I think that apple base turned 100-250 million folks into casual
gamers is more influential than yet another console.

~~~
talmand
But it seems to me you are assuming again. You are assuming how they are using
the device. With Nintendo's products you are not assuming, you know what they
are using it for.

I don't think I'm getting my point across very well. I'm not disputing that a
large number of people use their iOS devices for gaming, which is good.

I'm just saying that you cannot necessarily compare two devices on a 1-to-1
basis using sales numbers if the two devices are not comparable 1-to-1 in
their usage. The iOS devices are versatile in nature and are suitable for
multiple tasks. It's not proper to compare every single sale of an iOS device
against every single sale of Nintendo's products. You can make estimates and
guesses but I don't feel a 1-to-1 comparison can be made nor be fair.

To make a comparison like this I'd rather know the numbers of game titles sold
per device. That comparison works for me because the purpose of buying the
game is to play it, nothing else.

~~~
pbreit
I specifically did not make a 1-to-1 relation on sales, instead stating "the
number who play games on the device". I subsequently put up a range so large
(100-250 million) that it'd be hard to call it an assumption.

------
joejohnson
>> Then to give Jobs the top honors over Gabe Newell (of Valve) and Shigeru
Miyamoto (of Nintendo) is blasphemy, plain and simple.

The author is taking this all way too seriously. Who cares what a fan poll at
a gaming conference says? I see this type of tunnelvision with video
games/television/movie industry types all the time. Why do they think that
their industry is so important? Oh my god, who gives a shit.

------
bodegajed
Steve Jobs re-invented shareware through the app store. People are now willing
to buy titles from independent game developers. But having said that, I still
agree with the author that it didn't get that much impact as much as Miyamoto
did to the gaming industry.

Maybe that's what you'll get when you ask people to vote for their opinions.
The popular candidate and not exactly the right one will win.

------
jschuur
Modern Warfare 3 will probably make a billion dollars before the end of the
year.

------
shortformblog
Every time I read something by this writer on Forbes, I get the impression
that it's an angry rant meant to up his hit count so he gets paid more. (He
did the same thing with Google Plus a few months back, when he clearly made
some comments that showed he didn't understand how the service worked.) If so,
mission accomplished.

Now how about you give us some real insight, Paul Tassi, instead of another
rant about something that makes you angry?

It's not that I don't think your argument has some merit, Paul. You're right.
Steve Jobs probably gets too much credit for a medium he only had a passing
interest in. But you had an opportunity to correct the record, rather than
simply ranting about it. A little context goes a long way. As a blogger, it's
easy to tell people what you don't like. It's much harder to bring your
argument full-circle. If you can succeed at that, it makes your writing
essential, rather than a pit stop on the reader's long trip through his Google
News feed.

~~~
idspispopd
I went to the article looking for some statistic or a factual observation. I
had thought to myself "oh it's Forbes, it must be something reputable."

I was, um, mistaken.

Take the below snippet, seemingly the only piece of information the article is
pinned against.

"The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry
professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken
away after giving answers like these."

So it seems his entire article is based on the pretence that the combined
thought of these 1,000 people is incorrect.. because he says so.

I don't think cantankerously written, for-hits-only articles belong on
"reputable" sites.

------
dbattaglia
I mostly agree with the points made in this article (I grew up on 8 and 16 bit
Nintendo), but still I wonder if the majority of the folks at that conference
are actually iOS game devs? Would not be surprised at all, the low barrier for
entry and high potential for profitability compared to PC and console game dev
seems much greater on iOS nowadays.

------
cletus
I've been saying this for a year or two and I'll say it again: Apple is a huge
player in the gaming market _already_.

The PSP Go and 3DS are niche products that absolutely won't reach the sales of
their predecessors. This I guarantee you and you can blame the iPod Touch and
the iPhone for that.

I see a future where the Apple TV becomes a low end console, much like the
niche Nintendo currently fills, probably at the expense of Nintendo.

I see Nintendo becoming strictly a software house, much like Sega. Nintendo
franchises like Zelda and Mario Bros are still valuable. Their hardware
business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple.

I'm not a console gamer. I never was. PC games were always my thing and sadly
PC gaming seems to be dying. Sure it's still big for FPS titles, MMORPGs and
the like but my particular favourites (RPGs and turn-based strategy games) are
almost nonexistent. Even my guilty pleasure of the GTA franchise seems doomed
(GTA4 took 6+ months to come to PC, RDR din't come at all, I wouldn't be
surprised if GTA5 doesn't either).

The console market Sony and MS fill is harder to predict. I do kinda think
it's seen its peak. Consoles are coming out less often. Mobile gaming and
Steam are decreasing the prices people expect to pay for games. The hardware
race has resulted in top-tier titles having massive art budgets that I don't
think are sustainable in this mobile gaming world.

Plus what you can already do with the iPad 2 (in terms of graphics) is pretty
incredible. I hazard to think how good the iPad 3 will be.

By any objective measure Steve Jobs has already had a massive influence on the
gaming industry.

~~~
lukeschlather
>Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple.

Their hardware business is doomed because of _convergence._ Standard, custom-
built gaming machines will only last so long as having a single consistent
target environment requires a custom-built gaming machine.

But personally, I don't really see what that has to do with gaming. Gaming is
an art, and I still find games written for the Nintendo just as compelling as
they were 20 years ago. All iOS really offers is a better distribution
mechanism. And it's still somewhat limited in that you still need to have an
expensive piece of locked-down hardware. It's a footnote compared to the first
First Person Shooter, top-down RPG, 3D action game, Tower defense game.

It seems silly to talk about hardware when the really interesting stuff is new
paradigms in games.

~~~
technoslut
>Gaming is an art, and I still find games written for the Nintendo just as
compelling as they were 20 years ago.

I agree. Nintendo, much like Apple, controlled the hardware and software which
allowed them to create a compelling experience.

> All iOS really offers is a better distribution mechanism. And it's still
> somewhat limited in that you still need to have an expensive piece of
> locked-down hardware.

i think that mobile is the future of all computing and there will be a day
when most are choosing tablets instead of computers. At that point, it will be
considerably cheaper to just own a tablet than owning a computer, a console
and possibly even a smartphone for some.

------
PedroCandeias
My girlfriend is 27. She has never touched a console and doesn't own a
personal computer. She absolutely loves Angry Birds and Tiny Wings on the
iphone.

Whether or not Jobs should take credit for that is irrelevant. What's
important is that a revolution is happening in video gaming and all
smartphones and tabs, regardless of maker, are playing an absolutely HUGE part
in it.

~~~
vacri
I was unaware that your girlfriend outweighed the preexisting gaming
community.

It's a casual gaming revolution - see also facebook - not specifically an iOS
gaming revolution.

~~~
PedroCandeias
That was anecdotal evidence of what I thought was the pretty clear and
relevant point that casual gaming, from Bejeweled to Farmville to Angry Birds,
is bringing video games to a host of people who previously refused to touch a
controller.

These people may easily outnumber what you refer to as the "gaming community"
and, for them, Jobs was the face of the device they play on most of the time.
In short, the article sounds as though it was written by someone living under
a rock and/or refusing to acknowledge the revolution afoot.

Given how everyone seemed to be focused on comparing video game industry
legends to one another, I thought it was a point worth making. Judging by the
downvotes, though, guess not. Oh well.

------
Bud
Here's my rewrite of the headline:

Forbes Columnists' Influence Massively Self-Inflated

Mine even has the side benefit of being true.

------
zipop
Wow, tons of great data this bozo used to support his argument.

------
vacri
This is just the Recency Effect. Jobs has been in the media a lot because of
his death, so people think of him more, much more than those of even a few
years past.

If Bill Gates had died instead, the poll would have shown the same kind of
effect, as he would have been in people's minds as they took the poll.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect>

------
dylangs1030
Mostly I agree with the article. But I'm noticing a new trend now with Steve
Jobs. For the first weeks after his death, he was excessively glorified
(deserved or undeserved is not for me to comment here) by the media and by the
grand majority of commentators. Now that some time is past, the new trend
seems to be...not _renegging_ on the earlier attitude so much as bringing to
light why his innovations _aren't_ quite so universal, or that they _are_
"overstated" (again, while I agree with this article, I'd hardly call a lot of
his contributions overstated). Perhaps I'm just being more selective in the
posts I read, but has anyone else noticed this?

