14 DAY TRIAL // Roughly Drafted Magazine has put together a few facts, as the facts themselves, on their own, don't reveal much other than what is already known. Linked to one another, they make a totally different story - a story of the iPhone becoming a powerful competitor to Sony's PlayStation Portable and Nintendo's DS.
How is it Roughly Drafted touts the iPhone as a competitor to the PSP and DS, and doesn't see the two dedicated gaming devices as strong competition to Apple's handset...? The answer is simple: because Apple's device has got it all, including a rapidly growing userbase.
While Nintendo's DS sports a 67 MHz ARM 946E-S (N-Gage) processor, Sony's PSP boasts a much more promising 333 Mhz through its MIPS R4000 CPU + GPU with 2 MB onboard VRAM running at 166 Mhz. RAM is something that Nintendo's DS barely even sports (4MB), while Sony's has 32MB of that. However, Nintendo's handheld gaming device does offer some extras, compared to Sony's PSP, and that's touchscreen functionality. The PSP doesn't have that. More than that, Nintendo's DS is reportedly more fun that Sony's console, also being more affordable in terms of games and the console itself.
Apple iPhone, however, combines everything mentioned above and adds plenty of features of its own, too. Leaving Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS in a trail of dust, the iPhone (as well as the iPod touch) sports a Samsung ARM SoC at 620 Mhz. It uses 128MB of RAM, and offers up to 16GB of Flash storage (with the recently released updated version). It has a 320?480 3.5" display with multitouch input and also boasts motion sensitivity, allowing for unprecedented control. Bare in mind that if Apple decides to focus more on games (and we reckon it does) the iPod touch is also a supported platform for their plans, since it sports the same multitouch and motion sensing functionality that the iPhone does, only lacking telephony capabilities.
In simpler words, the iPhone is perfect for gaming!
You might remember Sega's Ethan Einhorn, who showed off a demo of Super Monkey Ball at Apple's March 6 event in Cupertino. The man told gaming site Next-Gen the following: "From a technical standpoint, the iPhone is competitive with dedicated handheld gaming devices [like the DS and PSP]. The delivery system for software will be digital and easy to use. And the ability to have all of your portable electronics needs catered to with one device is irresistible. Given all of that, the potential for the iPhone as a games platform is massive. From a technical standpoint, the iPhone is competitive with dedicated handheld gaming devices. This is a phone that offers plenty of power to work with, no compatibility concerns, and uniform input functionality. That represents an evolution in the mobile gaming space."
You can't take a developer's word for it! We're looking at the revolution of handheld gaming.