Apple makes its way into handheld gaming

Rehashing quickly on yesterday, we talked about Apple’s entrance into the Gaming World via the iPhone and it’s intuitive ‘Applications Store’. I left off by stating that there’s no doubt in my mind that with the PSP Go! rumored to be revealed at E3 this year and it’s rumored similarity in style to the iPhone, that eventually Apple will capitalise on their sneakily created casual gamer base by introducing an iPhone that incorporates some similar traditional forms of control.

Where then does this leave Sony and Nintendo?

With Sony supposedly on the verge of an announcement for the second generation of their PSP handheld it wouldn’t surprise me if they were to incorporate some kind of Playstation 3 (Sony’s home console) interconnectivity as well as mobile phone features. They already have access to their very own phone division in Sony Ericsson and therefore the resources are most certainly at their fingertips. It makes sense, if Sony is already competing against Apple in the 3G phone market, why not merge their newest gaming device with their mobile phone brand and create the worlds newest, premium mobile? Who better to take on Apple than Sony?

Sony’s new PSP Go! is rumored to drop the UMD format after major piracy issues plagued the successes of the PSP in favour of downloadable content similar to the iPhone. If this is indeed the case, it makes even more sense for there to be compatibility between the PSP Go! and the PS3, using the Playstation 3 as a storage device not dissimilar from iTunes on PC and MACs used by the iPhone. If this is indeed the case, music, video and games could be stored on the PS3. There’s even the chance that PS3 games could be streamed over short distances to the new handheld via a WiFi connection. It would certainly eliminate those annoying toilet breaks.

And what of our market leader? Nintendo has been the supreme front runner of the handheld gaming market since the Game and Watch in 1980. To find out, lets take a trip back to E3 2005 where Nintendo declared their new handheld devise, the Nintendo DS, to be the ‘third pillar’ in their hardware entourage. What they meant then was that the Wii, the Gameboy Advanced and the Nintendo DS would all coexist together. Today however we know things didn’t really go as planned (or they did and Nintendo just lied). There hasn’t been an upgraded ‘Gameboy’ system; there have however been three reiterations of the Nintendo DS. This begs the question, is the Gameboy dead?

Personally, I doubt it; the Gameboy is still today, after years of being rendered inactive, a household name. Originally targeted at boys (who would have thunk it!), Nintendo did a good job turning a device with a brand name like ‘Gameboy’ into a relatively unisex device through titles like Pokémon and Mario Kart.

As it stands, the Nintendo DSi, the third redesign of the insanely popular Nintendo DS has additional features that reflect intent to counter the online capabilities of the iPhone. With Nintendo’s strong ties with many electronics companies such as Samsung and Panasonic, mainly due to the fact that over the years both have been in direct competition with Sony on many other fronts, it’s possible Nintendo will be able to integrate phone-like features to a handheld in the future. I don’t know if I can see Nintendo release an multi-purpose device in the form of a ‘Nintendo DSiPhone’ anytime in the near future, but their hand may be forced if the competition for the casual gaming market is continued when/if Apple release a more ‘gamer orientated’ device and if Sony includes phone functionality with their PSP Go!.

Should this be the case, it would make sense for Nintendo to still keep their hands in the ‘pure’ gaming handheld market. Clearly the Nintendo DS is likely brand of choice to make its way into the multi-purpose device sector, its already beginning. Enter, wait *Delete. Delete*. Re-enter the Gameboy, Nintendo’s pure gaming handheld device may well have a place in the gaming world yet...

Of course, this is all speculation and is completely dependent on a number a decisions by various companies, but you heard it here first should these events come to pass. All this ultimately leads us to the questions; how would win a handheld war should the above events come to pass? How would this affect the home console market, if at all? And who would win in a futurist ‘console war’ between Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and... Apple?? Fire.

More on this tomorrow...