It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but I’ve returned to write about a topic I didn’t think I would ever be writing about; whether or not the iPhone/iTouch will replace the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. You see, until recently I thought the idea of the iPhone as a portable gaming platform was a laughable matter at best. Without any type of real control scheme, and with a weak processor, how would it ever be able to compete with the likes of the DS or the PSP. As far as I was concerned I had completely written off the idea of people playing and enjoying games on the iPhone enough for it to make any type of significant impact on the gaming industry. Then something happened that completely blew me away and changed everything in a way that made me question all of the previous reservations I had about the iPhone as a portable gaming device.


How a 14 Year Old Change my Opinion of the iPhone
About three weeks ago my oldest nephew turned 14. When I asked my sister (his mom) what to get the budding teenager, she told me I should get him an iTunes gift card, because he was getting an iTouch for his birthday. When I first heard this I thought it was a pretty lame gift idea. I’m typically the cool Uncle Shawn who gets my nephews new video games for their birthdays, not boring iTunes gift cards. I asked my sister if she was sure he didn’t want a new PSP or DS game, but she said she was sure. At didn’t have any other choice at this point, so I went out to Target and got my nephew exactly what he wanted, a boring blue $50 iTunes gift card. It wasn’t until I got to his birthday party that I found out why he wanted one so bad.

Apparently my nephew didn’t want an iTouch just to listen to music and watch videos, he mainly wanted it to play games on. When I heard this come out of his lips I laughed out loud, and asked him why he doesn’t just play games on his PSP and/or DS. The next words that came out of his mouth made my jaw drop and literally changed everything I had come to know about the view kids have of portable gaming. Apparently my nephew no longer owned his PSP or his DS. Neither did his younger 9 year old brother for that matter. They had both sold all their portable systems and all their portable games just so they could own an iTouch and play games on it. After hearing this monstrosity I was speechless. It took me a while to figure out what to say next, but once I did I had a ton of questions.

I couldn’t conceive of why my nephews would want to give up their PSP and their DS to play games on the iTouch. You have to understand that my nephews were HUGE fans of the DS and the PSP. They owned tons of games for each system, and took them everywhere they went. Whenever they weren’t at school, doing homework, or playing outside, they were playing games on their portable systems. Why would they want to give all of those awesome portable gaming experiences up to play lame, short, shallow games on the iTouch. The iPhone doesn’t have great 3D games like Mario Kart DS, it has Cave Man Racing with crappy SNES graphics. It doesn’t have Guitar Hero On Tour, it has Tap Tap and Tap Tap 2. How could games like those ever compete with the awesome games on the PSP and the DS. I just didn’t understand at all.




Advantages the iPhone has over the DS and PSP
Once I finally came out of confused state, my nephews explained why they wanted the iTouch over the PSP and the DS, and what shocked me the most is how much sense their reasons made. Not only did they make perfect sense for people their age, but they made perfect sense for someone my age as well. Let’s go over their reasons my nephews gave me:

1) The iTouch/iPhone have shorter duration games, which are easier to pick up and play for 5-10 minutes instead of the longer DS/PSP games which require longer time commitments. My nephews are on the go a lot, as are most adults, and they don’t have time to sit down and play long games really. The ability to pick up and play a game for just a couple of minutes is very enticing to them. If they want to play a long, deep game, they will play it on their XBOX360 or the PS3, not on the small little screen of their DS or PSP.

2) iPhone games are a lot cheaper to buy. To an 8-15 year old kid, a $40 DS/PSP game is a lot of money. For that much you can buy 6-8 different games on iTouch. My nephews, like a lot of kids, respond to quantity over quality. They don’t care if the $40 game is a lot better then the cheap $6 iPhone games, they get a lot of the cheap games, which means a lot of variety in their gaming. This was a big selling point for my nephews, and why they wanted me to get them a $50 iTunes gift card.

3) iPhone games are saved directly on the internal hard drive, so my nephews don’t have to carry around any extra weight, like games or accessories. When you own 20+ games like my nephews do, it can be tough to carry all those games around, especially PSP games. Having all your games saved on the internal memory and always with you, is a big plus. Now this point is a little mute now the that DSi is out and it also has the ability to store games on memory cards, but no one is really sure yet if downloadable content is the direction Nintendo really plans to go in.

4) Besides the games, the iPhone/iTouch also offer up a bunch of other really cool apps that the PSP and DS don’t have. You can surf the internet, figure out your GPS location, and turn your iPhone into a light saber, and these are just a couple of the million things you can do on your iPhone you can’t do on your PSP or DS. My nephews were very interested in all these little features, after all people absolutely love gimmicky features don’t they.

5) The most important reason of all though, is that all of their friends are doing it. Apparently a lot of their friends had all started trading in their PSP’s and DS’s for iPhone’s and iTouch’s. When you’re a kid, you aren’t cool if you aren’t doing what all your friends are doing right. This is as true now as it was when I was a kid, as when my parents were kids.





It’s not Just for Kids …
Reason #5 on the previous list shocked me the most. I was completely blown away to hear that a lot of the kids in my nephew’s school were starting to trade in their PSP’s and DS’s for iPhone’s and iTouch’s. Here I thought that people would never see these devices as real portable video game systems, but it appears I was wrong. Kids are interested in them, so much to the point they are actually getting rid of their old systems.

This phenomenon is not just confined to kids, it’s also happening to adults. In the past year, a lot of my friends have all started buying iPhone’s, and I’m hearing more and more of them say that they play games on them. They are playing everything from Puzzle Quest to racing games. Heck some of them are even playing the music rhythm games like Tap Tap. Many married couples I know buy two copies of the same game together, so they can play each other in multiplayer matches. They use their iPhones for everything from passing time during their lunch break, to getting through long business plane flights, to having something to do while on the toilet. Honestly, the iPhone is quickly becoming one of the most played gaming systems amongst my friends.


Conclusion
To conclude, let me make a couple of things clear. At this point in time I don’t really think the iPhone/iTouch is going to actually replace the Nintendo DS or the Sony PSP, but I do think it’s quickly growing in popularity as a portable gaming system, both with kids and adults. It might not ever replace the DS or the PSP, but it might change the portable gaming market so much that the DS and PSP have to adapt to be more like the iPhone. It won’t shock me if in the next couple of years we see both systems start to copy the business model of the iPhone. There are lots of rumors floating around that the next PSP might be touch screen, with downloadable games only. Even the new DSi has the capability to sell cheap downloadable games that are shorter with less substance, and it obviously already has touch screen capability. The PSP and DSi are already on their way to becoming more and more like the iPhone.

What both the DSi and the PSP don’t have though is the multipurpose capability of the iPhone. It’s already geared to become the “all in one” device that everyone is looking for these days. It has your phone, internet, music, video, and gaming capability all in one place, backed by a company who is extremely dedicated to supporting their products for a very long time. What’s even more shocking, is how many reputable companies like EA are starting to make games for the iPhone that are really good and really fun to play. Put all of those selling points together, and you have an unstoppable device that all of its competitors should be afraid of. Maybe the iPhone really will replace the DS and the PSP and become the next popular portable gaming machine.