EA: Fastest growing gaming console is iPad
Speaking with IndustryGamers, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello puts the previous Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony-led console market into post-iPad perspective:
Consoles used to be 80% of the industry as recently as 2000. Consoles today are 40% of the game industry, so what do we really have?
We have a new hardware platform and we’re putting out software every 90 days. Our fastest growing platform is the iPad right now and that didn’t exist 18 months ago.
So consoles are down by half, and iPad has come out of basically nowhere to become the hottest thing in gaming? Hard core gamers would argue you can't play Call of Duty or World Of Warcraft on an iPad, just like hard core geeks would argue you can't run Xcode/Visual Studio and otherwise use an iPad as a "real computer".
That's true. It just turns out the hard core base is much smaller than the mainstream, and Apple -- and Angry Birds and a host of other, casual titles -- is democratizing the gaming platform just as much as the computer.
And iOS 5 AirPlay mirroring, where you can play your iPad games on the big screen via Apple TV, hasn't even launched yet.
Editor-in-Chief of iMore, Executive Producer at Mobile Nations, co-host of Iterate and ZEN and TECH, cook, grappler, photon wrangler.
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The week in iPad, July 31, 2011Leave a Reply
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I hope this wont take away from hardcore gamers, I just can't play serious games on an iPad. Closest I've came to it was Chaos Rings, but even that was lacking in certain departments.
tweger010 the iPad, iPhone and other game-capable smart devices have only taken from hand held gaming. They haven't hurt console gaming at all.
Except for the whole "console gaming used to be 80% of the market, but is now only 40%" thing. True, the market has grown exponentially, but that shows me that console gaming isn't even close to keeping up.
I don't believe the market is split by hand held, console, PC. I believe it's all one and then mobile.
does the fact that a new console hasn't been released in years completely escape you? How naive do you have to be. As soon as Sony and Microsoft release new consoles the iPad will take a nose dive. Its a time waster until something substantial comes along.
TiPB this is very very old news!
Wake me up when there's a portable, hand held PS3 or 360, until then i'll never use an iPad for gaming other than simple games like Angry Birds. Like Rodney said, it may overtake the likes of the DS and PSP etc but it will never overtake consoles or serious PC gamers.
Actually the game 9mm on iPad 2 is not too far from console quality
I've played it and it is far from console quality, not even close to the graphics or controls of GTA.
Ok so just download GTA:Chinatown Wars HD for 2.99 then. Lol.
Seriously?
Am I the only one that feels like gaming on an iPad is inferior to the iPhone. IPads are too big and clumsy for me.
I want WOrld of Warcraft on the IPad. It can be done! Let's see it.
Let me play an fps multiplayer over 3G with a controller on my iPhone and inwould be happier then a pig in poo.
What do these percentages mean? Units shipped (or DLed)? Total revenue? Profits?
obviously its gonna be the fastest growing. everyone already has ps3 or xbox.
They're not eating into the video game market, they're growing it. What they're eating into is the board game market....
Exactly. I was at E3 There were ipad games there. But guess what everyone was playing or trying to play or talking about. Battlefield, Saint Row, Madden, Modern warfare, Call of Duty Elite blah blah blah. Same stuff. What you didn't see was people turning away from consoles. And the massive bulk of both sides of the convention center were console games. Hell Playstations new handheld section was arguably bigger then the area dedicated to ipad games combined.
And this is probably why Nintendo just lowered the price on the 3DS by 33%. The fact is that people are willing to play games on ipads, iPod touch and iphone. For a company like EA the reduced overhead and distribution costs for this platform are just a bonus. I see this trend continuing as the capabilities of tablets and phones increase and people gravitate towards using a single device for many things.
iPad is not a gaming console the same way a computer is not a gaming console. The iPad can't even play Pokemon as will as an DS and I would argue that every game is still better on a 3DS or PSV. Also Consoles are going for the mainstream market too it is important to not everyone that wants an console has one now and the Xbox 360 and PS3 are more than half way threw their cycle and the iPad just started. Lastly inorder to have the console experience with an iPad you need an iPand and an Apple TV that is at lest $600 way more expense than just about every console and they do a lot more when they are connected to the TV.
"Hard core gamers would argue you can’t play Call of Duty or World Of Warcraft on an iPad, just like hard core geeks would argue you can’t run Xcode/Visual Studio and otherwise use an iPad as a “real computer”.
That’s true. It just turns out the hard core base is much smaller than the mainstream, "
Sorry that's just totally wrong. Or at least totally bad and labored analogy. You can't equate Call of Duty or Warcraft to xcode and visual studio. First Call of Duty and Warcraft are the most popular games out there. They are far from only played by "hardcore gamers." They are in fact played by legions of casual gamers. That's why they are so popular. Black ops sold 7 million copies in it's first 24 hours. $360 Million in sales on day one. $1 Billion in almost one month. There were a Nov 2010 report in the Dallas Examiner that said that at a given time there are more then 6 million people all in online multiplayer games at once on xbox and ps3. The base is in fact extremely large it is not small like xcode or visual studio. The analogy is bad because they are not the same. Xcode is a developer tool used by a narrow set of people in the development world not mainstream computer users. It's not a user tool. Call of Duty and Warcraft are games for mainstream users not merely developers. But the big one is Call of Duty is the most popular game period on any console. Xcode is not the most popular piece of software on any computer.
Fastest growing? fine. Won't dispute that. It's starting from zero and others are already established. I'd expect it to grow faster. But at best it should be compared more to portable systems like a psp or nintendo ds. At best. But my issue is with the attempt at analogy. It's just a bad one.
Oh..!! I am surprised by reading this post as I was not aware about this. I am not much interested in games. But its really nice that Electronic Arts has made such a useful iPad.