The new iPhone 3Gs future as a gaming device

Now that the new iPhone 3Gs is out, sporting a new set of rather impressive innards that have been improved quite substantially over its predecessor, the iPhone 3G, we have to ask the question: What does it mean for the future of gaming on the iPhone?

As it stands the iPhone has proven itself as a mobile gaming platform, quite comfortably holding its own against the formidable likes of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP with over 6000 games currently available. A good number of those games are very simple in concept and offer no more than an addictive time passer but a few developers have taken their games further which in my opinion rival other mobile gaming devices in gameplay and story. Games such as Konami’s - Metal Gear Touch and TAG games – Car Jack Streets and Gameloft’s – Asphalt 4 have taken the iPhone to a whole new level of gaming with game not are not only nice to look at but that have a great story too.

The iPhone 3Gs has received a weighty update featuring a new processor that is almost double the clock speed of the iPhone 3G (from 412Mhz/128MB to 600MHz/256MB) but possibly more importantly in-terms of gaming is the new graphic processor; the PowetVR SGX which supports hardware acceleration of both OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 while the now dated iPhone 3G maxes out at OpenGL ES 1.1.

OpenGL ES 2.0 kicks things up a bit over OpenGL ES 1.1 by supporting more complex textures and shading operations which pretty much means more eye candy coated goodness for iPhone gamers. Sadly this also means that games taking advantage of OpenGL ES 2.0 won’t work on the iPhone 3G. As yet no iPhone 3Gs exclusives have been announced by the will inevitability make their way onto the App Store. The makers of taptaptap have a video comparing the frame rates of the two different iPhones and you will see that the 3Gs is almost four times faster than the 3G.

iPhone OS 3.0 which was recently released now has fully fledged Push technology which allows servers to push information to your iPhone at their discretion. This means, for example, that a game will be able to notify you of other players that are nearby for a little local multiplayer action or let you know in-game if someone has toppled your top score. OS 3.0 will also allow in-game purchases meaning that you will not have to leave the game to buy an extra level or full version of a game demo.

Neil Young of ng:moco, a company that has been innovating in the world of iPhone gaming, believes that augmented reality is the next step for the iPhone and in a recent interview at MTV Multilayer he gave us a little insight into the subject:

“I think compass and video are really important, if you wanna build augmented reality games, which I think could be a really exciting category in New Mobile. You can start to make games that sit on top of the real world.”He went on to say: “The relevance there for the compass and video, being able to access the raw video stream of the camera allows you to overlay imagery on top of that, which is something you couldn’t do before. You combine that with the compass you can then start understanding which objects are being looked at in the real world and you can start building really interesting things. You can mark up the real world with game data. I think there can be some pretty exciting and progressive games done there.”

Young went on to confirm that ng:moco have no plans for iPhone 3Gs exclusive titles yet.

The folks over at toucharcade have an article up on the possibilities of augmented gaming on the iPhone with a video demo of a virtual pet application. Using real time video (hey wait, the 3G does not support video) the iPhone overlays an animated image of a dog resulting in the appearance that the dog lives in the real world. You can read the entire article and see the video at toucharcade.

Apple have, what you could call the perfect game delivery method using their App Store. It’s a simple, efficient way of distributing games and although there is the odd approval snag, it’s relatively simple for iPhone game developers to submit not only their games but forthcoming updates too. The App Store is also available to a global audience (aside from countries like S.Africa which gets a piddles worth of what is actually available) allowing developer an instant global audience. Big publishers like Ubisoft and EA have teams specifically working on iPhone games which in itself is a sign that there is a whole lot more to come.

Apple recently snapped up a key Ensemble designer, Graeme Devine , who now works at the company’s iPhone group. This news, coupled with the obvious graphical capability boost of the new iPhone 3Gs definitely leads to the suggestion that Apple are ready to take on the mobile games market. Should Sony and Nintendo be worried? I think so.

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