It is an idea. That's all I will give it though. Honestly, this messes up the look of it badly if you want to use it for other things besides gaming. If you want to use it as an iPod I would not get it because I would look stupid with a whole bunch of buttons that when someone asks me what they do I have to reply Nothing. I don't like it. That's just me though. The Solar Energy idea is great though. I heard a rumor that would be in the next iPhone and it would be an awesome thing to have, especially with the battery life which is not too great sometimes.
If tactile stimulation comes from the dome of the home button, and the arrows are just for visual reference, they could be lit when the home button is in "game mode" and dimmed to background black when the home button is in "standard mode."
I think Apple will just make an updated iPotch and iPhone with new and improved graphic chips in it so that the games on the iDevices will become more sophisticated. I don't think Apple is really into the whole button thing (as you can see the iPhone only has 4 buttons). Without the buttons, I think developers are more creative with their games, therefore, probably better quality than regular games for other handheld consoles.
Better quality? I wouldn't got that far. While there are some amazing games on the platform that you can't find anywhere else (Ellis and Zen Bound), the DS absolutely crushes the iPhone in terms of game library. I mean crushes without a hint of mercy. A lot of the games in the AppStore are the equivalent of flash games. Not that many are full. Just made for a quick dose of fun. Makes me miss my DS at times.
ummm well solar panels dont make much sense because if thats just what they are, normal solar panels, they just take the heat from the sun and use it to heat up a liquid to help transfer energy throughout the home or device. so it would cause it to over heat? but if they were photovoltaic solar cells, that actually converts the light energy to usable electrical energy. plus these pics just look absurd in legitimacy. sorry for getting scientific
Believe it or not, I have a PSP.....and I put it down when I got my iphone. See I have to "sneak" my gaming device into work. So the fact that its so thin is a plus......This new device looks insane.
Well, that's the problem I have anytime someone compares this platform to DS and/or PSP: iTouch/Phone is not in direct competition with DS and PSP because it's not even in the same specific market with those platforms. DS and PSP are portable game systems. The iTouch/Phone, despite having games available and developed for it, is NOT a portable game system. At the end of the day, it's a mobile platform, and like the other mobile platforms that have games made for it, it's not in the portable gaming market despite being a viable platform for games. Mobile and portable, despite both meaning the same thing in common vernacular, are not considered the same market by the game industry. Portables, in the way the industry uses the term, refers specifically to portable game systems, that is portable systems primarily dedicated to games. Mobile platforms, while viable platforms for games, are not game systems. They are not primarily designed for or dedicated to games. It's similar to how the industry separates the video game home console market from the PC gaming market. Yes, I know there are now "gaming PCs"...but it wasn't always like that. Due to the the history of the PC, and how it came to be a viable platform for game development despite how they were NOT designed primarily for game playing (and still aren't, btw, despite some being labeled "gaming PCs - the interface, OS, etc. is designed for multi software usage, not primarily designed for one particular thing in mind), the mindset of developers were (and still are to a large extent) different when approaching that platform, its interface, and its market of potential consumers than the home console market. It still is that way, btw. So of course DS has "better" games (setting aside that this is opinion and not fact for the moment). It's a dedicated game platform. The primary focus of that platform, the companies that develop software for it, and the consumers who buy it, is games. That's not the case with a mobile platform like iTouch/Phone. The mobile platforms, by and large, are basically very tiny PCs, and just like the PC market, it is not one primarily focused on game software, but still very viable as a platform for game development and sales.
BTW, this is what I'd like to see Apple do: Either open this up to game and other types of app development (which I would've thought they'd have done by now): Or Combine the ideas behind the above device with the underutilized TV output on the iTouch/Phone as seen here: The former, IMHO, should have happened by now. I'm surprised it hadn't. Games seem be a big seller on iTouch/Phone, the idea of digital distribution through iTunes seems to have caught the hearts and minds of some of the bigger publishers, and the idea was floated about in the early days of iTV/Apple TV. And, of course, while not being as capable hardware-wise as the dedicated game systems, that little Pentium M and NVidia GeForce Go 7300 GPU (yes...Apple TV actually has a dedicated GPU) is more than enough to run the sort of casual games that owners of Apple's other platform purchase in droves. But, IMHO...the latter idea I have is better. Combine the idea behind Apple TV and the actual design of iTouch/Phone into one handy platform. In essence, create a hybrid mobile/home platform for digital entertainment distribution. Are you ? Just stop and think about it: What is Apple TV, particularly after the 2.0 update allowed it to download directly off of iTunes without being synced to a Mac or PC? Well...it's basically a giant iPod...without the screen. But...the iPod itself is capable of TV out (so are iTouch and iPhone, btw, though not for apps, including games). So...kinda redundant, no? Why buy an Apple TV if you already own an iPod or iTouch/Phone and can just, y'know...buy the necessary TV output cables? HD content. Apple TV has the capability to run HD content and output that to all those new HDTVs people are buying. iTouch/Phone? Not so much. So I'm thinking have the mobile device be the platform itself, and instead of having an internal CPU and GPU in the Apple TV, make it a shell containing an HDD and some video decoders and outputs. Basically this shell would be what you hook up the mobile device to in order to facilitate TV output when needed, charge up your device when needed, and, due to the HDD being on there, save all of your content. No more going from iTouch/Phone to Mac or PC if you buy this hybrid. It's all in one. Alright...remember that first photo of Apple TV? Remove the Apple Remote. Replace it with an iTouch/Phone. Or if you prefer, take the second photo and instead of hooking the iTouch/Phone directly up to the TV set, you'd input it into the Apple TV "shell" (just as you'd hook up a controller to you video game console of choice). But...now imagine the hardware currently inside the Apple TV isn't there, except for the HDD and the various output ports and a small video encoder/decoder. The iTouch/Phone? Replace the CPU and GPU with more recent versions (so, I dunno...ARM Cortex A9 and PowerVR SGX instead of what is in there now). The iTouch/Phone takes over driving the movies, music, games, etc. with the "Apple TV" box basically just used as a charge/store/output station. Now, sell them together, not separately. Two birds with one stone. Mobile and home. See...MS is trying to position XBox as a Trojan Horse by slowly, but surely, adding things like Netflix downloads. So for quite a few, MS's XBL (XBox LIVE) is becoming their de facto entertainment digital download device for home. Nintendo is trying to pull off the same thing with DSi, only with a portable game console. Sony is trying to do the same, separately, with PS3 and PSP. Apple? Apple could do both at the same time with one device "package". And they could use it to also further the idea of iTouch/Phone as a mobile computing device as well. Think about it.
By better quality, I mean an updated graphics drive that gives the ability for developers to create, not flash games, but high-quality games with superb graphics like the PSP or DS. Seems possible if you ask me.
Well, to be fair, I don't think Kamazar was referring to graphics but gameplay and polished gameplay at that. iTouch/Phone already has internal hardware more than capable of better looking games than DS (we've seen quite a few already) and and games that can rival PSP (we're seeing that slowly but surely). But CPU and GPU "power" is one thing. Good gameplay is another. Even though I won't usually compare two platforms in two wholly separate markets, I agree with Kamazar. DS crushes it in terms of games (when looking solely at gameplay quality). Then again, I'd also argue (and most, it seem, would agree), that DS also crushes PSP in terms of gameplay quality. So graphics, again, is not the primary criteria for judgment in this case.
There was an article about it and there were blueprints and stuff like that about apple trying something new to include the Solar into the screen. They might succeed into doing that. Lets just hope. Also I'm guessing Apple will use OLED for the screen because they are much thinner. The concept picture (obviously not from apple) Looks pretty cool. if those Arrows are just touch and not just buttons. They should Light up when needed so it could look nicer. So when a game is not on or a game that doesn't need it the arrow light would be turned off so it will now look like a normal iPod Touch. The home button would be a bad place to put there but it does look good there.
I see...well I must agree with you on the DS and PSP rivalry. DS has a whole load of games to play with while iDevices don't have much. One thing though is that the App Store has been out for less than year. On the other hand, PSPs and DSs have been out for 2-3 years? Imagine what can happen in the next 2-3 years with the App Store. We've already seen some high-quality games in less than year.
There could be even more high quality games if apple really did release a gaming system. It could consist of Memory card slots so games can use more memory because some games try to lower memory usage. Bigger battery. Etc.
Not to mention the fact that OLED uses something like 40% less power (due to not needing a back light) then LCD so that combined with a in screen solar panel tech (which is just flippin cool if it can be done all portable devices need to do this) would extend battery life a great deal. BUT it must be said that even know OLED is thiner, uses less power, and has much better image quality then LCD or anything eles out, there are 2 distinct draw backs. 1 they are still very expensive to produce, 2 the organic materail used in OLED has a much shorter life span then LCDs, though i dont know how short off the top of my head. If apple can refine the oled tech more to make it cheeper to make and last longer then I will love them forever!
