From the leaks coming out it is almost sure that 4g will come with an A4 processor and 256mb ram. I think that even though A4 is clocked higher than the processor in the 3gs, its not as great as the leap from 3g to 3gs. Probably the GPU should be same as that of 3gs and Ipad. Therefore the combined volume of these 3 devices will help iGaming to escape from the grab of the previous gen idevices such as 2g and 3g. When I heard iPad was coming, I was afraid that the Devs may forget iPhone community and jump to ipad wagon. But now I belive that huge success of ipad is necessary to accelerate igaming to a whole new level where 3gs is the base device. As the next gen is not much different from 3gs, 3gs may keep that place for a long time. I hope the igaming will reach the quality of psp very soon as the ipads are flying off the shelves like hotcakes. What is your opinion?
if Apple still okays the use of 3rd party engines I can see the iDevice outshining the market steadily as ever. I own a PSP, and the amount of quality games on it are small. It is a great fun device but there is no growth there, it is still very much of the old industry. Where as on my idevice, I have already 2 and a half pages of games that I find worth playing - and most of them are of the same caliber as the ones for my PSP. There does not seem to be a drought of interesting well-priced releases coming in the future either. Apple was very smart with iTunes. I may not agree with some of their policies - but they make great products that work, grow, and are easy to use - you can't really argue with that. That being said if they screw the indie community by going full-corporate it will implode on them, not fully but there will be fallout.
You're putting emphasis on the technology, when really all the iDevices need is maturing in the AppStore. The 2nd gen is already more powerful than the DS, but it's the quality of games that makes the DS the most popular portable gaming console there is. The two hurdles I see, if I had to nit-pick, would be the iDevice fragmentation. You have the 1st gen, which isn't seen often, but still used. 2nd gen, still very popular, 3rd gen, equally popular, and apparently an iPhone HD. It's going to be hard for developers to cater to all audiences. That and the crappy battery life.
I've never really had a problem with battery life - I always keep a charger with me at work, when I'm out I usually only use it for music.
if you don't have a charger (for which you'd also need a power source) and you're playing games, not listening to music, the iPhone's battery just sucks.. I think it's the only hardware improvement the iPhone needs, other than that I agree with Kamazar on the App store
There was a problem of fragmentation when 3gs was introduced last year. But as 3gs, ipad and hopefully 4g will be almost identical this won't be a problem in future. Devs who developes casual 2d games for .99$ may still consider iPhone 2g as the base model which won't hurt anyway. But the advanced 3d games or simply the 10$ games will concentrate on 3gs and higher Gens. Considering the prensence of ipad I think they will. The ipad will be the key trend changer that we haven't seen in past 3 years. It will have bigger influence than we think as its consumers demand much more advanced gaming than iPhone and itouch owners.
The bottleneck of the gaming development industry is the inclusion of support for the first gen touches and iPhones. We shouldn't deny that if they cater to a bigger range of users, the more profit they'll garner. So it doesn't matter much even if the seventh or tenth generation iPhones will be as powerful as full gaming consoles.
I don't agree with that completely. Suppose if the total idevice consist of 30% old gens and 70% new gens. And there are two soccer games in the market: A is 3gs specific and B is old gen compactible. It is clear that the 70% of the owners will go for game A but only 30% for the game B. So which way will a dev go?
