iPhone vs PSP: which has the better specs?
In response to rumors of an Apple portable gaming machine, Joel pointed out that it's a completely stupid rumor. This is because the iPhone already exists, and the only thing standing between it and gaming wonder is a pernicious assumption that you can't do anything interesting without a D-Pad and physical buttons.
Cult of Mac has a piece today making the same point, but it offers hard facts about the system that bring out in sharp relief how much potential it has. See the chart:
With its beefy specs and rapid sales, the iPhone's potential as a gaming machine is so overwhelming it would be odd if Apple didn't push it hard sooner or later.
You may already own the best portable gaming device [CoM]
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Lack of traditional controls really hurt the iPhone as a real contender, I don't care what the Apple fans say. They point to the Wii as a device that transcends traditional controls, but it's not like Nintendo eschewed putting buttons and directional pads on the Wii. You are very limited to what you can do on an iPhone: it's a fantastic device, but accelerometers and screen pinching will only get you so far.
You could easily add some sort of cradle/case to an iPhone with gaming buttons on it -- like the handle pads that are available for the PSP.
Don't both the iPhone and Wii controller use bluetooth? Now I know that current iPhone OS bluetooth support is a little shy of comprehensive, and Apple would prefer you buy only their new silver/black/crystal $$$.99 controller. Note to Apple legal: This is utter speculation please don't subpoena me.
Sure you need real buttons for a lot of game genres but I have played some potentially addictive game demos on my iTouch that use the touch screen and accelerometer to great effect. Most of these are not action games.
"To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail..."
The PSP has two 333MHz cores, both "MIPS R4000" 32-bit processors, it seems. One for CPU, and one called the Media Engine, which seems to be split between graphical and sound processing.
Regardless, the iPhone hardware is 2.5 years newer than the PSP, so yeah, it should be plenty powerful for gaming. Control methods are definitely the primary hurdle. The DS has shown that there's a decent amount that can be done with a touch screen, but some game types just don't lend themselves to that.
#1. Agreed. Most of the games I've played on the iPhone have been more tech demos than anything I'd want to play for more than 5 minutes. You go "Oooh neat, tilt control!" and then reach for your Nintendo DS.
I have and use an iPod touch.
It has an intermittent issue with deciding it no longer wishes to respond to screen touches for about five seconds, if the wireless connection isn't to its' liking. At the least, that seems to be the common denominator in the issue.
Anything that I have to turn off the wireless connection of, to get reliable and smooth input interaction ... not high on the gaming platform list.
Presumably you could make buttons just a part of the interface on the screen. Yeah, the gaming part would be smaller but still larger than, say, the gameboy advances'.
The psp slim has 64MB RAM. Still not as good but fair's fair. Also considerable is that the memory sticks go up to 16GB.
@7 -- Pocket PCs have tried the "emulated screen buttons" approach for years. It just doesn't work precisely or reliably.
I think we'll see some wonderful games on the iPhone, but will it take on the DS or PSP for the portable gaming crown? I don't think so.
I think this is mostly an academic debate, since there aren't actually any games for either system. :)
That's where you're wrong, 9. The PSP and DS have significant homebrew groups, which I've always thought boingboing have reported an annoyingly small amount on. Should all these homebrewers emigrate to the iPhone?
The most significant things from both of the homebrew factions though are on the PSP: a full speed PSX emulator and a N64 emulator that is, say 0.7 speed on average. The latter has taken two and a half years to get to this point, and the former was developed by sony, so it's a big and popular investment.
'None specified' for the PSP GPU? The PSP has a proprietary GPU whose specs aren't that far off the one in the PS2.
So all apple has to do is add a removable media slot and like 6 buttons and they've got a perfect gaming device.
Sounds like the G2 iPhone/iTouch to me.
--JJ