iOS vs Android… The New SNES vs Megadrive

When the iPhone came out, I got one and I loved it.  I loved, loved, loved it. It was my little iPhonikins.  In fact, I loved it so much, as soon as the iPhone 3G came out – I got that and my mum adopted my little iPhone from me. And I loved my iPhone 3G. It was my pride and joy – my iPhoneicutie – and although I was tempted by the 3GS, the S didn’t quite seem awesome enough. Then, the bastard battery died… and the iPhone 4 was out and I was left with a choice.  Did I pay a couple of hundred quid up front and then £35 for two years for an iPhone 4 – or did I just pay £18 a month and get an Android phone… for free… I went for the Galaxy S… and I have never looked back.

I sit down with friends who have an iPhone 4, and we get into a debate.  App Store vs. market, iTunes vs. drag and drop, retina displays vs. AMOLED displays, the best build quality in the market vs. something a third of the price, iOS5 vs Gingerbread, widgets vs. stability etc. ad infinitum.  In fact, it reminded me of something I used to do as a kid… argue about the Super Nintendo and the Megadrive.  More games vs. adult games (but you can make the blood red in Mortal Kombat with a cheat code), Mode 7 vs parallax scrolling, Sonic vs. Mario, “You smell” vs “Your mum smells”. And it looks like the iPhone and Android phones may have become the big games systems of the future. (And I’m sorry for the Windows 7 phone users who love their Xbox Live integration, but after the Zune and Microsoft’s late entry… I think the platform is the equivalent of the Amstrad GX400… even if Nokia is teaming up with them… after all, Panasonic teamed up with 3DO!)

Why? First of all there’s the install base.  Apple claims they have 200 million people using iOS devices, now Android have 130 million – and they’re growing fast, with 550,000 activations a day, and predictions that could rise to a million by the end of the year (so, ner, Apple!). Secondly, there’s the development.  People can do it in their back room.  Google have even invented a system where you can piece bits of Android code together like jigsaw pieces to make your own apps.  It’s like the community games that people make for Little Big Planet being put online and suddenly getting 10 million downloads. If a game got 10 million sales, it would be a blockbuster.  Then again, a game that sells for £39.99 is a lot better than a game that sells for free (well, financially speaking at least, I’d take my free version of Paradise Island over Duke Nukem 3D any day!).

It does mean that people are going back to gameplay.  People are looking for simple and fun – in a way, games have gone back to the NES era, where people would play for entertainment and high scores (BTW – how nice is it to see sprites again?).  Give them a graphical knock down and versions of Doodle Jump and Angry Birds could easily be remade on the NES. Although for every great new innovative game you get, you get a million poor clones… how many versions of Bejeweled does the world need? (Answer, not seventy five frickin’ billion of them!) And theft is rife, not just the people looking back at the NES and SNES back catalogue and ripping off Tetris Attack (although can I find one good rip off of Hatris, no I can’t!) but even ripping off new ideas, like Capcom Mobile’s well documented rip off of Explosion Man, MaXplosion (even after Twisted Pixel came to Capcom for a distribution deal). I give it a month before there are a whole bunch of Apparatus clones clogging up the Android market.

Add to that the number of emulators you can get.  On iOS, you can get versions of some Megadrive games, but on Android, why bother when you can download emulators for free! In a way, it would be nice to see more regulation, but also more studio involvement from looking at their back titles.  I never got to play Rocket: Robot on Wheels the first time, but it’s a great little game – well suited for play on the go – but it would be so much better if you could have proper accelerometer control.  Come on DMA, the next Grand Theft Auto is important – but the game already works! Why not spend an afternoon making the controls match up and rereleasing it for 59p (and while we’re at it, Gamefreak… you need to take an afternoon off from Pokemon to release a decent port of Drill Dozer! GBA games work SO WELL on Android emulation).

That’s is also the problem with games on the iPhone and Android at the moment – the price.  Microsoft actually set a pretty decent price point when it came to XBox Live Arcade, with some bigger arcade games costing 1200 points (£10), lesser titles costing 800 (£6.50) and retro games costing 400 (£3.25) – roughly. This means that people could make a clear profit.  When Apple started charging for games, the 99 cent price point came in, meaning that people are now wary of spending more than 59p on a game.  Great if you’re a guy in your bedroom, not so great if you’re a big studio… especially as both Android and Apple take 30% of any money you make.  This leads the big studios to try and get you to download their programs from websites off the main market – as a result they don’t get the sales they want, so then don’t commit fully to the smartphone game market. At the moment, of the big game publishers, only EA, Capcom and Namco seem to have any kind of presence in the Android marketplace, although Sega and Capcom have joined the AppStore.

So – now is the time to get involved. And I actually am getting involved (watch this space). The most expensive game on Android market is a Japanese RPG that still clocks in at under a tenner.  People are having ideas and making games that can be directly sold to the consumers.  There’s a small window of time before the big studios realize that they can’t ignore a combined market of 330 million users in iOS and Android.  Where else would a game as awesome, but short as Halfbrick’s Age of Zombies be the equivalent of an AAA?  So, play games, make games (a decent Metroidvania style game please), talk about games and maybe even review games on these platforms (certainly tell me your recommendations in the comments) – because I can tell you this… more people will play Angry Birds (which I bloody hate) than any game that will ever be released for the PlayStation Vita. And there are exciting times to come…  both iOS and Android need their killer apps – and I can’t wait for Apple’s version of Mario to take on Android’s version of Sonic in the 2032 Olympics.