There has never been more video game consoles on the market at once.
PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance are all competing for the money and attention of dedicated gamers. Throw PCs and mobile phones into the mix and the competition is even more fierce.
It is extremely doubtful that Apple would be contemplating a move into the dedicated game console market, as an analyst recently predicted.
Apple is obviously keen to receive more revenue from "casual game" downloads on the iTunes service alongside music and video. But how serious is Apple about games when it hasn't even added buttons to facilitate game-play on its latest iPod?
Apple has displayed no ambition in the games market since being burnt by their ill-fated Bandai collaboration called Pippin, a multimedia game machine using Macintosh technology released in 1996.
Games support for the Macintosh format is also very slim, mostly confined to ports of a select few successful Windows games. (Here come the flaming emails from Mac devotees...)
Sony and Microsoft are using PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to try to gain control of how we consume all forms of digital entertainment, including movies, television, music and games.
While making games software can be a very profitable business, for Sony and Microsoft, gaming is also a Trojan horse to get the device underneath the telly.
The analyst is right that companies like Apple will not let Sony and Microsoft establish a strong foothold in the digital entertainment realm without a fight.
It is indeed likely that Apple or any other player considering building a new do-it-all entertainment device - a simple online, hard-drive equipped box that can download movies, television-style broadcasting and music - would also include the capability of playing casual games.
But it is extremely difficult to image any company, particularly those without gaming expertise, going any further and wanting to make the incredibly vast investments in hardware development necessary for a cutting-edge games console.
Apple would only have to take a glance at how difficult and expensive it has been for Microsoft to establish a foothold in the console business, and Microsoft already had the advantage of 10 years experience making PC games, plus immerse financial resources.
It's a death-defying jump of Evil Knievel proportions from publishing a handful of casual games like Tetris and Bejewelled to making a console capable of competing with Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. Apple would be biting off far more than it can chew.
Click here to read complete article, (Source: playstation - Google News)
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