http://www.cultofmac.com/162144/why-apple-has-already-pwned-the-gaming-market/
an excerpt
QuoteOne way to understand Apple's participation in the gaming market is to compare it with Starbucks' in the coffee market.
Before Starbucks, a tiny minority of coffee drinkers in the United States sought out specialty shops that sold premium whole beans and ground their own at home, brewing it with some exotic, imported European coffee contraption. High-quality coffee houses that used premium beans and high-end equipment existed, but they were rare, and exclusively urban.
The vast majority of Americans bought pre-ground commodity coffee in a can and made it using a plastic drip system with a paper filter, or something similar. Or people drank instant coffee. In diners and restaurants, people drank the same kind of lousy, canned coffee made with low-quality brewing equipment.
The serious enthusiasts who sought out premium whole beans, bought grinders and went to coffee houses are akin to the serious console gaming market today.
These gamers are so serious about gaming that they seek out special equipment (Xbox and Playstation consoles, Kinect hardware, game controllers, headsets and so on).
What Starbucks did was not take over the existing "gourmet coffee" market, although that's probably what they initially set out to do. What they did was bring "gourmet coffee" to non-enthusiasts. They got every day people to drive out of their way, wait in line and pay $4 for premium coffee.
Of course, the hard-core coffee snobs think Starbucks is crap. But nobody can argue with the fact that Starbucks rules the retail coffee market.
That's what Apple does with gaming. They're not going after the console gamer. Just as Starbucks got non-gourmet coffee drinkers to drink gourmet coffee, Apple is getting non gamers to play games.
This point was driven home recently while I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, called the Slate Culture Gabfest. The hosts of the show are poetry-reading, granola-baking, lecture-attending East Coast intellectuals. They're not the kind of people who would ever play Call of Duty on Xbox. They feel alienated from the entire gaming world, and didn't grow up playing console games as kids.
Yet they all admitted in a recent show that they've started playing casual games on their iPhones. Apple and the iPhone has turned them into gamers, and turned them into customers of game developers.
This scenario has played out millions of times for millions of people. Apple turns non-gamers into gamers. They've expanded the gaming market in every direction, expanding the age, income and gender barriers that used to exist.
Apple is even being sued by parents because they say Apple makes it too easy for their young children to buy, download and use games from the App Store.
there's more both before and after
discuss!
It's in a similar vein to the gushing superlatives the ill-informed media was spewing concerning Facebook a few years back when Farmville and it's ilk got on their radar.
I've got a friend who works as a producer at EA Canada and they were quite excited about expanding into the smart phone market and going after the "casual" gamers and non-gamers. I guess reality didn't meet the pie-in-the-sky predictions and they're scaled back and farmed out a lot of their future projects.
Who know? Maybe the tablets will bring about the type of sales that the suits were originally predicting. All I know is, like Farmville, they aren't the type of games I have any interest in playing.
I'd hardly call the Cult of Mac guys "ill-informed media".
You can disagree with their analysis / conclusions, but they're pretty well-informed about the digital world.
No. Case closed.
Wasn't referring to the artilce. I was thinking of the twits posing as tech reporters on CNN, FOX, CBC, etc. You know, the ones who got all up in arms about sex in Mass Effect 2 despite never having actually played or even seen the game. The ones who make "wacky" jokes about Pac-Man and joysticks and don't realize games have changed since they hung around in the arcade sporting their parachute pants, leg warmers and leather ties.
Quote from: Capn Darwin on April 22, 2012, 09:36:26 AM
No. Case closed.
Well, they haven't conquered the
Board Game market...
... yet. ;)
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
No.
something like an apple tv with access to itunes, movie and tv program sharing and all ios and osx app running on it... that could be big.
Quote from: Capn Darwin on April 22, 2012, 09:36:26 AM
No. Case closed.
+1
Although I will say that most folks I know played games before Apple got to them.
My mom, who can hardly be mistaken for a gamer, used to play Bridge with a group of friends a couple of times a month with my dad. She still plays Solitaire on the PC.
So I suspect that most folks play games of some kind, though they don't call themselves "gamers." Heck, I'd bet World of Warcraft brought in droves of people who would not otherwise be gaming. It almost sucked in my wife when a co-worker nearly get her into it.
Quote from: Capn Darwin on April 22, 2012, 09:36:26 AM
No. Case closed.
Indeed.
More Apple fanboy posturing. As if gaming didn't exist before they came up with it? Buahahah!!
Apple...the "borg-like" culture they espouse bothers me. I can't explain it, but I just have a real inherent, innate, built-in or whatever you want to call it, dislike for Apple products and the whole Apple culture. I'm MIGMaster and I'm a PC, damn it !
What do you guys think of this line from the article
QuoteThey're not going after the console gamer. Just as Starbucks got non-gourmet coffee drinkers to drink gourmet coffee, Apple is getting non gamers to play games.
Angry Birds blew up on the iPad. Suddenly, everyone was looking to download it everywhere. The only time my wife ever played anything remotely videogame related was Wii Bowling. Now it's Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, etc, etc - lots of disposable throwaway games, but games nonetheless. She's even started playing some stuff that's coming in through our Uverse consoles.
I think the point of the article is not that Apple has forced everyone to play Apple games on Apple products. It's that Apple's infrastructure - instant delivery in your hand - has been copied by everyone, and is now the dominant market model for a HUGE percentage of the games being sold in the market. Not dollars, but raw counts of games.
Let's face it - most of this crowd are those gourmet coffee drinkers who are capable of brewing a fantastic cup at home with nary a Starbucks in sight. But Apple's app store casual-game paradigm was never aimed at us. It was aimed at people like my wife. And it seems to have worked.
Are people who play Angry Birds really "gamers"? This sort of begs the question...are apps like Angry Birds really "games"? To me, apps like Angry Birds are more like diversions, rather than an actual game. They are something you play while on a train, waiting in a line, sitting at an airport waiting to board your plane.
Most people I know do not go out of there way to play an app in their free time. When I get a new game like Mass Effect 3, I race home to play it. Ive never rushed home to grab my itouch and play Angry Birds, or any game app for that matter.
I think real classic style games are part of a totally separate market that caters to a totally separate crowd. There is a lot of cross-over, but this game market will never be consumed by the game app market created by apple. I will say that games like Combat Mission touch, are forging new ground and creating somewhat of a middle road that melds classic gaming with the app game formula. But games like this are relatively new so its uncertain as to how they will turn out in terms of popularity.
^Big +1 there. It depends on how a 'game' is defined and under which of 100 different categories it fits under.
My 6 year old plays Angry Birds but she is not a gamer, yet.
^ Oh yeah..... just ask Apple ::)
Quote from: MIGMaster on April 23, 2012, 08:37:50 AM
Apple...the "borg-like" culture they espouse bothers me. I can't explain it, but I just have a real inherent, innate, built-in or whatever you want to call it, dislike for Apple products and the whole Apple culture. I'm MIGMaster and I'm a PC, damn it !
Same here. After working on computer hardware for years, I also grew to dislike Apple's iron-fisted market approach. The common excuse I hear is that they do it for quality control, and that they have higher quality hardware, but I found that to be BS because they use some of the exact same low-cost hardware manufacturers that PCs do - even worse compared to some off-the-shelf PC brands. ::)
It's like computer Jonestown with the SheeApple.
I don't think Apple has conquered the gaming market and I'm not even sure that is their goal. What they have done is created the Earth's most advanced techno gadgets which makes it easy for us to take our amusing yet unsophisticated games with us where ever we go.
Subquestion:
Who has won the gaming wars? Microsoft Xbox hands down. More on this later...
Quote from: MIGMaster on April 23, 2012, 08:37:50 AM
Apple...the "borg-like" culture they espouse bothers me. I can't explain it, but I just have a real inherent, innate, built-in or whatever you want to call it, dislike for Apple products and the whole Apple culture. I'm MIGMaster and I'm a PC, damn it !
I have the same way of thinking. Maybe because I've had to much close contact with to many Apple fan-boys who have said, in not so many words, that they are better then me for owning Apple products. That being said I won't touch anything from that company.
As for the article. Aren't the most hardcore Apple people the ones trying to do away with video games because they make us all killers??
I actually own four Apple computers of various vintages. I got into them because they are relatively simple to fix and resell and I've fixed up and sold a number of them over the last five or six years. Note- I'm not claiming they are actually all easy to fix, just simple since there are way fewer models than there are of PC based computers. Also, OSX reminds me a lot of Ubuntu. Now, I also own five or six PCs of equally varied vintages so I'm not an Apple fanboi... just a hoarder. And I use my latest PC, built by Moi, as my main rig... Umm, that and my iPad2. ;)
You guys just remember that when the aliens come and they've been monitoring us thru their Apple Apple iPad 2N4^'s and land in their iSaucers after travelling thru iSpace, we could have headed things off by going back in time and feed Woz a bad burger !
Quote from: MIGMaster on April 23, 2012, 08:32:08 PM
You guys just remember that when the aliens come and they've been monitoring us thru their Apple Apple iPad 2N4^'s and land in their iSaucers after travelling thru iSpace, we could have headed things off by going back in time and feed Woz a bad burger !
Oh, I think Woz got fed. 'Fed Up' more like. ;D
Apparently Apple is getting out of the 17 inch laptop market:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57418966-501465/apple-17-inch-macbook-pro-dead-analyst-predicts-demise/?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea
According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple would have got away with it if it hadn't been for the those meddlin' kids and their dog. I think they actually heard the info from a Foxconn employee who happened to be heaving himself out of a 25th story window.
i ve been using apple desktops and laptops for personal and professional work for over ten years. i never got any problems in all those years. i never spent a single buck on support or anti virus software. but i also do not use torrents or other stuff that could be dangerous to your computer.
what i love about it is the ease of use: buy a phone start it and mail calendar adress list and everything else is here. no gmail adress to make the calendar work no such shit at all. this is a huge advantage for a tech noob like me.
Quote from: TheCommandTent on April 23, 2012, 06:49:56 PMI have the same way of thinking. Maybe because I've had to much close contact with to many Apple fan-boys who have said, in not so many words, that they are better then me for owning Apple products. That being said I won't touch anything from that company.
I'm pretty sure I've never tried to act like I'm better than anyone else just b/c I've got a Mac :)
I'm better than almost everyone else for plenty of other reasons!**
Quote from: TheCommandTent on April 23, 2012, 06:49:56 PMAren't the most hardcore Apple people the ones trying to do away with video games because they make us all killers??
I've been on Macs since 1984. I currently own 6 (MackBook Air, MacBook Pro, iBook, Mac Mini, lime iMac, Powerbook 170). I'm pretty sure I'm not trying to do away with games for anything.
** chief among them, my humility ;D
i do understand the sentiment against mac geeks though. when instagram went android there was quite an upcry and i really don't get that stuff.
owning a mac instead of a dell or a hp is no lifestyle statement for me. those who do think they are cool just handed over their sanity to an advertisement agency.
This feels somewhat like the mid-80s when the gaming industry left the Amiga/C64/AppleII for the PC. Amiga owners in particular thought their beloved gaming rigs would never be replaced.
But I don't think the future belongs to Apple. Long term, I would put my money on the open standard android. Once competitive feeding frenzy starts....we should start to see some real technical innovation, and dropping prices from the other than Apple crowd.
Finally I agree, the PC will be around for a long time yet...and indie devs will still be making great games for them for years. But the big development houses will move on I am afraid. They are already starting to.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on April 24, 2012, 05:41:12 AM
Quote from: TheCommandTent on April 23, 2012, 06:49:56 PMI have the same way of thinking. Maybe because I've had to much close contact with to many Apple fan-boys who have said, in not so many words, that they are better then me for owning Apple products. That being said I won't touch anything from that company.
I'm pretty sure I've never tried to act like I'm better than anyone else just b/c I've got a Mac :)
I'm better than almost everyone else for plenty of other reasons!**
Quote from: TheCommandTent on April 23, 2012, 06:49:56 PMAren't the most hardcore Apple people the ones trying to do away with video games because they make us all killers??
I've been on Macs since 1984. I currently own 6 (MackBook Air, MacBook Pro, iBook, Mac Mini, lime iMac, Powerbook 170). I'm pretty sure I'm not trying to do away with games for anything.
** chief among them, my humility ;D
Well played. 8) Although I am sure you notice I did not say all Mac users just the majority I've had contact with. You seem to be an exception despite that humility thing :P
Quote from: ArizonaTank on April 24, 2012, 06:31:36 AM
This feels somewhat like the mid-80s when the gaming industry left the Amiga/C64/AppleII for the PC. Amiga owners in particular thought their beloved gaming rigs would never be replaced.
But I don't think the future belongs to Apple. Long term, I would put my money on the open standard android. Once competitive feeding frenzy starts....we should start to see some real technical innovation, and dropping prices from the other than Apple crowd.
Finally I agree, the PC will be around for a long time yet...and indie devs will still be making great games for them for years. But the big development houses will move on I am afraid. They are already starting to.
Great point about the Amiga migration. I never gamed on one, but I did have a Macintosh and there was a time when it was my gaming rig. Temple of Ra, anyone? Art of War? Good stuff, there.
Anyway, it seems to me that Microsoft is making a play to the touch screen crowd with Win 8. Given the plethora of tablets and phones that are touch driven my crystal ball says we will be looking at a wild west of touch driven devices.
Will FPS games become touch-driven? My initial instinct says no, but then I had a flash of an idea where you get some kind of "death finger" where folks are using their fingers instead of a mouse to aim in a game. Who knows? But it might end up as a good thing, though when there's a paradigm shift there's no guarantee that the giants today will remain the giants of tomorrow.
I'm playing a touch FPS on my Playbook - Modern Combat 2. Sorta like CoD. One of the cool things you can do is duck or dodge to the side when things are coming straight at you. I'm still getting the hang of moving and shooting at the same time..........
My Amiga 500 was my entry point into real gaming after my C-64...I loved that machine so very much. I saved for like a year to buy it too...I think it cost me 1000 dollars. My uncle, a computer engineer, went with me to buy it because I was only 15 at the time. He asked if I was sure I wanted an Amiga, and why not consider a PC. I said it was purely for gaming. He patted me on the head and said 'Enjoy...there is no better gaming computer.' When we got home and showed my computer illiterate Mom, she asked if I used my money wisely. Uncle didn't skip a beat, patted me on the head again and said with a big grin 'Why yes...yes he did.'
I had that Amiga for years, all through college, and loved it long time.
In 2005 I bought a Mac laptop for work. It has never crashed once, has been dropped, rained on, peed on and keep's on trucking. I have heard that Apple's quality has declined a bit lately, but my old laptop owes me nothing. Great machine.
Interesting and something just came to my mind after reading your post Gus.
The reason why Apple's quality is on the decline, and why Dell is so shoddy, is because of subcons. A sub contracting manufacturer is typically not headquartered in the United States, nor are they American companies either. When a firm outsources is work overseas it loses control over the quality of it's product. The subcons are in the business to make money and know that they have a captive audience in their design customers (i.e. Apple). The design customer may have some specifications, proven production processes, and quality standards that they demand of their subcon, but the subcon doesn't have to follow the process to the letter.
This is why US firms should keep the jobs at home and not outsource. In the long run, you save money despite higher wages because you're not blowing it all on customer quality issues that you have little or no control over.
I work in the semiconductor manufacturing industry and I'm a quality engineer. What I see every day in my own firm sickens me and if I had my own company I know exactly how I'd run it and I'd keep the jobs here at home. People and quality not profits.
^I don't know about the whole profit thing man...when you have to answer to shareholders clamoring for your head, it's a whole new game.
On the flip side, my current job has me working with a tech team based out of Chennai, India. To get this team, the company let go of 50 IT techs before I came here. The resentment here is palpable still, to the point that when staff hear I work with the Indians, they typically comment 'hey how's that working out for ya?' because for most people the outsourcing is not effective.
So the Indian tech team is not particularly responsive to staff, but my particular team is great. It can go either way.
Don't fool yourself...profit and money wins out every time. And sometimes for good reasons!
Ultimately people - consumers - drive the market. If there were demand for circuit boards that would last for 30 years, we'd be making them.
Most technology is developing so rapidly (Moore's Law) that there simply isn't a need.
Sure, Gus' laptop has lasted a decade. If all he's doing is writing his next Great American Novel and checking email, he's probably OK. Some of us need more. Whether it's a smarter phone or a beefier gaming rig anything more than three years old is outdated.
Quote from: LongBlade on April 24, 2012, 10:44:11 AM
Ultimately people - consumers - drive the market. If there were demand for circuit boards that would last for 30 years, we'd be making them.
Most technology is developing so rapidly (Moore's Law) that there simply isn't a need.
Sure, Gus' laptop has lasted a decade. If all he's doing is writing his next Great American Novel and checking email, he's probably OK. Some of us need more. Whether it's a smarter phone or a beefier gaming rig anything more than three years old is outdated.
It's really hard to stop the momentum of a 6-month hardware cycle ! I'm guilty for wanting - not needing - 90% of the items that hit the PC market.
^Good point on the cycle and perception of need. People do demand quality and reliability from things like cars too.
I am convinced that there are companies out there building cars that have abandoned planned obsolescence in some ways.
The cars I own are what come to mind first...both are extremely well built and very reliable. I have hit deer with my Subaru going 70 mph and the car barely made any noise and there was no damage to anything. The Volvo is virtually indestructible.
So yes...demand it and they will build it.
This thread is bringing back some memories - and not in a good way. I was an Atari 800/ST loyalist for years before getting into the PC.
Here is a completely different take on this.
Starbucks enlarged the coffee market. US coffee consumption was on the decline. Starbucks offered something appealing and made a lot of money at it. Total US coffee consumption increased.
Lots of new competitors entered the coffee market after the Starbucks thing took off. Some of the new competitors (say McDonalds) beat the daylights out of Starbucks.
And Starbucks made mistakes. They overexpanded. Profits fell.
What Starbucks did was be very, very profitable (for a short while) and expand the total market. They did not control the market far into the future. Why? Very low entry barriers.
I look at a lot of the hand-held, casual games in the same light. Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and other simple shooter/type, inexpensive games have gotten more people introduced to gaming and interested in it. Does it mean that Apple or handhelds will control the market forever? Nope. The profits of Farmville, Angry Birds, etc..... provided incentives for tons of other firms to enter the gaming market. Plus, lots of people who have not played computer games before have been introduced to them.
You see this all of the time (the theory is the Product Life Cycle). If you have a highly profitable market entry it attracts competitors. More options proliferate and prices fall. Sound familiar?
Product Life Cycle.
I've been out of school too long. Thanks for the reminder, Airboy. Excellent points.
the greater Starbucks comparison from Airboy should've occurred to me too, given than I did about 12-page-ish case study on it back in grad school in South Carolina.
damn old age is catching up with me!