Apple, the new voice of portable gaming?

Not likely. And Apple’s VP of Marketing, Greg Joswiak, has got to be smoking something when he makes the claim that the iPhone is the “future of gameplay“. This is purely based on the fact that Apple has a superior store and in the electronic distribution process of the games. Given that, I think that Apple does have something there. The iTunes store does indeed dominate when it comes to distribution wise, and since the pricing is valued at something that most consumers could just “pick up” when the urge hit.

That is also something that we as consumers have been pushing on Sony for the past couple of years since the PSP has been out. The direct distribution of games via the Playstation Store didn’t exist until just recently and Nintendo is working on it through their new handheld, the DSi.

Overall, the iPhone will still remain what it always has been, a great phone with the ability to do multiple types of things intuitively. But gaming will be on the low-end of things there. Maybe not in the future, but currently it’s just not set up to take on the onslaught of gamers and doesn’t quite have the right array of games in its arsenal nor the power. Even with the accelerators, you’ll have to have some seriously Wii type gaming to actually combat great graphics and a control pad that can take some serious abuse.

The DSi and the PSP however have the portable gaming console side already set up which is the harder issue at hand, and just need to bring in the interactive and storefront. This is where the gaming industry has the upper hand. It’s not that it’s difficult to set up, but more of trying to convince them that there are new environments to chase revenue just as Xbox Live has taken the online thing in force similar to how the Asian gaming market has. Having a great store and distribution system doesn’t quite apply in the gaming industry as it does in the music or phone one where it took some iron fist tactics to uphold Apple’s rule. Mr. Joswiak doesn’t understand the market if he truly believes in what he said.

But the gloves have been thrown at the gaming giants to see what they can do with the online arena and how seamless they can tie their products into the interactive storefronts. We’ve seen it done on the next generation consoles already, so it’s only a matter of time to see the portable markets also take shape.