The iPad clearly has its fans for its common computer uses, and there’s been a lot of discussion about that, but what about for games While the large touch screen would seem to be perfect for gaming, very few games have had much buzz on the iPad so far.
One reason for this is the number of iPad games that are simply iPhone games adapted to the bigger screen. Still, the size of the screen is already a boon for those games, and could hint at greater things to come.
“I think the iPad has the potential to change gaming,” says Tony Leamer, VP of Marketing at I-play, noting that, “we’re still in the early days.”
Indeed, the system only just launched internationally and has sold 2 million worldwide compared to 85 million for the iPhone. The installed base needs to grow, and for now most games are going to be ports of mobile or PC games until the number increases.
“There’s a good reason for this and the reason is, there simply aren’t that many iPads out there yet,” says Steve Palley, editor-in-chief and founder of Padvance.com and SlideToPlay.com . “The install base just isn t where it needs to be for people to start making original iPad games and making money at it.”
“The primary difficulty is not knowing a ton about the audience yet,” says Leamer. “The question is: Who is using the iPad and what does that demographic look like? All we have are early adopter numbers and we have to see how that matures and changes.”
Creating a game from scratch is not a trivial task, Leamer adds. “We want to make sure that when we do that and it is when not if we want to know very clearly who we re making these games for and what they re interested in seeing and how we can translate those things into great experiences on the device.”
When a platform first comes out a lot of the development communities are learning what works and what doesn’t work,” says Travis Boatman, vice president of worldwide development for Electronic Arts Mobile. “The more time you have, the more time you have to experiment and to improve. I think you re going to see a lot of great improvements coming into the market down the line.”
Source: MSNBC
