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Will Apple's 'Console Quality' iPhone 5 Graphics Be A Game Changer For The Gaming Industry?

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The iPhone 5 boasts 'console quality' graphics according to Apple, but it's still missing the controls that make games great.

At yesterday's iPhone 5 event, Apple claimed that its latest smartphone boasts "console quality" graphics.

The question is: will smartphones, and the iPhone 5 in particular, begin to displace the console market, edging out traditional gaming devices in both the living room and handheld market?

I doubt it.

As I mentioned yesterday when discussing Sony's PS Vita, the full potential of touchscreen gaming is only realized when it's coupled with traditional control mechanisms.

Playing a game like LittleBigPlanet on the Vita gives you not just the added fun of touchscreen (two touchscreens, actually) but also two thumbsticks, numerous buttons, and so forth. If the game had been developed for touchscreen only it would be a far different, far less satisfying experience. It might still be fun, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

Time's Matt Peckham argues along similar lines when discussing the iPhone 5, noting that graphics are only one tiny slice of the picture.

Peckham is "not convinced the company understands what “console quality” means, or that the iPhone 5 is the phone to seal that particular deal."

The iPhone 5, whatever its graphical capabilities, "is still going to be a poor input device for console-style games," writes Peckham. "Grand Theft Auto III is fun to dink around with on the iPhone or iPad, but worlds apart from the experience you’ll have playing it on a console with a gamepad. Have you tried Command & Conquer Red Alert or Dead Space on the iPhone? How does it feel playing with your thumbs obscuring half the screen? Trying to maneuver on a flat, button-less surface, mangling the sort of pinpoint movement and camera control accuracy that’s almost an afterthought using thumbsticks? Imagine trying to do something like Halo or Call of Duty multiplayer on an iPhone or iPad without fundamentally altering the way those games play."

This question of inputs matters more than most mobile enthusiasts realize.

We underestimate the value of a gamepad or mouse-keyboard set-up and look to things like touch or motion as better replacements. The problem is, a touchscreen functions as just one button. Sure, there's tilt/swipe/tap but these are rarely used at the same time in mobile games which, ultimately, far too often come down to a long parade of quick-time-events.

Sometimes these are fun, and there's more than enough room for touch-only gaming in the diverse gaming industry, but it's not going to convince gamers to abandon their gamepads in favor of a smartphone.

Motion controls aren't much better, and are in fact remarkably restrictive compared to the wide array of buttons at your fingertips with controllers and keyboards.

Sure, with Kinect you can move or wave your arms around, but that's something you could do with a controller as well while inputing other commands at the same time.

Touch-based gaming is a wonderful supplement to traditional controls, and one reason I think the funky Wii U controller shows a lot of promise, but it's not a replacement for traditional controls.

Meanwhile, peripherals that replicate a controller-experience on the iPhone are nowhere near mainstream enough to prompt developers to code games with hybrid control mechanics. Android devices that integrate controllers with a touchscreen will face a similar problem.

Unless the iPhone 6 has built-in thumbsticks and an array of buttons to choose from, there's simply no way that even the shiniest, most graphically robust smartphone will ever displace more traditional gaming machines.

As Peckham notes, mobile gaming won't displace core gaming unless core gamers go extinct "or Apple finally addresses its iDevice input quandary and gives us more than a glass screen to tap on." Neither of those scenarios seems extremely likely at this point, especially given the fact that core gamers still account for the vast majority of revenue in the gaming industry.

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