Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)
Les Kern said:
this crap is getting out of hand.
I agree. These have a novelty value but no way should the become a standard or hopefully gain any traction beyond 'quirky gadget' status. It the price was cheap they might be a fun stocking filler gift or some amusement for half an hour like those £10 Megadrive and SNES 20-games-i- one controller things for your aTV that were everywhere a few years back. Unfortunately they're not. Why do I think they're crap...?
1) The iPhone sits in my pocket. I do not want to have to carry around a bag just to keep a daft game (and large) controller in. This thing spoils the look of the iPhone giving it all the charm of those horrible bargain store handheld consoles.
2) The size of these monstrosities! The mobile one must be about a foot long. Look at the video - It looks ridiculous in use! The arcade cabinet is a hefty piece of junk that's going to clutter up your house for 90% of its life as I'd imagine your iPad is going to spend most of its time doing what it is supposed to do; ie be a portable tablet computer and not a docked gaming station.
3) These game controllers are going to need their own power supply. That's either another device that needs charging or a supply of AA batteries to feed it. Still I suppose I could chuck a few packs into the bag that I now need to carry around (see point 1)
4) The iPad arcade cabinet looks like the very definition of uncasual gaming. You're not going to be sitting on the sofa with that awkward thing wobbling all over your lap. You'll be sitting up at a desk or the kitchen table I expect.Just how I like to relax! Plus you'll need to have it near a wall socket to plug it into.
5) These things only help to fragment the app store. At the moment games downloaded from the app store only need the iOS device to play them. An app store with games that you can't play because you need a £50 accessory to play them with would be ridiculous.
6) Some games are not suited to touchscreen play. However, I've found that whilst on screen controls are difficult at first in some games with a small amount of practice it's not difficult to learn. GTA:CTW uses touch screen controls and at first I found it difficult to use but after a little while it becomes easier. Touch screen SMS writing is slightly fiddly at first but given a bit of practice is now easy. There is not a huge market in 101 character keyboards to plug into your iPhone to make SMSing easier for a reason. Your phone is not a computer; or a games console.
7) The mini arcade cabinet looks cute in a geeky charging station kind of way. You'd probably play one game of Pacman on it for a laugh. Then never do it again.
8) Apple have created products with minimalistic design and minimum buttons. iOS and OS X are touch and gesture based for a lot of their operations. Are they really going to develop a piece of tat to clip their products into? I doubt it and hope not. It would kind of show their design philosophy to be wrong. "We make products where you don't need buttons. Except sometimes you do; so here's a product to rectify that design flaw."
Disclaimer. I'm not much of an accessories kind of person. So maybe these woukd never appeal to me. Very few accessories seem to offer any real utility, they often look terrible, and should you change device/upgrade to a new model they're only fit for the bin. The only accessories I've bought for my iPhone are replacement ear buds and a dock with wifi streaming, radio, and Internet radio so perhaps these game controllers were never going to be appeal to me.
