How powerful is iPhone compared to PSP & DS?

[BergerFan]

I've just seen the Super Monkey Ball demo that was demonstrated on the iPhone, and I have to ask myself(and you guys): if this is what the device can do with just a little work by a top dev team, then just how powerful is this device compared to a PSP or DS Lite?

 

[TEG]

Greater resolution, and more than likely a faster processor, and more memory.

TEG

 

[kdarling]

Something like this, though I'm no expert on this topic and you can take with grain of salt:

....... iPhone ............ PSP
=== ======= ===========================
cpu.... 400MHz .... 222-333MHz (depends on programmer)
lcd .... 480x320 .... 480x272
mem.. 8GB ......... 32MB
ram ....128MB ....... 4MB
gpu.... none? ....... hardware accel

 

[Hollis]

Something like this, though I'm no expert on this topic and you can take with grain of salt:

....... iPhone ............ PSP
=== ======= ===========================
cpu.... 400MHz .... 222-333MHz (depends on programmer)
lcd .... 480x320 .... 480x272
mem.. 8GB ......... 32MB
ram ....128MB ....... 4MB
gpu.... none? ....... hardware accel

iPhone is actually 620mhz and has a PowerVR MBX 3d Graphics Accelerator. Just to put the GPU in perspective, the PowerVR chip is most famously used in the Dreamcast. The MBX is a newer generation, and faster, than what was used in the Dreamcast.

The iPhone seems to be more powerful than the PSP, with a more sophisticated touch screen than the DS that has higher resolution than the PSP. If it wasn't for the lack of physical buttons, this would be THE mobile gaming device. But add in the acceleromotor of the Wii and Apple may really have something here.

The iPhone gaming capabilities shown were amazing. If the companies get down the controls just right, this might just be the best gaming platform on the go. Get rid of all the cludder of changing discs/carts, and still use it as a phone when you need to, along with an iPod when you're wanting to relax, or a camera when you need to take a picture.

What an amazing device.

 

[ee99ee]

I'm fascinated to learn this. I bought my iPhone today and I'm in love...

-Chris

 

[MikeDTyke]

There was a patent filed recently by Apple that showed a slate like device, ie. an iPhone or iPod Touch being augmented by hardware templates, these overlays could either be a physical keyboard or in another example a joypad for playing games.

Whilst i personally don't like this idea as it covers part of the screen, i could envisage a toughened case with an internal 30pin connector and on one end there's a D-Pad controller and on the other a couple of fire buttons. All it would take is for Apple to spec the physical interface and provide a controller API and then let the market decice how big/neat this gamer case should be, along with could and how protective you want to make it. This would be awesome if you could sell it for $20-30.

Great for shoot em ups, FPS, footie and any game that demands jabbing a physical button til your thumb hurts without breaking your shiny $399 toy.

M.

 

[Santa Rosa]

i could envisage a toughened case with an internal 30pin connector and on one end there's a D-Pad controller and on the other a couple of fire buttons. All it would take is for Apple to spec the physical interface and provide a controller API and then let the market decice how big/neat this gamer case should be, along with could and how protective you want to make it.

Aesthetically I think not. That sounds rather awful really.

 

[MikeDTyke]

Aesthetically I think not. That sounds rather awful really.

I'll agree it hides the clean lines of the iPhone, but then again it needn't look any worse than a Sony PSP, just that the screen bit pops out from the shell, when you want it to be a phone again.

M.

 

[Masquerade]

Something like this, though I'm no expert on this topic and you can take with grain of salt:

....... iPhone ............ PSP
=== ======= ===========================
cpu.... 400MHz .... 222-333MHz (depends on programmer)
lcd .... 480x320 .... 480x272
mem.. 8GB ......... 32MB
ram ....128MB ....... 4MB
gpu.... none? ....... hardware accel

in the video @ apple.com, they said that iphone gpu was hardware accelerated

 

[kdarling]

iPhone is actually 620mhz

Doesn't matter what it's rated for (and the rating is a guess anyway).

It's actually run at ~400MHz to conserve power, just as the PSP is usually run at only ~200Mhz for the same reason.

and has a PowerVR MBX 3d Graphics Accelerator.

Thanks. Apparently it's MBX-Lite, which has been around on smartphones for over half a decade.

This is one time that having more screen area is a downside... more pixels to move.

The iPhone gaming capabilities shown were amazing.

Sure, but they didn't show anything in the demos that people haven't done on much slower, smaller platforms for years. I did think it was clever for them to show a _movie_ of a Spore coming out of the water instead of something programmed.

 

[yoman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

regardless of the power differences between the PSP and iPhone many games will come to the iphone platform. And its about time.

 

[gusty987]

honestly how much fullscreen 3d gaming can the iPhone battery provide on a charge while running all the phone functions in the background?

 

[billabong]

PSP and Nintendo aren't going to know what hit them when the games start coming out...

The iPhone really is becoming the ultimate all in one device...
Sony PSP
Processor: MIPS CPU @ 222 or 333MHz (selectable)
Screen: 480x272 pixels
Input: D-pad, analog stick
Nintendo DS
Processor: two ARM CPUs (67MHz and 33MHz)
Screen: two 256x192 pixel screens
Input: D-pad, touch-screen
iPhone
Processor: ARM CPU @ 620MHz
Screen: 480x320 pixels
Input: multitouch, accelerometer

 

[Syrus28]

PSP and Nintendo aren't going to know what hit them when the games start coming out...

The iPhone really is becoming the ultimate all in one device...
Sony PSP
Processor: MIPS CPU @ 222 or 333MHz (selectable)
Screen: 480x272 pixels
Input: D-pad, analog stick

Nintendo DS
Processor: two ARM CPUs (67MHz and 33MHz)
Screen: two 256x192 pixel screens
Input: D-pad, touch-screen

iPhone
Processor: ARM CPU @ 620MHz
Screen: 480x320 pixels
Input: multitouch, accelerometer

Umm... I wouldn't go that far. Its a nice device but... Its a phone first. They won't have anything to be worried about.

 

[genshi]

Umm... I wouldn't go that far. Its a nice device but... Its a phone first. They won't have anything to be worried about.

Not according to the engineer from Sega at the SDK event. He said they had underestimated the power of the iPhone and had to bring in another artist to scale up the graphics of their "Super Monkey Ball" demo; when running it on the iPhone, in his words, "This is not a cell phone game, this is a full console game."

I think a lot of people here are still underestimating the power and [future] capabilities of this mobile computing platform known as the iPhone...

 

[sadilak]

I've just seen the Super Monkey Ball demo that was demonstrated on the iPhone, and I have to ask myself(and you guys): if this is what the device can do with just a little work by a top dev team, then just how powerful is this device compared to a PSP or DS Lite?

You are comparing an Apple to 2 Oranges. Each device has its own market and loyal fanbase. EOS

 

[billabong]

You are comparing an Apple to 2 Oranges. Each device has its own market and loyal fanbase. EOS

True that PSP & Nintendo fan might not ditch there current systems for an iPhone... But it could convince a fan of those devices to go for the iPhone when purchasing a phone, because they enjoy gaming...

With gaming added to the iPhone / iPod touch it just adds another thing on it's long list of things it can do very well.

 

[TravisReynolds]

it is way more powerful, you can do pretty much the same but you use the motion sensors on the iPhone which is incredible

 

[Syrus28]

True that PSP & Nintendo fan might not ditch there current systems for an iPhone... But it could convince a fan of those devices to go for the iPhone when purchasing a phone, because they enjoy gaming...

With gaming added to the iPhone / iPod touch it just adds another thing on it's long list of things it can do very well.

But it could also come off as redundant to purchase another capable gaming device when they could buy a cheaper phone. I mean, the PSP and iPhone overlap on quite a few things. Skype, Games, movies, internet, songs, etc. I would think they would be more inclined to purchase a regular cell phone.

 

[shaba]

We shall see

Apple has been the ultimate teasers of gamers for years. I remember reading the complaints of a famous developer saying something to the effect that Apple always makes a show of encouraging game development on their computers every few years but never follow through. The iPhone has tremendous potential but if they don't even try for games on macs how can we expect iPhone to be any different?

 

[Michael CM1]

Not according to the engineer from Sega at the SDK event. He said they had underestimated the power of the iPhone and had to bring in another artist to scale up the graphics of their "Super Monkey Ball" demo; when running it on the iPhone, in his words, "This is not a cell phone game, this is a full console game."

I think a lot of people here are still underestimating the power and [future] capabilities of this mobile computing platform known as the iPhone...

Underestimating? Yes. But I don't see it as the downfall of the PSP or DS. The DS is highly successful because it's cheap and not too complicated. I have one and my only problem is Nintendo doesn't get a lot of developers who know how to make games I like (and will like a month from now). I never did get the concept of the PSP because it is SO much bigger and introduced that stupid UMD thing as if it was a good idea. Gaming media? Sure. For watching movies and TV shows? Great idea until the iPod w/Video came out about 5 months later.

I liked what I saw at the iPhone event because that darn monkey game is so stupidly simple and fun. You don't need World of Warcraft depth on a portable system. You need a monkey rolling around or just shooting up some space ships (who else wonders how long before LucasArts has a Star Wars game on iPhone?). As for my current RAZR, I'd even go for frickin' Snood. Alas, I wait on the iPhone.

 

[Michael CM1]

Apple has been the ultimate teasers of gamers for years. I remember reading the complaints of a famous developer saying something to the effect that Apple always makes a show of encouraging game development on their computers every few years but never follow through. The iPhone has tremendous potential but if they don't even try for games on macs how can we expect iPhone to be any different?

I bet most game companies don't think the Apple market share has been worth the effort to develop for the platform. When you have PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, DS, PSP.... (long breath), it's hard to compete for their time. But EA is now on the bandwagon a bit, which will hopefully bring others in. One of the best things about World of Warcraft is Blizzard was smart enough to make it Mac-compatible.

I also think the Intel switch probably made it easier for PC developers to make stuff for Mac. Don't trust me on that for a second, but from what I understand about the Boot Camp stuff, running it all on Intel stuff helps.

 

[anti-microsoft]

What about the iPod touch? Is it ruffly the same? Or is it completely different?

 

[johnnyjibbs]

PSP and Nintendo aren't going to know what hit them when the games start coming out...

The iPhone really is becoming the ultimate all in one device...
Sony PSP
Processor: MIPS CPU @ 222 or 333MHz (selectable)
Screen: 480x272 pixels
Input: D-pad, analog stick
Nintendo DS
Processor: two ARM CPUs (67MHz and 33MHz)
Screen: two 256x192 pixel screens
Input: D-pad, touch-screen
iPhone
Processor: ARM CPU @ 620MHz
Screen: 480x320 pixels
Input: multitouch, accelerometer

Specs don't mean &^*&%R£. Everyone knows that Wii and Nintendo DS are much less powerful than the competition but both products are now market leaders.

The iPhone potentially has all the franchises, sure, but it doesn't and will never have Nintendo. Developers will create their own ports of popular games (as will be available on the other systems), and perhaps tweaked with some element of multi-touch/accelerometer.

Whether developers push out resources for innovative iPhone-only games will be very much dependent on iPhone sales and iPhone game sales, which the industry will be watching very closely.

But never underestimate Nintendo.

 

[kdarling]

Specs don't mean &^*&%R£. Everyone knows that Wii and Nintendo DS are much less powerful than the competition but both products are now market leaders.

Exactly right about specs. Look at the iPods as another example... more expensive and less features than other devices, but they keep selling.