Game-breakers: Vita, smartphones and the 'Post-PC era'

The PlayStation Vita is, by all accounts, a worthy successor to the PSP, and more evidence of Sony’s unquestionable place in gaming history.

But where exactly ARE we in gaming history? The ‘Post PC era’ of smartphones and tablets certainly seems like the end of the line for separate handheld platforms -- and, as some have predicted, perhaps even the end of console systems and PCs altogether. The more hopeful term is ‘convergence’ ... is there still a chance for a device that could deliver the best of both worlds?  

“It's not enough for a digital device to just play games,” observes Kyle Orland of Ars Technica, while reviewing the release of Netflix, Twitter and Flickr apps for the Vita. “To keep up with the smartphones and tablet computers of the world, any game system needs to at least nod in the direction of cloud-based and social networking ‘apps’ that are all the rage with the kiddies. Sony's PlayStation Vita has now done exactly that.”

All Your Base Are Belong to Us

The numbers are clear; smartphones are taking a bite out of the handheld gaming market. This trend is more likely to accelerate as hardware and usage increasingly eclipses the potential of handheld platforms -- a market which already serves a relatively small subset of consumers. How long before Sony and Nintendo decide that there are too few dedicated gamers to warrant the manufacture of new dedicated gaming devices?

“Mobile games have traditionally been simple and often very childish,” writes Forbes’ Tero Kuittinen, “yet slowly but surely, deeper and more sophisticated games are arriving, chipping at the depth advantage long held by the games designed for portable consoles. The majority of consumers are not interested in the 30 to 60-hour epics dominating game charts. The fickle casual gamers have started their grand migration from portable consoles to smartphones and tablets. 2012 could well be the first year when we see the shape of this transition."

“Smartphone and tablet games are going to nibble away at the portable gaming market, particularly with the more casual gaming audience,” said Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities. “I think that 10 years ago, every kid under 12 wanted a Game Boy; now every kid under 12 wants an iPad or a smartphone. That has to hurt dedicated handheld gaming device sales. The addressable market is going to continue to shrink for Nintendo and Sony, and their devices will be competitive enough with one another that neither will likely ever hit the kind of numbers we saw from the Nintendo DS.”

On the other hand, Keiji Inafune (“Mega Man co-creator and ex-Capcom head of production”) told Ben Gilbert of Joystiq that the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita were not necessarily threatened by smartphones.

“I think it's very similar between cell phone cameras and professional digital cameras,” said Inafune. “You don't use a Smartphone camera for an interview, and you don't use a really professional camera to take some small pictures when you're going to work.’"

Now, Mr. Inafune was correct to a point -- but this glosses over not only the sales statistics of gaming devices, but also the Internet-driven ‘user-generated’ or ‘crowdsourced’ trend in video. Between YouTube as a news source and countless amateur and pro-am bloggers, smartphone video has made major strides in replacing professional production. The gaming parallel is not direct, but it’s obvious to many in the industry that the 99-cent smartphone app is a bigger threat to the established game industry paradigm than piracy ever was.

“You can get a really good 99 cent game that occupies you for hours and hours on end,” said Epic Games President Mike Capps. “Are people really going to want to spend $60 on a game? I mean, we're spending tens of millions of dollars making those games that they want to play ... it's not a sustainable business model."

“It's about how do we deal with iPhone 8,” says Capps. “If you watch where the gamers are going that's where they are. Your iPhone 8 will probably plug into your TV, or better yet, wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience with good sound. So really, what's the point of those next-gen consoles?”

A Link to the Past

The Vita is an evolution of the PSP line, which was at least semi-revolutionary in its ability to do things other than play games. Multimedia, connectivity and Internet capabilities were particularly strong points before most smartphones boasted similar features. Despite the format fumble of UMD, PSP owners were quite happy to have portable movie-viewing.

Both the PSP and Nintendo’s DS models provided stereo speakers (a rarity among smartphones even to this day), and supported MP3 and other audio format playback. A major selling point of both systems was WiFi connectivity, which enabled 2-player gaming but also chat and web browsing capabilities. The PSP even featured tabbed web browsing (again, a feature that many modern smartphones lack), and hackers were able to develop the browsing functionality even further.

Still, true gaming / smartphone hybrids have been seemingly just out of reach. The first attempt was in 2003, with the release of Nokia’s infamous N-Gage. The many missteps and swift demise of the N-Gage platform cast a long shadow over both the gaming and mobile phone industries, and was doubtless mentioned once or twice during the R&D for Sony’s own venture last year into hybrid gaming smartphone territory: the somewhat-underwhelming Xperia Play.

In the eight years between the N-Gage and the Xperia Play, smartphones had caught up. Even a middle-of-the-road 2011 smartphone can match the kind of processing and graphics power that drove the first-generation DS or PSP devices. Depending on the capabilities of the particular phone’s hardware, and the skills of the app developer, you can get results that compare well against last-generation consoles (i.e., PS2, Xbox and GameCube).

But Can it Run Crysis?

Now, serious gamers can be very critical of smartphone gaming capabilities. In fact, depending on your definition of ‘serious gamer’, many are critical of handhelds, period -- and many still take a position firmly on the PC side of the PC vs console debate (yes, that’s still going on circa 2012, as intensely as ever).

The markets are still distinct, to a large extent. Vita owners are typically ‘serious’ rather than casual mobile gamers -- i.e., people who probably have a smartphone as well as a dedicated gaming device. Chances are, if economics forces you to choose between a smartphone (that can play games) and a handheld (with apps, but that can’t make calls), all but the most dedicated gamers will take the more pragmatic route and opt for a smartphone.

Just so there’s no confusion as to my own loyalties, I’ll confess: I’m a ‘serious’ gamer. My pedigree and addiction began with Atari and Zork, and continues to this day with CrossfireX and Steam. So it’s probably a little odd that I rarely, if ever, use my smartphone for gaming. But I doubt that I’m alone, and I doubt that I’m really part of any ‘untapped market’.

On the other hand, I fully recognize that there are at least a handful of developers making creative, unique and compelling contributions to the Android and iOS game markets, and there are even some types of games that are much less achievable on other platforms.

Handhelds vs Smartphones = Tanks vs Nukers?

Control options are still a point of contention. Multitouch does some things very well, but by nature obscures the viewable area. Analog controls are the method of choice for many gamers, but Nintendo did fine throughout the Game Boy and initial DS generations without anything like an analog stick -- although the inclusion of the 'Circle Pad' on the 3DS begs the question a bit.

It would certainly not be too difficult to offer an included or optional dual-stick controller for a smartphone -- designs such as the Fling Mini and the 3DS Circle Pad Pro come close to providing that functionality already. The slider format of the Xperia Play (and its PSP Go predecessor) made for a somewhat elegant way of providing analog-ish controls without getting in the way of the screen.

A little extra bulk is an easy compromise to make for something that users consider to be an essential feature (just ask any of us who demand slide-out keyboard phones). I could be wrong, but I doubt that the ‘slim-as-possible’ market overlaps the ‘serious gamer’ market too much.

Still, the larger touchscreen area of tablets is a major departure from the existing paradigm, and presents a ‘third way’ challenge to both small mobile touchscreens and the large-format ‘view-only’ screens of consoles and PCs. The only thing lacking to make the iPad or other tablets a unique gaming experience is, well, a lack of any truly compelling games for gamers. It’s a tempting landscape in general, but one almost exclusively devoted to casual gamers.

Gaming Smartphones = Giant Enemy Crab?

It seems obvious that Sony could have captured many smartphone ‘defectors’ with a Vita that could make calls. But the Vita is, by design, a device made specifically for gamers.

Sony’s CEO said in no uncertain terms that he was not interested in confusing the waters. "The games being played on Android and Apple platforms are fundamentally different from the world of immersive games that Sony Computer Entertainment, and PlayStation aims for,'' Mr. Hirai said.

But there’s far more at work here; multifunction smartphones require both significant discrete hardware resources and complicated carrier agreements. By contrast, games are the Vita’s reason to be, and any apps that come along will piggyback on gaming functionality.

A current-generation (let alone cutting-edge) smartphone simply needs to have certain things. A camera is a must, with 5MP at the bare minimum, and 8MP far more future-proof. The Vita’s cams wouldn’t cut it for a 2008 phone, let alone anything resembling a current model. Ironically, the Vita’s cameras have the same specs as those on Nintendo’s DSi from 2008.

720p HD video recording is probably a minimum requirement at this point, and battery life is a major consideration for any mobile device. In both cases, the Xperia Play did not fare too well, even with bare-minimum screen demands. The Vita does well enough for a gaming device, but by smartphone standards it would not pass muster.

Regarding the OS of potential hybrids, we can quickly cross off Apple. The company has never been particularly friendly to gamers, and any sort of partnership would be hampered by Apple’s need to derive about 30% of the revenue and 99% of the control. And without Apple, we immediately lose about half of the smartphone market and nearly all of the tablet market (currently, anyway).

So we’re talking about Android -- unless some serious movement comes from RIM, Microsoft, or an even darker horse candidate. After N-Gage, nobody in their right mind would venture near a Symbian gaming phone -- no matter how good it might be. And a proprietary OS won’t cut it.

The more complex issue may be actual calling technology. Especially in the US, different carriers offer various cellular and data networks, requiring different internal hardware. The Vita has a good start along these lines -- 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth. And interestingly, each Vita has already been discovered to have its own phone number, as well as SMS (receive only) capabilities.

Still, the confused and contradictory demands of carriers could be a serious issue. A hybrid gaming smartphone manufacturer would either need to limit the device with reduced calling functionality, a single carrier (i.e., the Xperia Play or original iPhone), or bear the extra investment burden of developing discrete models for different carriers.

VoIP would seem to be a fairly elegant solution to many of these concerns -- and Skype calling was already a viable option on WiFi-connected PSPs. Carriers, however, have proven extremely resistant to Skype -- due to obvious revenue concerns, as well as the closed-source P2P architecture, and various incompatible agreements (the Verizon WiFi issue for the Android app is particularly convoluted).

Gaming Smartphones = A Final Fantasy?

The hybrid gaming smartphone could happen. We have the technology. Better, stronger, faster ... but whether it WILL happen seems doubtful at best.

The most likely prediction is for increasing marginalization and splintering of the serious gaming community -- many will join the ‘casual’ market, and others will find themselves more of a specialized niche, catered to by fewer and fewer major companies as time goes on. As older generations to some extent ‘grow out’ of serious gaming, newer generations more accustomed to smartphone gaming will contribute fewer replacements. The good (ish) news is that smartphones will get better and better at satisfying the gaming urge, but dedicated gaming handheld devices will ultimately become unprofitable for the manufacturers to R&D. 

We’ve already seen how even the ‘hardcore’ PC and console gaming world has been trending toward shorter, smaller, streaming, episodic and/or more casual games in general. The ‘Post-PC era’ will also be largely a ‘Post-Gaming’ era for many of us, settling for lower resolutions, simplified controls and gameplay, and a general lack of the immersive and aesthetic nature that the best of the PC and console gaming era had to offer.

So in one respect, the market for a gaming smartphone may be opening up -- because soon enough, it may be all that ‘serious’ gamers have left to look forward to.