Nintendo may not (publicly) care much about people playing games on Apple products, but don’t tell that to Apple. At their iPhone OS 4.0 preview event today the company came out gunning for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
Shot one was a social networking platform called Game Center that’s built into the phone’s OS. Basically, people in gaming will call this feature Xbox Live Lite, because that’s what it is: A semi-featured, multitasking matchmaking and leaderboard service that’s tied directly into the device’s operating system and connects to whatever games you have that might support its feature set. Also, Achievements!
Shot two was a “mine’s bigger” quote from Steve Jobs about the number of games on the iPhone/iPad platform. Here’s a summary: There are many, many more games on Apple “portables” today than there are on Nintendo or Sony. Quantity has nothing to do with quality, of course, but nevertheless you had Steve Jobs on stage today making direct comparisons between his products and those from the big three.
We shall see! The new iPhone features arrive in the summer (iPad update in the Fall).