[/caption]\n\nI've been trying to buy a copy of Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS for some time (you've probably gleaned that I'm a huge GTAIV fan). I just found out it's been available for the iPhone (for $10) since last week. This underlines the deficiencies of the DS and the strengths of the iPhone as a platform (and, obviously, this extends to the iPad).\n
\n \t- I can't find a copy of Chinatown Wars for the DS anywhere — even though it is the best reviewed game for the DS ever — and I didn't want to order it online (instant gratification and all that). And, in the end, I don't tend to use my DS much.
\n \t- I just got it for $10 vs. considerably more for the DS version ($20 at Walmart, for instance).
\n \t- I bought the iPhone version in large part because I fully expect it to be upgraded to run on the iPad, and possibly get a price hike (after all, while it's debatably the best implementation of Chinatown Wars on any platform right now, it won't even be debatable when it's running on the iPad.
\n \t- And yes, it runs jim dandy on my nearly two year old iPhone 3G. Which means it will run better and smoother on the 3GS, let alone an iPad.
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\nSo, to recap:\n\n \t- Apple has introduced the idea of a games platform that's a real OS that gets upgrades with backwards compatibility, which Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, et al have conspicuously failed to do despite having ample opportunity. (Indeed, Sony's new PS3 dropped all backwards compatibility with the PS2.)
\n \t- Developers can make some trivial changes to an iPhone title and it will run at full resolution on an iPad. Or they can do nothing and it will still run at near full-screen size on an iPad. By comparison, the PS2 ran PSX apps no better than a PSX did, back when Sony still paid lip service to backwards compatibility.
\n \t- This goes back to Apple's underlying business model — they make money on the handle and let everyone else sell blades. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have their hands in developers' pockets, so of course they want you to buy everything over again. Oh yeah, and aside from Nintendo (who are into Apple's old model of selling overpriced, underpowered hardware) they lose money on those handles. My guess is that Rockstar makes as much or more from a $10 iPhone sale as from a $20 DS sale.
\n \t- The App store may annoy developers of desktop apps who can click \"compile\" and release their software five minutes later, but it's blissfully cheap, easy, and pleasant compared to trying to become a (proper) Nintendo, PS3, or XBox 360 developer.
\n \t- The iPad may not be the best games platform in terms of, say, raw graphics capability, but it's probably Good Enough. I for one would rather have a game console I can carry with me than a more graphically capable one that I have to leave at home. My XBox 360 is currently in the bedroom, which is its third location in the house. Just moving it from one room to another is a pain in the ass, and where-ever it is, I want it somewhere else.
\n \t- Incidentally I believe that if you own an iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, you can run one license of a game on all three. Sony? Nintendo? Microsoft? My wife and I share an iTunes account and in fact we run one license of some games on both our phones (we'd actually happily pay for the extra copies, but we don't have to, and in fact there's no way for us to do so).
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