作者：Johnny Minkley

苹果设备改变了我们的体验时间、体验内容及付费方式。

挖出那些曾轻视对手产品的资深人士的言论非常有趣。如下源自于2007年1月的言论颇具代表性：

“我不敢相信媒体竟把焦点都锁定在iPhone上。就连我的若干微软迷好友和同事也将其视作一大创新，认为其将‘重新定义市场’或‘带来新纪元’。”

“什么？！我想知道谁会想要这些东西。对用户来说，这首先得是部手机。”

这些言论来自Richard Sprague，他当时是微软的高级营销总监。显然，Sprague是出于自己的潜意识偏见（游戏邦注：这是来自于激烈竞争对手雇员的偏见）。这非常有趣，但并非由于他错了，而是在于错到什么程度。

iPhone from iimedia.cn

“在此问世5年的领域中，基于‘数百万’谈论游戏设备远远不够”

截至6月29日，iPhone就问世5年。我们可以轻松说出有关设备成就的事实和数据，但如今查看Sprague的言论，有一点我们要非常清楚：目前单是苹果的iPhone业务价值就高于微软的整体价值（在2012年第1季度是226.9亿美元 vs.174.1亿美元）。

在相同时间范围内，没有什么产品比iPhone更具影响力。这当然也促进设备在游戏领域的影响，在如今的5年之际，我们应仔细思考设备带来我们行业的革命性变化及利弊。

当代游戏机问世时，iPhone还不存在，直到1年后，App Store才诞生。目前，全球共售出3.65亿台iOS设备，其中2.18亿台是iPhone。iPhone开启的大门引入众多新竞争者，尤其是谷歌，他们刚推出4亿台Android激活设备。在此问世5年的领域中，基于‘数百万’谈论游戏设备远远不够。

这如今也体现在游戏领域。今年初，Rovio庆祝《愤怒的小鸟》取得10亿次下载量。这自然跨越很多平台，但成功跳板是iPhone。换种方式思考：不妨将《愤怒的小鸟》想象成独家索尼掌上游戏。你无法单凭非独创性的物理游戏及若干卡通小鸟获得10亿销量。它需要依靠此生态系统、安装基础及苹果杰出的文化背景。

“5年里，iPhone在将游戏转变成‘普遍现象’方面所做的贡献比传统游戏40年里的付出更甚”

最后一点相当重要。iPhone 5年里在将游戏转变成普通‘事物’方面所做的贡献比传统游戏40年里的付出更甚。若干年前，工党议员、忠实游戏玩家Tom Watson告诉我，他认识某位沉溺于《吉他英雄》的政府部长，但他不敢公开承认，担心会被当地媒体斥责。

当英国政府官员想要表示自己“跟进潮流”时，他们会谈论iPhone，而非Xbox,会谈论《愤怒的小鸟》而非《马里奥》。当知晓英国首相着迷于iPad上的《水果忍者》时，公众能够产生共鸣。更有趣的是，好莱坞巨星因拒绝停止在智能手机上玩《Words With Friends》而被赶下飞机。这种情况不会出现在游戏机领域。

Words With Friends from androidfreeware.net

以iPhone主导的智能手机游戏已成为日常生活和文化的必要组成元素。无论它们的优点是什么，都无法体现在定制游戏机制中。

从理论上来说，我应该能够基于PlayStation Vita体验既有的所有iPhone游戏，同时享受到智能手机所没有的深度和复杂性。要是这只是硬件性能问题就好了。显然情况并非如此，这就是为什么为了创造杰出设计及巨大发展潜力，Vita积极证明自己的存在。

同时iPhone的经济模式和可访问性也让游戏变成“一次性产品”，这给设计带来深远影响。随着公司纷纷过渡至棘手的免费内容模式，用户能够尝试内容，将其抛弃，然后尝试其他内容，再次将其丢弃。

在这种情况下，游戏只有几秒钟时间吸引用户眼球（游戏邦注：在它们消失殆尽，被用户留下1颗星评价前）。毋庸置疑，这对需要些许解释方能繁荣发展的杰出构思来说并非友善的环境。

同时，由高居榜首成就催生的乐观主义已被匿名人士的可怕恐惧情绪取代：每天有100款游戏上传至App Store，这些作品就像是大海中的一滴水。

传统安全网（由优质PR和营销支撑的杰出游戏设计）不再值得信赖。的确，NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil在上周的Game Horizon上明确表示，它们完全是浪费时间和金钱。

他表示，“当进行落实到位的专门PR活动时，你会发现PR活动无法给大型游戏带来什么影响。这没起到什么作用。你面对的下载数据非常庞大，因此所创造的PR下载量不过是个‘噪音’。”

那些没有任何有效预算的公司还有什么希望？诸如《翼飞冲天》和《新星足球》之类杰作的背后都包含无数次失败的尝试。在iPhone时代，口碑传播比其他任何评论者的评论更重要。

在Reil看来，如今真正发挥作用的是生产标准，将游戏机水准的陈述带到最简单的构思中。Epic Games充分证明这点，上周公司表示，就投资回报而言，《无尽之剑》是工作室目前创收最丰厚的作品。

这款幻想战斗游戏突出iPhone故事的另一重要篇章：技术快速发展。当高成本主机游戏受困于冗长开发周期中时，iPhone已由没有第三方内容的可怜手机转变成基于retina技术的游戏发电站，有超过50万款应用供用户选择，而这整个过程比索尼制作《跑车浪漫旅5》的时间还短。

因此传统游戏行业变得小心谨慎还有什么值得惊奇？光想到苹果可能会生产电视，微软就感到非常紧张，他们昭告全世界，SmartGlass将“把所有电视都变成智能电视”。他们的想法是什么？

iPhone让游戏机业务变成步履维艰，但也并未将主机游戏赶尽杀绝。与之相反，如今的游戏越来越多，类型越来越丰富，玩家越来越多。这不是个“非此即彼”的零和游戏；但各公司需要在新的世界秩序中找到自己的位置。

但你知道iPhone游戏变革的真正惊人之处是什么吗？这一切是在苹果没有真正使力的情况下就发生了。该公司对于制作游戏毫无兴趣；他们只是创建了得到用户认同的平台，及相应的传送机制和经济模式。

对于5岁的iPhone平台来说，这是个不错的发展势头。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

This Changes Everything: iPhone’s Five-Year Gaming Revolution

By Johnny Minkley

How Apple’s device has changed when we play, what we play, and what we pay to play forever

It’s always fun to dig out old quotes from senior figures dissing a rival product that goes on to become wildly successful. This one, from January 2007, is a particular gem:

“I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone. Even some of my blindly-loyal pro-Microsoft friends and colleagues talk like it’s a real innovation and will ‘redefine the market’ or ‘usher in a new age’.

“In the space of five years, talking about gaming devices in terms of “millions” is no longer enough”

“What!?!? I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful). People need this to be a phone, first and foremost.”

Words taken from the blog of Richard Sprague, who was a senior marketing director for Microsoft at the time. Clearly, Sprague was subject to all the unconscious – and conscious – biases you’d expect from an employee of a fierce competitor. Fun, as I say, but what’s really interesting is not that he was wrong, but how wrong.

iPhone turned five on June 29th. We can all reel off success-related facts and figures, but here’s one that must make particularly sobering reading for Sprague today: Apple’s iPhone business alone is now worth more than Microsoft’s in its entirety ($22.69bn vs. $17.41bn, Q1 2012 revenue – as detailed in this eye-opening infographic).

I can’t think of another product that has had a bigger impact than iPhone in a similar timeframe. That, of course, goes for its impact in gaming too, and at the half-decade point it’s worth reflecting on the revolutionary changes, good and bad, the device has inspired in our own industry.

iPhone didn’t exist when the current generation of consoles launched, and it wasn’t until a year later that the App Store arrived. Now, 365 million iOS devices have been sold worldwide, 218 million of which are iPhones. And new competitors have stormed in through the door iPhone smashed open, not least Google, which just announced 400 million Android activations. In the space of five years, talking about gaming devices in terms of “millions” is no longer enough.

That applies to games now, too. Earlier this year, Rovio celebrated one billion downloads of Angry Birds. That’s across many platforms, naturally, but the springboard to success was iPhone. Think of it another way: imagine that Angry Birds had been an exclusive Sony handheld title. You don’t reach a billion based on a spectacularly unoriginal physics game and some cartoon birds alone. It needed the ecosystem, installed base and cool cultural cachet of Apple.

“iPhone has done more to make gaming a regular, normal ‘thing’ in five years than the traditional games industry has managed in 40″

That last point is particularly important. iPhone has done more to make gaming a regular, normal ‘thing’ in five years than the traditional games industry has managed in 40. A few years ago, Labour MP, passionate gamer and scourge of News Corp, Tom Watson, told me he knew a Government Minister who was addicted to Guitar Hero, but was too afraid to admit it publicly for fear of being excoriated by his local press.

When British politicians want to sound ‘with it’, they talk about iPhone not Xbox, Angry Birds not Mario. The effects of Apple’s infamous reality distortion field reach far beyond the walls of its press conferences. The public can empathise when it emerges that the British Prime Minister is obsessed with Fruit Ninja on iPad. It’s cool when a Hollywood star gets booted off a plane for refusing to stop playing Words With Friends on his smartphone. It wouldn’t happen with handheld consoles.

Smartphone gaming, spearheaded by iPhone, has become an essential part of daily life and culture because it happens on the only device essential to daily life. Whatever their many merits, that cannot be said of a bespoke gaming system.

I should, in theory, be able to play every single iPhone game in existence on a PlayStation Vita, while enjoying experiences with a level of depth and complexity impossible on a smartphone. If only it were solely a question of hardware capabilities. Manifestly it isn’t, which is why for all the brilliance of its design and enormous potential, Vita struggles to justify its existence.

The economics and accessibility of iPhone have also made gaming ruthlessly disposable, with a profound impact on design. As businesses fret over the painful transition to a free content model, consumers try something, dump it, try something else, dump that, then leave the Post Office queue without a thought.

In this context a game has mere seconds to impress before it is banished back into the ether and damned with a one-star review. Needless to say, that is not a friendly environment for great ideas that need a little explaining to flourish.

Meanwhile, optimism fuelled by chart-topping successes has been replaced by the awful fear of anonymity: with 100 games uploaded to the App Store every day, each one becomes another needle in an immense haystack.

Traditional safety nets – a great game design backed by good PR and marketing – can no longer be relied upon. Indeed, NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil argued compellingly at Game Horizon last week that they are a waste of time and money.

“A game has mere seconds to impress before it is banished back into the ether and damned with a one-star review. That is not a friendly environment for great ideas”

“[PR] has no impact that you can see for a big game when you run a dedicated, very well executed PR campaign,” he said. “It does nothing, absolutely nothing. The download numbers that you’re dealing with overall are so huge that any PR downloads you create are just noise.”

What hope, then, for those without any kind of marketing budget? For every Tiny Wings and New Star Soccer, there are innumerable beautiful failures. In the age of iPhone, word-of-mouth is more important than any critic’s review.

What can make a difference now, according to Reil, is the standard of production, bringing console-quality presentation to the simplest of concepts. Epic Games has proved this most convincingly, revealing last week that Infinity Blade is its most profitable title ever in terms of return on investment.

And the fantasy fighting title highlights another important chapter in the iPhone story: the rapid evolution of technology. With expensive consoles stuck in long cycles, iPhone has transformed from a poor phone with no third-party content into a retina-screened gaming powerhouse with over half a million apps to choose from in less time than it took Sony to make Gran Turismo 5.

Is it any wonder the traditional games industry is running scared? So nervous of the mere idea that Apple might be making a television, Microsoft broadcast to the world that SmartGlass will “turn any TV into a smart TV”. What could they be thinking of?

“If iPhone has made the console business sweat and suffer, it is also hardly killing off console games”

If iPhone has made the console business sweat and suffer, it is also hardly killing off console games. Rather, there are now more games, more types of game, and more people playing them than ever. It’s not an either/or, zero-sum game; but every company must now find its place in the new world order.

But you know what the truly amazing aspect of iPhone’s gaming revolution is? That it happened without Apple even really trying. The company hasn’t the slightest interest in making games; it just created the right platform, delivery mechanism and economics for them in the eyes – and hands – of consumers.

Not bad going for a five-year-old.（Source：gamesindustry）