All I know is that the iphone is hella more expensive than either of the other two.

ummm yes but no thanks i am not a huge apple fan like some of those fanatics out there a phone lasts 1 1/2 years in my house it'd die even faster if i used it as a handheld gaming even tho DS and PSP are still alive...my phone on the other hand is on its last legs and its coughing.

As much as I love my iPhone I can't imagine playing anything but a turn based game on it.

The DS and PSP are primarily designed to play games though, whereas the iPhone is primarily a phone/internet browser thing, is it as easy to make games for the iPhone?

I hope they do start bringing out some awesome games for the iPhone, i've had mine for a while now and am getting bored of the applications and lack of any games without having to mod it.

I know im looking forward to gaming on my iPhone...as long as its not just "novelty"

Spore.

Let us get the game system hate out of the way and point out that it is not bad for a phone.

I'll be the first to concur that the iPhone won't and shouldn't ever beat/replace either a PSP or a DS as a dedicated game system.

That said, I'm getting more excited about the device (or more accurately the next revision, since I don't have one yet) with each new game announcement, I'd love to be able to replace my laptop with one eventually, but I'm gonna need at least a few good RTS/strategy titles first, fully a quarter of what this laptop does is play Homeworld 2 and Starcraft ;)

Spec-wise, Apple iPhone looks impressive but the device wasn't designed as a game machine first and foremost.

If you have a Iphone and like gaming..., considering its cost I bet you already also own ether a PSP or a DS.
If not, your probably not that into gaming.

Casual games will probably sell okay on mobiles, like they already do, but I really dont think most people want a hardcore rgp, GTA etc on there mobile. I mean when I got the Nokia 6680, way back..., the only hardcore game I installed on it was Doom 1. Which was installed to say to peeps, "Hay, its better than my first PC. It can run doom perfect..." However I never played it. Phones are still phones in my view.

I want every old Sierra adventure game from the 80's and early 90's on the iPhone. Let me play Space Quest II while I'm getting a car wash and I'll be a happy lad.

Even playing emulated NES-games on a jailbroken is a real chore. You don't have any "real" buttons and because of that normal Jump 'n' Runs like Super Mario Brothers are nearly unplayable if you don't spend hours on learning to not push both A and B at the same time.

Is not my area of expertise, but the MIPS R4000 seems a hell of easy to program in assembler. And 32 MB is much more than 4MB.
This make the *me* the PSP a better platform to write for. Also 333 is way more than 67.
The sad thing, is that to use a PSP you have to hack it, or live under the Sony whatever policies put on the machine. Maybe even banning homebrew software.
There are very good console emulators, like Mame.
I admit I have never played a good Nintento Pokemon/JRPG game. The PSP with a nintento emulator to play one of these could be fun.
But It could be boring to have a arms race against the Sony firmware to mantain your PSP open. So maybe the DS is a better option.
I don't know nothing about the iPhone.. seems have a bad interface, judging from the comments of other dudes.

Advanced Wars Iphone Advanced! It's a 10 million seller!

The fact that it costs more than both a DS and PSP together is a bit off-putting. I've heard from friends who own the iPhone that the actual service runs about $95 a month...but I suppose if you buy one, price isn't a primary factor.

I am still curious to see if iPhone gaming picks up, or if it gets left with a bunch of uglied yet portable PC/Mac games. We'll see.

gentlemen, behold... WIIPHONE!!!

+ Watch video

The iphone is as much of a gaming machine as the NGage was. Take that for what you will.

@DaiMacculate:
The only thing a laptop needs to run...Homeworld 2 :p

In all seriousness, I don't really like the concept of the iPhone in general, let alone the iPhone as a gaming device. Though there will spawn some interesting titles, it doesn't seem to be able to bring a breakthrough in mobile gaming in my opinion.

Sure, the specs may be there. But keep in mind that from the processor power, sensors and all extra bells and whistles in the phone a good deal goes to running the operating system, managing your agenda and running background processes.

This reminds me of android somewhere. They too have included opengl in their sdk, and you theoretically can develop nice looking games that play well. But if these games have place on a phone I'll leave in the middle.
I'd rather have that we develop more of the interesting 'normal' applications for phones. Applications that make it easier to stay 'connected'. Web2.0, rss - readers and that stuff.

It's a nice try, but overall I like my games on my handheld system.

I don't want my music player to also be my phone. I DEFINITELY don't want my portable gaming device to also be my phone. I use my DS to pass the time on long plane rides, I don't want to worry about draining the batteries on my phone.

The iphone specs are impressive. The post presents as the good bits of both ds and psp - i.e the brawn of the psp, with the interface of the ds.
Problems is, the ds still has buttons, a d-pad, and a form factor suited to games. The brawn is good, but the iphone has only one aspect of the games interface required.
The psp 2 may have a touch screen, but it will still
have buttons.

Wouldnt like to subject a large glass touch screen to the rigours applied to a d-pad in a driving game or a face button on an action title.

2 things.

My PSP has a camera on it.

People don't make Monster hunter, Crisis Core, God of War, Lumines, Flatout or Wipeout for Iphone. Case dismissed.

The question isn't about specs. The question is, "Do people buy this to play games on it?" In the case of the iPhone, I don't think so. First of all, it's more expensive than either the DS or the PSP, both of which have amassed a hella good library by now. Yes, the PSP, too, even without custom firmwares... Which aren't quite as big a hassle as you'd think: I haven't upgraded mine since, oh, this summer, and the only new PSP game I've had trouble getting to work is Ratchet & Clank (apparently, I have to set the clock speed manually for that).

For those who've already bought an iPhone for other purposes, I'm sure it's got plenty of potential for games. Those I've seen so far look pretty danged good. But very few are going to buy an iPhone to play Monkey Ball or Spore on it. And the lack of actual buttons on the thing makes it hard to do "proper" action games.

That said, I could see Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan work on the iPhone. Very well, in fact.

Sure PSP has no touchscreen and the DS has no camera, but they curiously left out the fact that the iPhone has no buttons for people to press.

Yet all three lose points for not opening up their platforms to homebrew developers. Out of the lot the easiest to do homebrew is the DS as at the moment as you can get a Supercard/R4 or whatever.

Otherwise you are into the world of hack firmware and I would never really recommend that to anyone. I don't count the up and coming iPhone apps in homebrew because it is not open to everyone and Apple seem to be randomly choosing partners for it.

Although it mentioned that the iphone has a multi touch display, it failed to mention the ds has a pressure sensitive display. Also, battery life is a factor. Its a bit silly to use specs as a good guide to determine potential in the gaming industry, look at things like the game gear vs the gameboy - psp vs Ds - gba vs Neo Geo the list goes on.

I think that the iphone will sell many games because it has a large user base, but the games wont be as good because the device hasnt been designed for games properly. Sure it has a cool multi touch display and accelerometers which will no doubt allow for some really cool and interesting games - but in terms of traditional style portable games - it fails to have the physical requirements needed for proper gaming.

@marlblank: I'm totally with you on the "apps more than games" argument for a device like this, as others have noted its not cheap, and if all you want is gaming and music and a phone this isn't the device for you. I'm more excited about the higher level apps we'll see from people like Adobe, MS' MacBU, and the host of small indie devs that will be looking at this SDK.

I loved my dad's Newton 2000, nice device for what it was at the time it came out, I'm still waiting to see if the iTouch platform (iPhone/iPod Touch) can evolve a little more in that direction over the next couple of revisions before I even think about dropping $300+ on one ;)

Not just the iPhone remember, there is the iTouch too. That's a lot cheaper.

It is certainly proving to be the trojan horse I expected it to be.

Apple are never up front about exactly what it is they want from the hardware they produce. The iPhone was clearly a sly way of getting a multi purpose device into the pockets and handbags of the fashion conscious and those where amountInPounds>commonSense == true ;)

I don't think it will succeed as a games device simply because of the way that the user interacts with the hardware. A touchscreen alone will not suffice as a way to control games. Take Metroid on the DS for example, a fine game using the touchscreen to the best of its ability but having to also use old school buttons as well.

For most games, the imprecise nature of a touchscreen is not nearly accurate enough to be usable or provide a satisfactory gaming experience. You could argue that games such as cooking mama, loco roco or doki doki majo shinpan would work really well on the iPhone and I would agree. But I would imaging that anything more complicated would too much hard work given the lack of buttons.

Even though the hardware specs look impressive, I would assume that the OS gobbles up a lot of the processing power and memory before a game is even launched. That may be an issue to any developers out there who wish to use the full power of the system.

@DaiMacculate: Forgot to mention, another thing a future iTouch device should/must have in my mind is some type of high-def audio in/out capability, whether its 1394/TosLink/whatever, the massive utility of that to sound production, DJs, etc would sell another million ;)

The iPhone with it's rather ubitqutious Wireless and EDGE/US Equivalent data transfer is prime territory for creating an MMO if we hark back to the days of the N-Gage and Ragnarok Online. The game I most want to give an example of is the original SWG, where combat was by no means a necessity for people to play. Sure we've got Spore on the way, but that has little to no hope of capturing the raiding stat whoring demographic. A simplistic design with an intricate crafting system, click and toolbar combat and a highly customisable permanent avatar creates not only a game, but a social networking opportunity as well. And the recent rise of Myspace, Bebo, Facebook etc has proven that the teenage phone buying demographic really really love sending each other app notifications. Why not make it properly viable on a phone?

Of course until the iPhone appears on a PAYG call plan for us lonely nerds with no one to spend our umpteen hundred minutes and texts on and takes a massive price dip, I won't be joining in. My ageing Motorola Razr (yes, the original one) isn't getting replaced until absolutely necessary which is code for "It catches on fire or falls under a bus".

DS and psp are gaming machines and I don't own any of them. I don't know if I have time to play it. If I'm at home I'd rather play my ps3. I'm not away enough to need a portable gaming machine...though lately I've been very tempted to get a psp. I need more justification. As for the iphone, I wouldn't even consider that as a gaming platform. Without buttons, it can't be a gaming machine...not the kind of game that I want to play. Casual gamer might be able to play puzzle games on there..but there's no real game it can handle without dedicated buttons.

@nxp3: Its odd because I find that I play my PSP and DS more at home than away :)

Sure, I take it on the daily commute with me for a short blast of advance wars or whatever else I have handy, but I tend to find that playing games like Crystal Chronicles is nicer sat on the sofa with a glass of wine and plenty of time.

Y'know, I wouldn't mind seeing some innovation.

The iPhone and iPod Touch will always be too expensive to break into the handheld gaming market in a big way.

iPod Touch: $300
PSP: $170
Nintendo DS: $130

Apple will need to half their prices and ensure a steady and consistent supply of games, which they've never shown any interest in doing. I will be very surprised if the iPhone/Touch ever manages to reach the market share of something like the N-gage, Gizmondo or even GP2X.

iPhone has an amazing distribution channel in iTunes. My bet is they sell a huge number of simple mobile games. I seriously doubt they want to directly compete with the DS or PSP...yet.

For the price of an i-Phone, you can buy both DS and PSP and a brace of top of the line games.

Doesn't the psp have 802.11g as of an update a while ago? Any who, the lack of buttons will doom the iPhone for games. They're maybe a couple that can utilize what the iPhone has and be great, but most games will be rubbish. Plus, the DS and PSP are sold as game systems, the iPhone's main selling point is a phone. So when its put that way, the people who go to buy an iphone go to buy a phone, not a game system. The people who go to buy a PSP and DS, they want a game system. The iPhone may have the guts, but I don't think it has what it takes.

Sure the PSP and DS are cheaper...

However, there are a few things to consider:

1) As has already been mentioned - the iPod Touch is also supported by the iPhone SDK and it's $299.
2) The games for the iPhone/Touch are likely to be *much* cheaper. Games for the current iPods are about $5 each. PSP and DS games are more like $20-$40.
3) The iPhone/Touch does a hell of a lot more than either the DS or the PSP.

Hardware specs mean little if you can't take full advantage of them. And this isn't a 'wait a few years for developers to get used the hardware' statement. This is a 'those resources you want for your game will always be reserved for X' statement. Not knocking the iPhone, since this is the case for any mobile phone platform, including the PSPhone if it comes out. Just don't through those stats at me as a reason its a contender unless I can make my iPhone a dedicated gaming device.

Regardless, it's not a 'war' until all parties have some decent ammunition.

@Horseflesh: The iPhone sucks hard for the old Siera AGI games. You need to be able to type and see the screen at all times. Those games didn't pause as you typed and some of them required quick and timely input. King's Quest I even had a handfull of hotkeys for jumping, swimming etc.

@DaiMacculate: Unfortunately the DSPs Apple uses for their iPods aren't all that great. I'm not sure any DJ who cares about the music he's spinning would want to use an iPhone for it. Especially when a laptop provides more storage and features.

Man, 'throw' not 'through'. Sue me its early 8-p

Hmm, didn't realize that iPhone had some nice hardware for a little device.

Maybe if the iPhone was selling well in any country other than the US...

Who cares about PSP, DS and iPhones? Midget Brawl!!

Sounds like a lot of turtle-neck sweaters went into the making of this rundown.

My bet is that Apple is going to sell casual gaming titles that no Kotaku reader will give a damn about for 5$ each - and make a $hitload of money on it. :)

In January I have been trying to see what gaming options my jailbroken iPhone gives me :
[www.bartsnews.net]

Since then GBA emulator has been updated and SNES emulator appeared. There's a ton of user levels for iPhysics. So it's not too bad, all in all. When my PSP battery dies out during intercontinental flight, I have sme backup. :]

@Barts: Exactly. Before the iPhone, the same exact argument was made for the iPod for YEARS.
'But there's so many of them out there, surely they can take a chunk out of Gameboy's market share....'

Not exactly the case now, is it?

Sure they can sell a bunch of Pac-Man re-hashes and the like, but it will take some truly original and quality content to convince actual gamers that the iPhone can be compared to the PSP or DS. That is, without hacking it to play quality content from past systems ;-)

@Agies: Of course that wouldn't work. Let me clarify. I want to play REMAKES of those old games done in the icon interaction style they introduced with King's Quest 5 (I believe). Remember when all the Sierra games changed to the icon things instead of typing? Wanna talk to someone? Click on 'em with the Talk icon.

Good specs doesn't equal good gaming machine. The Iphone specs was more or less matched by the Dell Axim X50v 3 years ago: 624Mhz XScale, 16MB Intel 2700G graphic accelerator (PowerVR based), 64MB RAM, 640x480 resolution, WiFi, touchscreen. The games were visually nice, but the lack of proper gaming hardware made it suck as a gaming platform. Same problem with the Iphone. Expensive toy.

I will stick with my PSP, DS and a proper smartphone thank you.

ds: has controls
psp: has controls
iphone: NO FUCKING BUTTONS!!!

Iphone = touch display and rotation/movement recognition. Which could be used to develop some cool games. (Will that happen, *shrugs*) If people take that approach, I think you could see some really cool games. The DS is King, and will always be sitting on it's throne waiving it's stylus at the populous. The PSP is just a hot girl you met at a bar, got into a relationship with, and a month later realized she's no more interesting than the pimple on your ass.

UMD = epic failz

Cell phones are NOT for GAMING... AND SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OF PEOPLE!!!

DS - Fun, quirky games I like to play while taking a dump.

PSP - Games I wish were on PSN or PS2 games (basically, games I want to play on my TV but the component out is just laughable)

iPhone - Don't have one, don't want one. I want to talk on my phone and that's it.

@raptorsrevenge: What a cluster of useless analogies. I mean, the credibility seal descended with gusto when you ended with:

UMD = Failz.

Or not. Seriously, fanboy much?!

@Agies: I'm making the assumption that higher quality DSPs would be available, you're right there is no point in adding high-def audio to the device without a hardware bump, hence me hoping for it in a future revision rather than some type of adapter for the current model ;)

Wait... 368×207 usable for video???
Oh my gosh! I have perverted PSP! She's capable of handling more than 480x272... let me see... about a year already %-). And it's AVC altogether... Nevertheless, 480x272 is my resolution of choice, period.

@brianwh: but then you wouldn't have a phone ;) and all the other features that the iphone provides.

Just saying for the sake of argument.