In the past year, I have been getting furious with articles popping on the Internet such as:
- Industry Vet Bing Gordon Believes Nintendo Will Go Software Only
- Nintendo’s handheld division “will fall apart”
I’m sick of tired of seeing them. When I see these headlines, I get annoyed since mobile gaming is garbage. This is why I don’t use my iPhone 4S for gaming anymore since the games are boring. It’s also the reason why I have a 3DS and a Playstation Vita, to play real games. Still, some analysts can’t get it in their thick heads that mobile gaming is a fad that will eventually end. So, I’m going to share some crucial reasons why handheld gaming is better than mobile gaming:
- Controls: If you want to play real games, you must have a D-Pad, control stick and buttons. Smartphones don’t have these since they are not designed for gaming. Sure you can use the touchscreen, but it limits what you can do in the game. Also, on-screen controllers are not a solution since your fingers cover up the screen. Not to mention, Bluetooth controllers don’t count, they need to be built in on the device.
- Upgrade costs: With a handheld gaming console like the 3DS and Vita, you don’t have to worry about having to upgrade so you can play the latest games. The fatal flaw with mobile gaming is that Smartphones changes every so often and not all these devices run the same version of the operating system. You will end up spending more just to upgrade so you can play the latest games, especially if you want to do an early upgrade.
- Battery: The advantage of handhelds is that you can play them until the battery runs out and it’s not a big deal. When you start using your phone as a gaming system, your battery will start draining fast. I know since I own a smartphone and the battery starts going down relatively quickly. Once you use your phone to call someone, your might be stuck if the battery goes dead. This can become a big problem if you have an emergency like having a flat tire. You will be stranded
- Game Experiences: If you play any good handheld console game, you realize that it has a lot of depth that will keep you playing for several hours. The problem with mobile gaming is stemmed from Sturgeons’ Law. Since the games are easy to make, the developers put little effort to make a quick buck. In turn, this leads to very unsatisfying experiences which people play for 5 minutes before deleting the application.
Overall, I think mobile gaming is terrible for the fact the games are horrible and it’s a scheme to milk everyone’s money with worthless in-app purchases. Also, handheld consoles aren’t dying any time soon as no real gamer will game only on a smartphone.
If you are wondering about the games shown in the picture: Pocket Monsters Black 2 (DS), Shining Hearts (PSP/Vita), Mario Kart 7 (3DS) and the infamous Angry Birds, which is crap by the way.
I want to shove this post into the faces of all the kids who thought I was stupid for sticking to GBA and DS when they were all nutter butters over Angry Birds/Farmville/whatever bullshit was popular that week.
I can’t even use Facebook on my phone without it freezing half the time, much less play a game for more than 30 minutes. Meanwhile, my DS has been reliable every day since I’ve had it, the battery is good for about a day of gaming (without fudging around with wifi)…oh, and the games don’t suck (pretty important, should’ve started with that one).
LOL, Angry Birds and Farmville being better than actual games? I would laugh in their face since those games are time wasters that one can get bored with. Besides, Facebook games are pretty boring to me since they are like most flash games.
Aside from that, during my vacation in Boston, I used my smartphone quite a lot for browsing while playing some games on the Vita while having some free time. The surprising thing is that my iPhone 4S battery life is bad and it was at 30% after using it for ONLY 3 hours. Meanwhile, my Vita still have a lot of juice left, even though I played with it for a few hours. I can’t imagine how fast the iPhone will drain from playing mobile games straight through. It’s pretty bad.
In my view, consoles and PC gaming is where its at. At least with the PC opposed to mobile games, at least you have a keyboard and mouse, so you can have more ways to control the character. Not only that, it’s upgradable (providing that one has a Desktop computer) and one doesn’t have to upgrade their device every year just to play the latest mobile games (especially when Android rarely gets OS updates on most non-nexus devices).
But yeah, if someone call themselves gamers and only play mobile games, they don’t deserve the title as mobile/Facebook games aren’t gaming… They are more like time wasters.