Smartphones: consoles or not?

Smartphones: consoles or not?

We all love smartphones. They access the internet and send SMS messages, what more do we want? Maps, books, file browsers and calculators, are all there in different sizes and shapes in the app store.

 But a few days ago at the Tokyo game show, TGS for short, they revealed 715 games to be made by next year. What has this got anything to do with smartphones, you say? 507 of these games were for smartphones! That is about 71%

 This isn’t good.

34 Titles were revealed for the 3DS, 5 for the Wii, 2 for the Wii U, and apparently the DS is considered dead this year. This is also terrible, but what is more terrible is the percentage of games coming for smartphones.

  Since when was a Smartphone a gaming console? I still remember the old days when I used to put a Game Boy and my Nokia 5200 in my handbag to go and have a walk with my parents. The fact that my mobile can take pictures and sends it to the laptop through Bluetooth made us so happy that we didn’t have to worry about our ever-diminishing battery of the old digital camera. Nor did we have to look for a shop that can make the film thing a real picture because most of the shops were closing. And now, less than a decade has past and they want to remove even the 3DS and PSP and PS Vita from the real purpose that they were made for: playing games!

 And as if Smartphones can play games that well! They lack everything a real video game has. They are for casual gamers, not us. They are Flash games that you play on the internet!! Not that all flash games are bad. I have enjoyed most of those that I play on the laptop. The Guardian 2 and Epic Battle Fantasy should be real Video Games. Some physics games are really enjoyable, even on Smartphone. Cut the rope, and BMX Moto, and such are great games. But they are just to make you wait for something in the car or bus, etc. They are not the hardcore games, and they don’t have experience. When RPG goes into a smartphone, it isn’t great either. It becomes like a Facebook game in order to make the best zoomed in graphics and still have elements of an RPG. That ends as a fail. Exceptions are low graphics emulated or Zelda-based games. Not all of them though, like that rip-off “Zanda” on iOS isn’t a game at all. Yet it won awards. So a Smartphone can play a truly epic game? Can we see a real Zelda game in the future?

  The answers are no. And even if they do happen, real gamers shouldn’t recognize a Smartphone as a gaming console. Not because of the touch screen (The DS is the best pocket console ever) but because of its style, and lack of physical buttons.