So in my previous blog I blogged a blog about iPhone games needing better save systems. Well here is a problem I’m not sure the games themselves can solve. Battery life. See my iPhone before anything else, is a phone. I need to be able to make phone calls at a moments notice. I need to check email, and get text messages. These iPhone games are killing battery life. Now on the hardware side of things the iPhone 3G S has supposedly better battery life, but that’s measured against things like standby time, iPod usage, and talk time. It’s not tested for games. And how could it? Every game is different. Tic Tac Toe isn’t nearly as taxing on a battery as Doom Resurrection.
So now you have limited my time with iPhone games, I can’t play them if I know I’m going to be out for hours. If games like Doom Resurrection keep coming out you will have to lump iPhone games into two categories. Two categories we know very well. Casual and (hard)core games. I could whip out the phone and play some checkers while waiting for the bus, or my food at a restaurant, assured that I’m not wasting much battery life. I could play games like Mass Effect: Galaxy while I’m at home. Just swap my nightly gaming on a console for gaming on my iPhone. Treat it like a PSP or DSi. It seems like it defeats the purpose, but at this point in the iPhone’s life this is the caveat we have to make. There are already casual iPhone games and hardcore iPhone games. Maybe a couple of iPhone generations from now the battery will be good enough to support hardcore gaming at the IHOP, but for now the battery is definitely a huge limitation holding the iPhone back from being a serious contender in the handheld gaming space.
Of course….there is one more thing. The iPod Touch. The mysterious dark horse, the iPod Touch has a great battery, it’s not a phone, and it plays all the same games. The problem is what do iPhone owners do, I don’t want to have to own, let alone carry around both devices. I’m also not sure the content is compelling enough yet for anyone to do this, but I could see it happening. I mean I technically have both an iPhone and iPod Touch in the same house. So if I wanted to live this doomsday scenario I could. I just don’t see a good reason for it. Not yet anyways. Doom Resurrection is a great start to the amazing games we could be seeing on the iPhone in the very near future, but I have a feeling games like this are going to be few and far between. I’m also not sure this current round of iPhone hardware will be able to handle games any more complex than Doom. Better batteries, and more power, I’m sure they aren’t as far away as we think. Soon I’ll need a phone to talk on for when I’m gaming on my iPhone.