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The thing is, Jobs is still right. The iPod Touch is the best bang for the buck among portable systems. It's only $229 for the new 8GB model with HD display and video recording and compatibility with almost all existing iPod accessories, whereas the DS Lite starts at $129 but lacks internal storage, HD screen or camera and has very few accessories, and the PSP-Go is $179 but offers no accessories or internal storage, and no camera or HD screen.

The DS is largely a "younger" person's portable game player, and not many of its titles appeal to more mature audiences, not to mention the fact that it lacks the same multimedia capabilities of the PSP and the iPod Touch.

The PSP offers more mature titles for gamers but suffers from a control scheme that console and computer gamers would consider "insufficient", especially when you consider that most of its titles are just portable versions of console games. Those games were originally conceived of for systems with 2 analog stick/buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, a D-Pad, and the Square, Triangle, Circle, X buttons (or A,B,X,Y for xbox). It simply doesn't translate to a good experience when you remove part of the controls.

The iPod Touch has games that are developed specifically for it, with control schemes generated from intuitive actions, and while it isn't capable of the same graphics or speed as the PSP (though I believe it's about equal to the DS if not better) the games are designed to be more addictive and fun for short bursts of play. It also has a wide range of titles, from children's games with fluff and rainbows to adult titles with blood and gore, and the ideal part of that is that they cost about $5 on average for a decent game, and $10-$15 for the best games (which far outclass other titles). That's loads cheaper than the PSP and DS titles, and there's no physical media to lose or break because every game is stored on the internal drive.

Then there's the issue of development. The DS and PSP both have strict developer rules, like the iOS is famous for, but they also have extremely high developer costs. The iOS only costs $100 for the right to publish a game, but the developer kit is free and you are welcome to use it to develop as many apps as you like. There is even the ability to insert ads into your apps and games if you want to offer them for cheap or free, so you are virtually guaranteed revenue as long as your game is popular (and most free titles are). The DS and PSP have the problem of not selling many titles, except those from franchises or from well-known and well-funded developers, because people don't have interest in any other games. In a way, you could say that the iOS games are so popular among developers because they've managed to lower the bar for portable game quality in the minds of consumers, so they take less effort to sell than the PSP and DS, which have gamers that expect a minimum level of quality and playability in their games (they do spend upwards of $25 on new titles after all). Gamers on the iOS devices pay $1 for their games usually and play them much more often (though for shorter play sessions) than the gamers on other portable systems.

Steve Jobs first changed the computer industry with the iMac, which made computers cool and personal as opposed to simply towering grey/tan boxes, and also demonstrated the value of a tightly controlled system. Then he changed the MP3 player industry with the iPod, which offered more storage and better usability than any player at the time, and had a design that stood out among the crowd of black and silver. Next he changed the music industry with iTunes, which offered more music than any store or other website with a la carte pricing, something the music industry had never considered as a way of making money. After that he changed the cell phone industry with the iPhone by taking away phone development from the carriers and giving it to the hardware manufacturers, which resulted in giving consumers better phones that the carriers could charge more to use. Honestly, the only reason any of you Android fanboys have the phones you do is because Apple opened up the possibility by changing how carriers deal with developing phones, because otherwise we'd still all have phones that cost $15 to make with 2 inch screens and .5 megapixel cameras, no internet access, no third-party apps, etc.

Now it appears he's changed the gaming industry and even the software industry with the App Store, which offers developers both experienced and new to create niche games and apps that people will actually use for specific purposes, many of which replace hours of internet searches with a simple tap of a button. What next? With the release of the new Apple TV, will we see him change the movie rental industry to move away from Blockbuster and NetFlix DVD distribution to a more streamlined broadband video streaming solution? Will the next iteration include a better wireless system to stream 1080p content instead of just 720p? Who knows? But with Steve Jobs it's hard to tell what he'll do next to change our industries' ideas of what consumers want.


I should note, I'm not a Steve Jobs fanboy, I'm simply stating the facts about what the iOS represents, what Steve Jobs has been responsible for in the past, and that the markets and media are giving every indication that his statement "the iPod Touch is the #1 portable gaming device on the market" is correct, if not in sales then in potential and user satisfaction.

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