What is it with developers thinking handhelds are gonna be on par with the HD consoles any time soon? First, we had rumours pegging the 3DS’ power to be at the same level as the Xbox 360 and the PS3’s (as it stands now, the 3DS is definitely more powerful than the Wii, and is encroaching into the HD consoles’ territory, but to conclusively state that the handheld is on par with any of the two HD twins is just flat out wrong), and now, we have a developer stating that the next iPad, due out in 2011 by his estimation (and if anybody is familiar with Apple’s penchant for annual revisions to their products, they’d know he’s right), will match the Xbox 360 graphically.
Okay.
Michael Schade, CEO of mobile platform developer Fishlabs, appears confident of his claims.
“I think you can expect some time next year to have rendering capabilities on mobile devices superior to the Xbox 360,” Schade said at the Develop Conference in Brighton, during a session entitled “Mobile becomes Console”.
And I believe by the end of the year the ‘iDevices’ could have sold 120m copies, which puts them close to a par with the PS2’s 140 million.
“When we have made it so that someone buys a mobile device to play a game, then the mobile has become a more important platform than consoles,” he added, saying that the smaller screen size wasn’t a major issue.
No, just… no. The iDevices are certainly the most succesful mobile/portable non gaming devices so far when it comes to gaming, but to think that they could at any time rival the consoles, be it in processing power or in user base and relevance, is just flat out insane.
I just wish Apple would come out with a real gaming machine, if only to stop all the Apple fanboys from trying to prove just how cool the iPhone really is for gaming.