Apple just announced the iPad 2, and it looks pretty sweet. It’s thinner, lighter, and faster than the original iPad, and its better GPU means developers can make even more impressive games for it. Considering the iPad is already a formidable gaming platform, with many developers putting serious muscle behind iPad games, this raises a very good question: Is the iPad a gaming device?
No. No, it isn’t. But we can still discuss it. Friend site 2D-X has broken out into a heated argument over whether the iPad is or is not a gaming device. You should definitely join the fray, and add your own insights as to whether the iPad is a gaming device below. But here’s why it isn’t, and why if you disagree, you’re wrong.
I define a gaming device as a piece of electronics designed with gaming as the primary function. It can certainly have other uses, but at heart it was built to play games. The PlayStation 3 is a gaming device. The Nintendo 3DS is a gaming device. Even those crappy old Tiger Electronics handhelds were gaming devices. A PC, however, is not a gaming device (although you can play more games on it than on the other three devices combined), because it wasn’t designed with gaming specifically in mind. Gaming’s a great function, but it’s not the primary function.
Even if you built a gaming computer, with performance components in mind for getting the best framerate out of your games, it’s not strictly a gaming device. Microsoft and Intel didn’t develop their OSes and CPU architectures primarily for gaming. The hardware wasn’t conceived with gaming in mind as the main purpose. Of course, with ATI and Nvidia graphics accelerators, at least one component in your PC might have been developed mainly for gaming, but it doesn’t change the fact that your PC is a multi-use system, good for work and play, games and movies, web browsing, communications, and so on.
These days, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have tons of non-gaming features. They can access online video sites. They can send messages. They can video chat. The PS3 can play Blu-ray discs. But they’re still gaming devices, because they were built from the ground up with gaming in mind as the primary function. The other features are there and they’re great, but when the main interface is a gamepad and the majority of the software available consists of video games, it’s a gaming device.
The iPad was built from the ground up to be a multi-purpose device. It’s a media player. It’s an ebook reader. It’s a web browser. And, yes, it’s a device that can play games. It was made to do a lot of different things, and while gaming might have been in mind, it wasn’t close to the top of the list.
The Sony Xperia Play might be the best category-blurring product in this argument we’ve seen yet, not the iPad. It’s a Sony Ericsson smartphone, but it also is “PlayStation Certified,” with downloadable PlayStation games and a slide-out gamepad. While it’s obviously a smartphone as well, it’s clear Sony developed it with gaming in mind as one of the most important features. Therefore, while the lines aren’t that clear, I’d have to say it’s a gaming device.
What do you think? Am I full of shit? Discuss below.
