News roundup: iPhone 5S/C and PS Vita TV discussed

Hello and welcome to Pocket Gamer.biz's video news roundup of the week. And it's the week ending Friday the 13th of September. We've got through almost most of the day without anything terrible happening, so that's good. I've been on holiday for the last kind of 10 days or so, so I myself have been catching up on the news this week. I guess the big news in the industry has has been the much expected um kind of announcement of iPhone 5 in terms of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. Um kind of hard to know which is the most exciting of these really. Um I guess iPhone 5S is kind of what we expect from this uh this cycle of the iPhone hardware. We've got a not an iPhone 6, we have a upgraded iPhone 5. Um few interesting kind of elements there. The

No one seems to know exactly why we've got a 64-bit chip and what that actually means. It's kind of the same thing I remember when the when Intel had this big thing about 64-bit CPUs. Um And it was a big kind of marketing ploy type thing, but actually no one could really tell you exactly why 64-bit kind of was needed in terms of kind of running anything better than you already had it. I guess similar thing with phones or or even more so with phones. So I guess the more the more interesting kind of part of iPhone 5S is the is the fingerprint um kind of sensor. Um Again, uh interesting for consumers I guess as as people get more worried about privacy, but I'm I'm sure we'll have a few stories about how it doesn't work very well. Um Because it's pretty well known bio biometric factor that about 7% of the population don't have fingerprints anyway. So manual workers obviously wear them off. And and I guess there'll be some interesting things where

um because although fingerprints are individual, there is a Excuse me, a genetic component. So I guess we'll find some interesting things with identical twins opening kind of opening each other's iPhones. And I'm imagining all manner of funny stories based around that. Um And I guess the other the other thing is a a slightly better range of colors for the iPhone 5S. But bringing on to colors, that's obviously where the iPhone 5C um really kind of I guess comes up trumps for people who who like different colored phones. So I guess the the C is the is the is the interesting letter in the sense that it's never Apple hasn't hasn't specified exactly what the C meant. So lots of people have taken the opportunity to obviously suggest it's cost cuz it's the cheaper of the of the iPhones. Um and there's been some supposition that it's C for China. Um and of course that being the case,

lots of people have been kind of asking this week did was the Chinese market very interested in this cheaper iPhone? And some people even before we get to the answer to that question have actually said, "Well, why Apple's never said the iPhone C is is was developed for the Chinese market." So you're kind of hitting them over the head with a stick that they've never kind of said that's what it's for. They're just having a more expensive iPhone, the S, and the and now a cheaper range, the C. Which is kind of a fairly standard consumer electronics kind of price differentiation. Um and kind of interestingly, what they've actually done in the Chinese market, so if you're buying the the iPhone in China, the iPhone 5S is actually slightly more expensive than the iPhone 5 would have been. And so the iPhone 5C, while cheaper, is kind of nothing like as cheap even as its US um dollar price. And to make matters even worse, in China most people don't buy phones through um an operator. I.e.

they they the price isn't isn't um subsidized with a say a 2-year contract. So in the States, the iPhone 5C is $99 with a 2-year contract. In China people tend to buy hardware um kind of unlocked as as you know, just as as as hardware without without worrying about the contract. And even when Chinese operators do subsidize the the price of hardware, they tend to subsidize the monthly cost you pay rather than the hardware itself. So um we'll see. We'll see. I mean China is a is a is a as we always say an interesting market. And um but it's it's it's like a two sides of a coin I think. So China is is is Apple's second biggest market after the US. I mean maybe it's not surprising when it has four times the population and is rapidly developing. Um but equally Apple is um or I the the iPhone is a tiny part of the of the Chinese ecosystem. The Chinese phone

ecosystem has has increased massively on the back of Android because you can sell um devices for for Okay, so $600 devices or you can sell $100 devices. And obviously Android is an open system. Something Keith actually had a had a good opinion piece about this week that's saying it's not really about the hardware so much, it's that um with Android a lot of the Chinese OEMs have their own stores, they have their own they obviously can can have their own pre-installed apps, they can have their They can have their own branding on on those Android devices. Something Apple is is I would say never, but maybe we should say highly unlikely to do unless it does some big deals with with something like China Mobile, which is the biggest mobile network in the world and something that and a company that Apple has still not done a deal with over officially releasing iPhones in China. So that one's going to kind of bubble on for a while I think. I guess the good news in general for for the industry and and game developers is

a slightly cheaper iPhone suggests you're you're going to have a slightly larger market. So some people who perhaps didn't buy the the top end device um will will will upgrade quicker to a slightly cheaper device. Um So we'll keep our eye on that one as that progresses. But I guess the still the kind of bubbling under story, and I guess it's the story that will be bubbling under for the next few months as we come up to the release of the new games consoles, so PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is where these what I call unconsoles fit into the the picture. And I guess we've had um a a move which may be substantial from Sony, which has has kind of been picking up some momentum on the PS Vita, it's its handheld device, which is a lovely device and has Sony's been working hard to get support from indie developers, but hasn't The device itself hasn't sold very well at all cuz why would anyone buy a a dedicated gaming console now, a

portable console at least, when you have a an iPhone 5 or a Galaxy S4? Um so Sony being in its slightly Sony-ish way has has announced they or showed a concept video for what it calls PS Vita TV, which is effectively a $99 console microconsole unconsole, whatever you want to describe it, that plugs into your TV um and uses a a standard Sony dual stick controller to control the games. The games are PSP, PS Vita, and some earlier PlayStation games. That's at least that's what they're saying. And it will have compatibility with PlayStation 4. Um Sony being Sony, it's been saying this kind of stuff for a number of years, it's fair to say. I mean I remember back in the days of PlayStation 2 when the PlayStation 2 chip was going to be integrated into into set-top boxes. Something that never happened at any scale at all. And similar things have been said about PlayStation 3. So we'll

see if it actually happens. At the moment it's just announced for Japan. There's been quite a lot of uncertainty um whether it will actually come out be released in in the US or or Europe. And my kind of view is I kind of think Sony is saying obviously technically it can do it. Um whether it actually would make sense while it's launching a PlayStation 4 console to kind of say, "Well, you can spend buy the big massive console for, you know, $500 or this kind of weird one for $99 that doesn't play the games, but has some interaction with the PlayStation 4." I think that's got a confusing medium message marketing message. So we'll we'll await to see where that happens. But I think it it does suggest um the console market, the fragmentation that's going on in the console market, and and how these companies now are they used to have a very obvious thing to do. Used to every new console was the games are high high resolution graphics, better kind of audio, which is a more

console-like experience we could call it. And now I think the um that kind of upward lift every 5 years has has completely been exploded. So while there are still people who who prepared to buy a expensive $500 console to play Call of Duty, pretty much that that a large majority of that market now, particularly the the kind of the late adopter market has been hollowed out by mobile devices. And whether they want living room gaming anymore is is really I think open to question. I think a lot While it will never go away, I think a large proportion of people's time now is spent on mobile devices and playing Clash of Clans or or you know, Candy Crush Saga. Or and I'm sure Call of Duty will eventually turn up. But whether we want to do that in front of our TV most of the time, I think that's open to question. So um that was the news this week. Catch us next week when I'm sure there'll be lots more news. Bye.