Forbes, using its clout as a business magazine, is running off at the mouth again (see Exhibit A) with provocative, but logically bankrupt predictions of the DS being overtaken in the portable gaming market by the Chosen One: Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.

Unlike a lot of riled up game journo’s (journalists) in the business, I didn’t chastise Forbes the first time around. In fact, I agreed that the iPhone and iPod Touch were primo gaming platforms that deserve to be given such credit. I even wrote that perhaps the Sony PSP should be afraid.

Forbes has shown its misguided enthusiasm by erroneously predicted the death of the Nintendo DS with its sensational article, “Why Apple Could Kill The Nintendo DS,” while gaming sites have attacked Forbes in droves, showing their short sightedness in evaluating the potential of the iPhone as a gaming platform… Read More

While Forbes writer Brian Caulfield isn’t a fool and throws around some impressive numbers, it doesn’t change the fact that there is still one big problem working against Apple: its abysmal battery life. Even if I wanted to make the iPhone my dedicated mobile gaming device, it just flat out wouldn’t survive the day.

In business, particularly in marketing products, a single product can’t be everything to everybody. Broad sells don’t sell because people still latch onto the thought that a product can still only do but so many things. And in the case of the iPhone, it’s true. Sure it can play thousands of interesting little games, but between actually using it for its primary function and all of its other handy apps (Google Maps, e-mail, restaurant search, fart noise generators), the damn thing will be dead by the end of the day.

Technically computers can do a hell of a lot things, and in today’s age of wide broadband access, there are no more limitations. My laptop can make phone calls via Skype, it has always been able to play DVD’s, and it can stream live televised events such as the recent Presidential Debate. Despite those functions I still use my cell phone at home instead of Skype, I still watch DVD’s on my HDTV, and I, along with an estimated 57 million people, still watched the debates on cable.

Just because people can do a variety of different things on one platform doesn’t mean they will. Convergent products, despite their obvious convenience, have a hard time dominating any of the additional markets they enter. There will no doubt be a lively and large gaming community on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it will be one that could arguably be larger than the installed base of the DS, but it won’t replace the DS’s installed base. At the end of the day, all it means is there will be a lot more gamers, and a lot of peaceful co-existence.

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About This Author: Anthony Perez

Founder of SmashPad and former GameSpot freelancer, I love covering the gaming industry when it surprises me. Sometimes gaming gets a bit too stagnant, but when a game wows me like Scribblenauts, then I get excited again. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tonyp1222

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