10 ms·

Steve Jobs and Apple's Influence on Gaming Massively Overstated

130 points by drey 15y ago

ebabchick 15y ago
> treating him like some sort of god who invented anything with an on switch actually, he never invented anything with an on/off switch; he claimed so in one of those 60 minute interviews because it reminded him of death
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  That is incorrect, plenty of Apple devices had an on/off switch. The original Macintosh and LaserWriter, to name a few [1][2]. The quote you were referring to: "ISAACSON: I remember sitting in [Jobs'] backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God. He said, "Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of-- maybe it's 'cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on. The he paused for a second and he said 'yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He said—and paused again, and he said, "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices." [1] Original Mac on/off switch: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/AnOriginalMacintoshBackCaseUNALTEREDMACINTOSH.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/AnOrigina... [2] LaserWriter (on/off switch is on the left side): http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/gallery/gallery_jobs_inventions/laserwriter_f.jpg http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/gallery/gallery_jo...
  - dylangs1030 15y ago
    I find it hilarious he managed to put a little Apple tag-line on an existential crisis (and it worked), "marketeer" indeed. Ups for the stat.
chao- 15y ago
While I entirely agree with the thrust of the article, including that his criticism is all-the-more necessary given that poll was of industry professionals, this really points out the weakness in moment-to-moment opinion polls more than anything. Much like day-to-day polling of presidential primary candidates, an even-handed, reflective consideration doesn't seem to be the dominant force in this type of measurement. To actually consider the point at hand (influence of iOS on the game industry), it's fair to note that this battle is far from concluded. The advance of video games targeting new demographics, as led by the Wii, smartphone and social network games, and how they will play out versus sales of tried-and-true genres on PCs and consoles, is far from over. One could be forgiven an ambiguous stance on the matter. Personally speaking, as a recently retired gamer (that is, I plumb don't have the time these days), my hat is in the ring with Gabe Newell. Game distribution following a publishing model is flawed, and while the industry is just barely waking up to this, Valve seems to be in the best position to adapt as time goes by.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
weaselspice 15y ago
Reality distortion field in effect? I dare say Gates should be higher on the list than Jobs. Influential products results are just ridiculous also. PS2 for me, 150 million consoles and 1.5 billion games sold over 10+ years. Pong, Atari 2600 and SNES deserve honorable mentions.
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
Not that I think Steve Jobs was the most influential person in gaming, but it would've been nice if the author had mentioned that Jobs worked for Atari, where he and Woz built Breakout. Also, let's not forget the Apple ][, which was wildly popular with gamers -- Apple sold millions of them, before anyone had a IBM PC.
- beernutz 15y ago
  Actually, WOZ built Breakout. Steve (as usual) stole his work, and lied to him about the amount of the payout.
  - mayanksinghal 15y ago
    The missing citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29#History_and_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29#Histo... :)
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    According to Walter Isaacson's biography, Steve Jobs was the only one of the two who was employed by Atari. Jobs and Woz both worked days and nights on end to get the Breakout project done. Colleagues from that period say Woz was a better engineer, but that doesn't mean Jobs didn't do anything.
- serge2k 15y ago
  Wozniak actually modified breakout to use fewer chips. He didn't invent the game. Jobs just lied to him about the amount of money they got for the project.
michaelpinto 15y ago
The child who wrote that article is clearly too young to realize that the Apple II was a HUGE gaming platform back in the day: http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/ http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/ "In the 1980's (and into the mid 1990's) the Apple II computer series was one of the premier game systems in the computer industry. Despite it's graphical and sound shortcomings (especially with the 8 bit series machines), programmers always found ways to make the best games possible for the II series. In it's heyday, Apple II supporters claimed the Apple II had some 10,000 programs for it and many of those were games."
- tobiasu 15y ago
  The fact that Apple built general purpose computers does not make the head of the company the most important figure of gaming.
- Radim 15y ago
  Indeed, and where would gaming be without the late night pizzas?! I therefore nominate Mark Angela, the CEO of Pizza Express, as the gaming giant of the century.
  - bpolania 15y ago
    No Radim, you had the whole thing wrong, is not Mark Angela going into the gaming industry list, is Steve Jobs being among the most important people for the Pizza Industry.
- factorizer 15y ago
  Yup the Apple II and clones where kind of a half decent gaming platform then. Except only for rich kids, because nobody else could afford one. At least here in good old europe i would go with commodore or atari.
- blub 15y ago
  If Apple was such a HUGE gaming platform, why was the company completely ignored when it came to major titles? It's only recently that studios have started investing in Apple ports, and so far the ports are late compared to the premium platforms (consoles or PC). In conclusion, Apple II's popularity is an interest factoid, but not relevant to the article. It is barely a blip on the radar of gaming history.
swombat 15y ago
I have played computer games since I was about 6 years old, starting with an ancient text-based nethack clone called LARN. I played (many) dozens of games on the C64 that was my next computer. The first game I bought was Civilization, for the PC. I have bought (a large proportion, at least) and played (many) dozens of games for the PC, everything from UFO: Enemy Unknown, to Populous 2, Black&White, Warcraft (1, 2, 3, WoW), Diablo (1, 2, 2X), Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 1/2/3, Dune 2 (and Dune 2k), C&C, Red Alert, Dawn of War, Total War, Total Annihilation, King's Quest, Space Quest, Flashback, Prince of Persia, Duke Nukem, Quake 1/2/3, Loom, the TSR/SSI rpg's (played through the whole Krynn series and the Savage Frontier series), Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, The Elder Scrolls Arena/Daggerfall, etc. I played them online and offline. I played MUDs till my social life withered to a pale, ghoulish shred of nothingness. I have never been much into consoles, but some of my friends have been, so I've played games (to completion) on the PS2, PS3, the original Xbox, the Xbox 360, and the Wii. I bought games on the XBox Live Arcade, and on PSN, and at the time (before the iPhone) I thought this was an awesome way to deliver games at the right price point, and it was the future of gaming. I think I qualify as one of those "real gamers" - at least I did in the past. Despite this long and varied history of playing games on many platforms, today, I own about 3 games on my mac (HL and clones, Trine, and Braid). I own about 40 on my iPhone and iPad. Arguing who has the most influence is retarded. The unarguable fact is that the iOS platform is indeed having a huge effect on the games that I, a "gamer", play. I look forward to the final annihilation of the console and PC gaming worlds when the Apple TV comes out.
- factorizer 15y ago
  You really believe that Apple TV will annihilate console and PC gaming? That's adorable. Of course arguing who has the most influence in the gaming world is not exactly useful, but arguing that Apple and Steve Jobs had the most is just protype retardyness.
  - swombat 15y ago
    The iPhone, despite (and perhaps because) the fact that it's not a dedicated gaming platform, has wiped the floor with the portable gaming industry. Only fringe people and parents of young children buy a PSP or DS these days. Taking stats from [this article](1), even a successful portable console like the DS has sold only 50m units since 2004. That's 8 years ago. That's 6 million units a year or thereabouts. The iPhone 4S approached that number by the end of launch weekend. I can't imagine there are any gaming companies serious about portable gaming who don't consider iOS their primary market. Hundreds of millions of customers who actually buy apps. You'd have to be dumb to ignore that. In the same way, I expect that if the Apple TV does deliver on basically the same sort of disruption that the iPhone delivered to the mobile phone industry, we will see consoles becoming, perhaps not extinct, but at least fringe. Why buy any console, even a Wii, when your Apple TV already supports thousands of cool games? Of course, this makes a large number of assumptions about the Apple TV. But I don't think they're that far-fetched (though Apple may choose to go in a completely different direction, of course). So, if a disruptive Apple TV comes out, with its sights set on the TV industry as the iPhone had its sights on the mobile phone industry, you can bet your ass that consoles will be a barely noticeable casualty of this battle (in the same way that cheap HD cams, point-and-shoots, and a wide variety of single-purpose devices are being wiped out by the iPhone without even being its target). Apple gets convergence. Any tech gizmo industry where you have to buy one device for each piece of functionality you want is in deep shit the moment Apple makes a move in their neighbourhood. Consoles are one of those industries. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/13/video-game-sales-drop-6-percent-in-september/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/13/video-game-sales-drop-6-pe...
jasonjei 15y ago
From a developer standpoint, the App Store did eliminate the barriers to entry for mass distribution. In order to distribute for Sony, Nintendo, or XBox, you had to go to large publisher. Just as it is with iTunes, any studio, big or large, is capable of distributing on the App Store. Even if Steam isn't difficult to get published, the App Store certainly has the perception of being easier.
jschuur 15y ago
Modern Warfare 3 will probably make a billion dollars before the end of the year.
zerostar07 15y ago
What can you say, the man knew how to market himself, period.
dylangs1030 15y ago
Mostly I agree with the article. But I'm noticing a new trend now with Steve Jobs. For the first weeks after his death, he was excessively glorified (deserved or undeserved is not for me to comment here) by the media and by the grand majority of commentators. Now that some time is past, the new trend seems to be...not renegging on the earlier attitude so much as bringing to light why his innovations aren't quite so universal, or that they are "overstated" (again, while I agree with this article, I'd hardly call a lot of his contributions overstated). Perhaps I'm just being more selective in the posts I read, but has anyone else noticed this?
bodegajed 15y ago
Steve Jobs re-invented shareware through the app store. People are now willing to buy titles from independent game developers. But having said that, I still agree with the author that it didn't get that much impact as much as Miyamoto did to the gaming industry. Maybe that's what you'll get when you ask people to vote for their opinions. The popular candidate and not exactly the right one will win.
danso 15y ago
The author seems to miss the point. The iPhone has had a massive impact on gaming, like it or not. The iPad will too. This is why the new Nintendo and Sony devices may be DOA. I do think that giving Steve Jobs credit as a person is wrong, though. He didn't seem to care much for games. And according to the book, he was against the App Store originally.
- llambda 15y ago
  Exactly. The hardcore PC/console gaming crowd is in for an unwelcome wake up call: the future of gaming is mobile. In fact, it isn't even limited to the future, it's already happening. I think it's fair to say that devices like the iPhone and iPad will be seen as the originators of this revolution. So maybe that group of avid enthusiasts is a little more insightful than the author is willing to give them credit for.
  - moomin 15y ago
    I agree: mobile gaming is the wave of the future. But if you want to know who has affected gaming most since its inception, the answer's pretty much got to be Shigeru Miyamoto. The problem with this poll is that it works just like "greatest movies of all time" polls. People have the attention span of mayflies.
    - danso 15y ago
      Agree completely with you. And to my shame, I didn't read the poll question well enough. I had thought it was about what had the greatest impact in the last 15 years or so. But given that the responses were: iPhone: 17% Wii: 7% Xbox Live: 3% PlayStation One: 3% Steam: 2% All of those are relatively modern. I would easily put the original Nintendo and/or Gameboy before most of those. The poll question is terrible and the respondents have too short a perspective. Then again, if you're an avid fan and/or professional, you ought to be polled on things looking forward. Much respect to the original game developers, but anyone who is in the industry today who is going to focus on the great accomplishments in the 8-bit era are going to find themselves in the same trouble as Nintendo's current revenue trend.
shocks 15y ago
What about John Carmack? He's not even on the list, and certainly has contributed more to gaming than Jobs.
bpolania 15y ago
There's a lot of truth in this article but that didn't surprised me at all. What did surprise me was the arguments against the author, specially those who said that Steve Jobs was more known that other options in the list. Under that -and many of the other- premises the top spot would definitively belong to Bill Gates, since for a long time the best games ran almost exclusively in PC, or because BASIC -that had the snake game or the one with the gorillas throwing bananas- came with MS-DOS and was the first development environment offered free for anyone who bought a PC, with no $100 annual fee and no big-brother curation. Also I can argue against the notion that the future of gaming is mobile, I've been in the (mobile) industry for many years and I came to the conclusion that mobile gaming will always be a niche for a casual gamers, but heavy gaming, the one that pushes the technology to its limit, will be for a long time the realm of the consoles and PC's. The future of gaming is virtual reality, EEG controlling and motion sensors, not virtual potatoes spamming people's email. And this illustrates very much the reality of Mr. Jobs, his products were in many cases very innovative from the consumer electronics point of view, but not necessarily from the technological point-of-view, even the iPod, by far his most breakthrough product, was developed from parts he bought off-the-shelf somewhere. Saying that mobile is the future of gaming is like saying that the iPad is the future of computing.
teamonkey 15y ago
The first thing you have to ask when faced with a survey like this is: who conducted the survey and to whom? The London Games Conference is a high-level biz-dev and marketing conference. The questions were asked to readers of MCV - a games industry business and marketing magazine who are also sponsors of the show. Says the editor of MCV: “LGC is the only event dedicated to examining the ways connected gaming has transformed video games – we will be welcoming 300 industry professionals to head great leaders speak and discuss hot topics including how smartphone games are transforming the world.” http://bastion.gamespress.com/link.asp?i=2097&r=7899&r2=5750 http://bastion.gamespress.com/link.asp?i=2097&r=7899&#38...
shortformblog 15y ago
Every time I read something by this writer on Forbes, I get the impression that it's an angry rant meant to up his hit count so he gets paid more. (He did the same thing with Google Plus a few months back, when he clearly made some comments that showed he didn't understand how the service worked.) If so, mission accomplished. Now how about you give us some real insight, Paul Tassi, instead of another rant about something that makes you angry? It's not that I don't think your argument has some merit, Paul. You're right. Steve Jobs probably gets too much credit for a medium he only had a passing interest in. But you had an opportunity to correct the record, rather than simply ranting about it. A little context goes a long way. As a blogger, it's easy to tell people what you don't like. It's much harder to bring your argument full-circle. If you can succeed at that, it makes your writing essential, rather than a pit stop on the reader's long trip through his Google News feed.
- idspispopd 15y ago
  I went to the article looking for some statistic or a factual observation. I had thought to myself "oh it's Forbes, it must be something reputable." I was, um, mistaken. Take the below snippet, seemingly the only piece of information the article is pinned against. "The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken away after giving answers like these." So it seems his entire article is based on the pretence that the combined thought of these 1,000 people is incorrect.. because he says so. I don't think cantankerously written, for-hits-only articles belong on "reputable" sites.
dmbaggett 15y ago
I helped create Crash Bandicoot at Naughty Dog back in the late 90s. I've been out of the game industry since 1998, but find the industry changes catalyzed by iOS and the app store fascinating. It must be very unsettling for those working in the industry. The survey results were indeed silly, but you have to forgive people a bit for being enthralled by the rapidity with which Apple has changed the game (pun intended). It's not just mobile vs console/PC -- Apple (and, to be fair, Zynga, though I personally despise their work) have also ushered in a new era of casual gaming that really appeals to the mass audience. And, let's not forget, to little kids. With Crash we tried to channel Miyamoto's emphasis on simple game mechanics and fun for all ages. Nobody did more than Miyamoto to make games (industry-wide) fun. (As an aside, though, there are many largely unknown industry figures who have worked very hard in the same way, and have accomplished similar results; Mark Cerny, whom we worked with at Naughty Dog, and who designed or co-designed the gameplay for the Sonic, Crash, Jak & Daxter, and Ratchtet & Clank series certainly deserves a lot of credit as well.) As a now-industry-outsider, it seems to me that Apple's resurgence has had the following effects on games: 1) casual gaming is again dominant; 2) it's no longer clear we need dedicated consoles in our living rooms; 3) one or two people can make a viable, salable game again Naughty Dog has seen their budgets increase from around $1M for Crash 1 to many tens of millions of dollars these days. There will still be a big market for AAA titles with huge budgets. But what interests me most is that two coders in Laos (say) can now make a game that lots of people will buy. Sort of like in the Apple II era, when one or two people could create salable games (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli for a great example); this is a welcome change for aspiring game developers. And I confess I'm happy about the return to casual gaming and greater emphasis on pure gameplay. But if I were Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft, I would be very concerned about #2.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  Thanks for sharing Mark Cerny's influence here...Jak and Daxter really rekindled my love of "fun" games vs. FPS.
cletus 15y ago
I've been saying this for a year or two and I'll say it again: Apple is a huge player in the gaming market already. The PSP Go and 3DS are niche products that absolutely won't reach the sales of their predecessors. This I guarantee you and you can blame the iPod Touch and the iPhone for that. I see a future where the Apple TV becomes a low end console, much like the niche Nintendo currently fills, probably at the expense of Nintendo. I see Nintendo becoming strictly a software house, much like Sega. Nintendo franchises like Zelda and Mario Bros are still valuable. Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple. I'm not a console gamer. I never was. PC games were always my thing and sadly PC gaming seems to be dying. Sure it's still big for FPS titles, MMORPGs and the like but my particular favourites (RPGs and turn-based strategy games) are almost nonexistent. Even my guilty pleasure of the GTA franchise seems doomed (GTA4 took 6+ months to come to PC, RDR din't come at all, I wouldn't be surprised if GTA5 doesn't either). The console market Sony and MS fill is harder to predict. I do kinda think it's seen its peak. Consoles are coming out less often. Mobile gaming and Steam are decreasing the prices people expect to pay for games. The hardware race has resulted in top-tier titles having massive art budgets that I don't think are sustainable in this mobile gaming world. Plus what you can already do with the iPad 2 (in terms of graphics) is pretty incredible. I hazard to think how good the iPad 3 will be. By any objective measure Steve Jobs has already had a massive influence on the gaming industry.
- nkassis 15y ago
  The demise of PC games has been talked about at least since the PS one. I don't thinks it's going to happen for a while. The delivery mechanism on the PC side feel much better than on other platform (I'm completely bias, I even read PC Gamer every month). I do feel that web games have a chance to bring PC gaming to more platform than just Windows. Unity/WebGL/Flash are the future for a lot of genres, AAA titles will still need closer hardware access for sure. I like what sony attempted with the xperia play an android phone with a game pad but, it's sony(who are now tarnished) and it's going to be a niche product so forget good games. On the mobile and iDevices side, I feel their biggest draw back right now is the input mechanism. Touch is great for a lot of things but in gaming it feels a little weird to me in a lot of genres. As for the console, well, until now the big 2(sony, microsoft) haven't seen a need to spend money on a bigger console. They are getting to the end but it's not really a longer cycle than the last one looking at this timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_video_game_console_releases_in_North_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_video_game_console_... Nintendo on the other side has saturated the market for the Wii and needs a new hit or they will die.
zipop 15y ago
Wow, tons of great data this bozo used to support his argument.
apaitch 15y ago
I think mobile games are opening up a new market, not taking over an existing one. The fact that X% of gaming is taking place on i-devices / Facebook doesn't necessarily imply that people don't play AAA devices anymore. The wave of mobile games allows people who don't play games to start - and the fact that you can play off a mobile device means all they have to do is buy a $1 game off the App Store instead of spending $250 on a PSP/DS. It also allows gamers to take their games on the go without bringing along ANOTHER device. So in this way Apple probably did influence gaming more than any other company. That said, it was NOT Apple that got the industry to where it was before the iPhone came out. It was NOT Apple that developed video games from their infancy to the art/science it is today. And at this time, Apple still hasn't interfered into the console/AAA market, which is, in a sense, the foundation of the industry. Apple is popularizing casual games and carving out a new market, which is good. Apple is providing a good way for indie developers to distribute their games to a mass audience, which is also good. But at this point I think it's too early to give Apple so much credit, and rankings like these ones are definitely unjustified. Note: While unjustified, the rankings are understandable, given the craze about mobile/"social" games in the industry.
joejohnson 15y ago
>> Then to give Jobs the top honors over Gabe Newell (of Valve) and Shigeru Miyamoto (of Nintendo) is blasphemy, plain and simple. The author is taking this all way too seriously. Who cares what a fan poll at a gaming conference says? I see this type of tunnelvision with video games/television/movie industry types all the time. Why do they think that their industry is so important? Oh my god, who gives a shit.
PedroCandeias 15y ago
My girlfriend is 27. She has never touched a console and doesn't own a personal computer. She absolutely loves Angry Birds and Tiny Wings on the iphone. Whether or not Jobs should take credit for that is irrelevant. What's important is that a revolution is happening in video gaming and all smartphones and tabs, regardless of maker, are playing an absolutely HUGE part in it.
- vacri 15y ago
  I was unaware that your girlfriend outweighed the preexisting gaming community. It's a casual gaming revolution - see also facebook - not specifically an iOS gaming revolution.
  - PedroCandeias 15y ago
    That was anecdotal evidence of what I thought was the pretty clear and relevant point that casual gaming, from Bejeweled to Farmville to Angry Birds, is bringing video games to a host of people who previously refused to touch a controller. These people may easily outnumber what you refer to as the "gaming community" and, for them, Jobs was the face of the device they play on most of the time. In short, the article sounds as though it was written by someone living under a rock and/or refusing to acknowledge the revolution afoot. Given how everyone seemed to be focused on comparing video game industry legends to one another, I thought it was a point worth making. Judging by the downvotes, though, guess not. Oh well.
mun2mun 15y ago
If Steve Jobs is that much serious about gaming then he would have taken the acquisition offer from Bungie first time, not after hearing that Microsoft also wants to buy Bungie. Source http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-bungie-at-first-how-microsoft-burned-apple.ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-... .If they bought Bungie then there was a chance that Mac would have been a gaming platform not PC or XBox. iOS devices emerging as a popular casual gaming platform is a side effect imho. The credit goes to casual gamers who plays games for time passing. By that same logic one can easily say that Mark Zuckerberg is the pioneer in gaming, in a sense that he brought gaming to 800+ million user.
Bud 15y ago
Here's my rewrite of the headline: Forbes Columnists' Influence Massively Self-Inflated Mine even has the side benefit of being true.
vacri 15y ago
This is just the Recency Effect. Jobs has been in the media a lot because of his death, so people think of him more, much more than those of even a few years past. If Bill Gates had died instead, the poll would have shown the same kind of effect, as he would have been in people's minds as they took the poll. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect
dhugiaskmak 15y ago
Did no one here own a Mac prior to the introduction of iOS? It's a plainly undeniable fact that Jobs refused, year after year, to do anything to make the Mac a viable desktop gaming platform despite developers and publishers begging him to do so. (Valve's Source games [HL2,TF2,L4D,etc], which came out nearly six years after the first PC release, is the exception that proves the rule.) The reason that games are a success on iOS is due to the fact that the graphics support was already there for other purposes. If an extra chip was required in order to enable that level of gaming Jobs would almost certainly have killed it.
dbattaglia 15y ago
I mostly agree with the points made in this article (I grew up on 8 and 16 bit Nintendo), but still I wonder if the majority of the folks at that conference are actually iOS game devs? Would not be surprised at all, the low barrier for entry and high potential for profitability compared to PC and console game dev seems much greater on iOS nowadays.

130 points by drey 15y ago

> treating him like some sort of god who invented anything with an on switch actually, he never invented anything with an on/off switch; he claimed so in one of those 60 minute interviews because it reminded him of death

Samuel_Michon 15y ago
That is incorrect, plenty of Apple devices had an on/off switch. The original Macintosh and LaserWriter, to name a few [1][2]. The quote you were referring to: "ISAACSON: I remember sitting in [Jobs'] backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God. He said, "Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of-- maybe it's 'cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on. The he paused for a second and he said 'yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He said—and paused again, and he said, "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices." [1] Original Mac on/off switch: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/AnOriginalMacintoshBackCaseUNALTEREDMACINTOSH.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/AnOrigina... [2] LaserWriter (on/off switch is on the left side): http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/gallery/gallery_jobs_inventions/laserwriter_f.jpg http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/wp-content/gallery/gallery_jo...
- dylangs1030 15y ago
  I find it hilarious he managed to put a little Apple tag-line on an existential crisis (and it worked), "marketeer" indeed. Ups for the stat.

chao- 15y ago

While I entirely agree with the thrust of the article, including that his criticism is all-the-more necessary given that poll was of industry professionals, this really points out the weakness in moment-to-moment opinion polls more than anything. Much like day-to-day polling of presidential primary candidates, an even-handed, reflective consideration doesn't seem to be the dominant force in this type of measurement. To actually consider the point at hand (influence of iOS on the game industry), it's fair to note that this battle is far from concluded. The advance of video games targeting new demographics, as led by the Wii, smartphone and social network games, and how they will play out versus sales of tried-and-true genres on PCs and consoles, is far from over. One could be forgiven an ambiguous stance on the matter. Personally speaking, as a recently retired gamer (that is, I plumb don't have the time these days), my hat is in the ring with Gabe Newell. Game distribution following a publishing model is flawed, and while the industry is just barely waking up to this, Valve seems to be in the best position to adapt as time goes by.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

weaselspice 15y ago

Reality distortion field in effect? I dare say Gates should be higher on the list than Jobs. Influential products results are just ridiculous also. PS2 for me, 150 million consoles and 1.5 billion games sold over 10+ years. Pong, Atari 2600 and SNES deserve honorable mentions.

Samuel_Michon 15y ago

Not that I think Steve Jobs was the most influential person in gaming, but it would've been nice if the author had mentioned that Jobs worked for Atari, where he and Woz built Breakout. Also, let's not forget the Apple ][, which was wildly popular with gamers -- Apple sold millions of them, before anyone had a IBM PC.

beernutz 15y ago
Actually, WOZ built Breakout. Steve (as usual) stole his work, and lied to him about the amount of the payout.
- mayanksinghal 15y ago
  The missing citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29#History_and_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_%28video_game%29#Histo... :)
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  According to Walter Isaacson's biography, Steve Jobs was the only one of the two who was employed by Atari. Jobs and Woz both worked days and nights on end to get the Breakout project done. Colleagues from that period say Woz was a better engineer, but that doesn't mean Jobs didn't do anything.
serge2k 15y ago
Wozniak actually modified breakout to use fewer chips. He didn't invent the game. Jobs just lied to him about the amount of money they got for the project.

michaelpinto 15y ago

The child who wrote that article is clearly too young to realize that the Apple II was a HUGE gaming platform back in the day: http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/ http://www.angelfire.com/80s/apple2/ "In the 1980's (and into the mid 1990's) the Apple II computer series was one of the premier game systems in the computer industry. Despite it's graphical and sound shortcomings (especially with the 8 bit series machines), programmers always found ways to make the best games possible for the II series. In it's heyday, Apple II supporters claimed the Apple II had some 10,000 programs for it and many of those were games."

tobiasu 15y ago
The fact that Apple built general purpose computers does not make the head of the company the most important figure of gaming.
Radim 15y ago
Indeed, and where would gaming be without the late night pizzas?! I therefore nominate Mark Angela, the CEO of Pizza Express, as the gaming giant of the century.
- bpolania 15y ago
  No Radim, you had the whole thing wrong, is not Mark Angela going into the gaming industry list, is Steve Jobs being among the most important people for the Pizza Industry.
factorizer 15y ago
Yup the Apple II and clones where kind of a half decent gaming platform then. Except only for rich kids, because nobody else could afford one. At least here in good old europe i would go with commodore or atari.
blub 15y ago
If Apple was such a HUGE gaming platform, why was the company completely ignored when it came to major titles? It's only recently that studios have started investing in Apple ports, and so far the ports are late compared to the premium platforms (consoles or PC). In conclusion, Apple II's popularity is an interest factoid, but not relevant to the article. It is barely a blip on the radar of gaming history.

swombat 15y ago

I have played computer games since I was about 6 years old, starting with an ancient text-based nethack clone called LARN. I played (many) dozens of games on the C64 that was my next computer. The first game I bought was Civilization, for the PC. I have bought (a large proportion, at least) and played (many) dozens of games for the PC, everything from UFO: Enemy Unknown, to Populous 2, Black&White, Warcraft (1, 2, 3, WoW), Diablo (1, 2, 2X), Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 1/2/3, Dune 2 (and Dune 2k), C&C, Red Alert, Dawn of War, Total War, Total Annihilation, King's Quest, Space Quest, Flashback, Prince of Persia, Duke Nukem, Quake 1/2/3, Loom, the TSR/SSI rpg's (played through the whole Krynn series and the Savage Frontier series), Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, The Elder Scrolls Arena/Daggerfall, etc. I played them online and offline. I played MUDs till my social life withered to a pale, ghoulish shred of nothingness. I have never been much into consoles, but some of my friends have been, so I've played games (to completion) on the PS2, PS3, the original Xbox, the Xbox 360, and the Wii. I bought games on the XBox Live Arcade, and on PSN, and at the time (before the iPhone) I thought this was an awesome way to deliver games at the right price point, and it was the future of gaming. I think I qualify as one of those "real gamers" - at least I did in the past. Despite this long and varied history of playing games on many platforms, today, I own about 3 games on my mac (HL and clones, Trine, and Braid). I own about 40 on my iPhone and iPad. Arguing who has the most influence is retarded. The unarguable fact is that the iOS platform is indeed having a huge effect on the games that I, a "gamer", play. I look forward to the final annihilation of the console and PC gaming worlds when the Apple TV comes out.

factorizer 15y ago
You really believe that Apple TV will annihilate console and PC gaming? That's adorable. Of course arguing who has the most influence in the gaming world is not exactly useful, but arguing that Apple and Steve Jobs had the most is just protype retardyness.
- swombat 15y ago
  The iPhone, despite (and perhaps because) the fact that it's not a dedicated gaming platform, has wiped the floor with the portable gaming industry. Only fringe people and parents of young children buy a PSP or DS these days. Taking stats from [this article](1), even a successful portable console like the DS has sold only 50m units since 2004. That's 8 years ago. That's 6 million units a year or thereabouts. The iPhone 4S approached that number by the end of launch weekend. I can't imagine there are any gaming companies serious about portable gaming who don't consider iOS their primary market. Hundreds of millions of customers who actually buy apps. You'd have to be dumb to ignore that. In the same way, I expect that if the Apple TV does deliver on basically the same sort of disruption that the iPhone delivered to the mobile phone industry, we will see consoles becoming, perhaps not extinct, but at least fringe. Why buy any console, even a Wii, when your Apple TV already supports thousands of cool games? Of course, this makes a large number of assumptions about the Apple TV. But I don't think they're that far-fetched (though Apple may choose to go in a completely different direction, of course). So, if a disruptive Apple TV comes out, with its sights set on the TV industry as the iPhone had its sights on the mobile phone industry, you can bet your ass that consoles will be a barely noticeable casualty of this battle (in the same way that cheap HD cams, point-and-shoots, and a wide variety of single-purpose devices are being wiped out by the iPhone without even being its target). Apple gets convergence. Any tech gizmo industry where you have to buy one device for each piece of functionality you want is in deep shit the moment Apple makes a move in their neighbourhood. Consoles are one of those industries. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/13/video-game-sales-drop-6-percent-in-september/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/13/video-game-sales-drop-6-pe...

jasonjei 15y ago

From a developer standpoint, the App Store did eliminate the barriers to entry for mass distribution. In order to distribute for Sony, Nintendo, or XBox, you had to go to large publisher. Just as it is with iTunes, any studio, big or large, is capable of distributing on the App Store. Even if Steam isn't difficult to get published, the App Store certainly has the perception of being easier.

jschuur 15y ago

Modern Warfare 3 will probably make a billion dollars before the end of the year.

zerostar07 15y ago

What can you say, the man knew how to market himself, period.

dylangs1030 15y ago

Mostly I agree with the article. But I'm noticing a new trend now with Steve Jobs. For the first weeks after his death, he was excessively glorified (deserved or undeserved is not for me to comment here) by the media and by the grand majority of commentators. Now that some time is past, the new trend seems to be...not renegging on the earlier attitude so much as bringing to light why his innovations aren't quite so universal, or that they are "overstated" (again, while I agree with this article, I'd hardly call a lot of his contributions overstated). Perhaps I'm just being more selective in the posts I read, but has anyone else noticed this?

bodegajed 15y ago

Steve Jobs re-invented shareware through the app store. People are now willing to buy titles from independent game developers. But having said that, I still agree with the author that it didn't get that much impact as much as Miyamoto did to the gaming industry. Maybe that's what you'll get when you ask people to vote for their opinions. The popular candidate and not exactly the right one will win.

danso 15y ago

The author seems to miss the point. The iPhone has had a massive impact on gaming, like it or not. The iPad will too. This is why the new Nintendo and Sony devices may be DOA. I do think that giving Steve Jobs credit as a person is wrong, though. He didn't seem to care much for games. And according to the book, he was against the App Store originally.

llambda 15y ago
Exactly. The hardcore PC/console gaming crowd is in for an unwelcome wake up call: the future of gaming is mobile. In fact, it isn't even limited to the future, it's already happening. I think it's fair to say that devices like the iPhone and iPad will be seen as the originators of this revolution. So maybe that group of avid enthusiasts is a little more insightful than the author is willing to give them credit for.
- moomin 15y ago
  I agree: mobile gaming is the wave of the future. But if you want to know who has affected gaming most since its inception, the answer's pretty much got to be Shigeru Miyamoto. The problem with this poll is that it works just like "greatest movies of all time" polls. People have the attention span of mayflies.
  - danso 15y ago
    Agree completely with you. And to my shame, I didn't read the poll question well enough. I had thought it was about what had the greatest impact in the last 15 years or so. But given that the responses were: iPhone: 17% Wii: 7% Xbox Live: 3% PlayStation One: 3% Steam: 2% All of those are relatively modern. I would easily put the original Nintendo and/or Gameboy before most of those. The poll question is terrible and the respondents have too short a perspective. Then again, if you're an avid fan and/or professional, you ought to be polled on things looking forward. Much respect to the original game developers, but anyone who is in the industry today who is going to focus on the great accomplishments in the 8-bit era are going to find themselves in the same trouble as Nintendo's current revenue trend.

shocks 15y ago

What about John Carmack? He's not even on the list, and certainly has contributed more to gaming than Jobs.

bpolania 15y ago

There's a lot of truth in this article but that didn't surprised me at all. What did surprise me was the arguments against the author, specially those who said that Steve Jobs was more known that other options in the list. Under that -and many of the other- premises the top spot would definitively belong to Bill Gates, since for a long time the best games ran almost exclusively in PC, or because BASIC -that had the snake game or the one with the gorillas throwing bananas- came with MS-DOS and was the first development environment offered free for anyone who bought a PC, with no $100 annual fee and no big-brother curation. Also I can argue against the notion that the future of gaming is mobile, I've been in the (mobile) industry for many years and I came to the conclusion that mobile gaming will always be a niche for a casual gamers, but heavy gaming, the one that pushes the technology to its limit, will be for a long time the realm of the consoles and PC's. The future of gaming is virtual reality, EEG controlling and motion sensors, not virtual potatoes spamming people's email. And this illustrates very much the reality of Mr. Jobs, his products were in many cases very innovative from the consumer electronics point of view, but not necessarily from the technological point-of-view, even the iPod, by far his most breakthrough product, was developed from parts he bought off-the-shelf somewhere. Saying that mobile is the future of gaming is like saying that the iPad is the future of computing.

teamonkey 15y ago

The first thing you have to ask when faced with a survey like this is: who conducted the survey and to whom? The London Games Conference is a high-level biz-dev and marketing conference. The questions were asked to readers of MCV - a games industry business and marketing magazine who are also sponsors of the show. Says the editor of MCV: “LGC is the only event dedicated to examining the ways connected gaming has transformed video games – we will be welcoming 300 industry professionals to head great leaders speak and discuss hot topics including how smartphone games are transforming the world.” http://bastion.gamespress.com/link.asp?i=2097&r=7899&r2=5750 http://bastion.gamespress.com/link.asp?i=2097&r=7899&#38...

shortformblog 15y ago

Every time I read something by this writer on Forbes, I get the impression that it's an angry rant meant to up his hit count so he gets paid more. (He did the same thing with Google Plus a few months back, when he clearly made some comments that showed he didn't understand how the service worked.) If so, mission accomplished. Now how about you give us some real insight, Paul Tassi, instead of another rant about something that makes you angry? It's not that I don't think your argument has some merit, Paul. You're right. Steve Jobs probably gets too much credit for a medium he only had a passing interest in. But you had an opportunity to correct the record, rather than simply ranting about it. A little context goes a long way. As a blogger, it's easy to tell people what you don't like. It's much harder to bring your argument full-circle. If you can succeed at that, it makes your writing essential, rather than a pit stop on the reader's long trip through his Google News feed.

idspispopd 15y ago
I went to the article looking for some statistic or a factual observation. I had thought to myself "oh it's Forbes, it must be something reputable." I was, um, mistaken. Take the below snippet, seemingly the only piece of information the article is pinned against. "The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken away after giving answers like these." So it seems his entire article is based on the pretence that the combined thought of these 1,000 people is incorrect.. because he says so. I don't think cantankerously written, for-hits-only articles belong on "reputable" sites.

dmbaggett 15y ago

I helped create Crash Bandicoot at Naughty Dog back in the late 90s. I've been out of the game industry since 1998, but find the industry changes catalyzed by iOS and the app store fascinating. It must be very unsettling for those working in the industry. The survey results were indeed silly, but you have to forgive people a bit for being enthralled by the rapidity with which Apple has changed the game (pun intended). It's not just mobile vs console/PC -- Apple (and, to be fair, Zynga, though I personally despise their work) have also ushered in a new era of casual gaming that really appeals to the mass audience. And, let's not forget, to little kids. With Crash we tried to channel Miyamoto's emphasis on simple game mechanics and fun for all ages. Nobody did more than Miyamoto to make games (industry-wide) fun. (As an aside, though, there are many largely unknown industry figures who have worked very hard in the same way, and have accomplished similar results; Mark Cerny, whom we worked with at Naughty Dog, and who designed or co-designed the gameplay for the Sonic, Crash, Jak & Daxter, and Ratchtet & Clank series certainly deserves a lot of credit as well.) As a now-industry-outsider, it seems to me that Apple's resurgence has had the following effects on games: 1) casual gaming is again dominant; 2) it's no longer clear we need dedicated consoles in our living rooms; 3) one or two people can make a viable, salable game again Naughty Dog has seen their budgets increase from around $1M for Crash 1 to many tens of millions of dollars these days. There will still be a big market for AAA titles with huge budgets. But what interests me most is that two coders in Laos (say) can now make a game that lots of people will buy. Sort of like in the Apple II era, when one or two people could create salable games (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli for a great example); this is a welcome change for aspiring game developers. And I confess I'm happy about the return to casual gaming and greater emphasis on pure gameplay. But if I were Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft, I would be very concerned about #2.

feralchimp 15y ago
Thanks for sharing Mark Cerny's influence here...Jak and Daxter really rekindled my love of "fun" games vs. FPS.

cletus 15y ago

I've been saying this for a year or two and I'll say it again: Apple is a huge player in the gaming market already. The PSP Go and 3DS are niche products that absolutely won't reach the sales of their predecessors. This I guarantee you and you can blame the iPod Touch and the iPhone for that. I see a future where the Apple TV becomes a low end console, much like the niche Nintendo currently fills, probably at the expense of Nintendo. I see Nintendo becoming strictly a software house, much like Sega. Nintendo franchises like Zelda and Mario Bros are still valuable. Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple. I'm not a console gamer. I never was. PC games were always my thing and sadly PC gaming seems to be dying. Sure it's still big for FPS titles, MMORPGs and the like but my particular favourites (RPGs and turn-based strategy games) are almost nonexistent. Even my guilty pleasure of the GTA franchise seems doomed (GTA4 took 6+ months to come to PC, RDR din't come at all, I wouldn't be surprised if GTA5 doesn't either). The console market Sony and MS fill is harder to predict. I do kinda think it's seen its peak. Consoles are coming out less often. Mobile gaming and Steam are decreasing the prices people expect to pay for games. The hardware race has resulted in top-tier titles having massive art budgets that I don't think are sustainable in this mobile gaming world. Plus what you can already do with the iPad 2 (in terms of graphics) is pretty incredible. I hazard to think how good the iPad 3 will be. By any objective measure Steve Jobs has already had a massive influence on the gaming industry.

nkassis 15y ago
The demise of PC games has been talked about at least since the PS one. I don't thinks it's going to happen for a while. The delivery mechanism on the PC side feel much better than on other platform (I'm completely bias, I even read PC Gamer every month). I do feel that web games have a chance to bring PC gaming to more platform than just Windows. Unity/WebGL/Flash are the future for a lot of genres, AAA titles will still need closer hardware access for sure. I like what sony attempted with the xperia play an android phone with a game pad but, it's sony(who are now tarnished) and it's going to be a niche product so forget good games. On the mobile and iDevices side, I feel their biggest draw back right now is the input mechanism. Touch is great for a lot of things but in gaming it feels a little weird to me in a lot of genres. As for the console, well, until now the big 2(sony, microsoft) haven't seen a need to spend money on a bigger console. They are getting to the end but it's not really a longer cycle than the last one looking at this timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_video_game_console_releases_in_North_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_video_game_console_... Nintendo on the other side has saturated the market for the Wii and needs a new hit or they will die.

zipop 15y ago

Wow, tons of great data this bozo used to support his argument.

apaitch 15y ago

I think mobile games are opening up a new market, not taking over an existing one. The fact that X% of gaming is taking place on i-devices / Facebook doesn't necessarily imply that people don't play AAA devices anymore. The wave of mobile games allows people who don't play games to start - and the fact that you can play off a mobile device means all they have to do is buy a $1 game off the App Store instead of spending $250 on a PSP/DS. It also allows gamers to take their games on the go without bringing along ANOTHER device. So in this way Apple probably did influence gaming more than any other company. That said, it was NOT Apple that got the industry to where it was before the iPhone came out. It was NOT Apple that developed video games from their infancy to the art/science it is today. And at this time, Apple still hasn't interfered into the console/AAA market, which is, in a sense, the foundation of the industry. Apple is popularizing casual games and carving out a new market, which is good. Apple is providing a good way for indie developers to distribute their games to a mass audience, which is also good. But at this point I think it's too early to give Apple so much credit, and rankings like these ones are definitely unjustified. Note: While unjustified, the rankings are understandable, given the craze about mobile/"social" games in the industry.

joejohnson 15y ago

>> Then to give Jobs the top honors over Gabe Newell (of Valve) and Shigeru Miyamoto (of Nintendo) is blasphemy, plain and simple. The author is taking this all way too seriously. Who cares what a fan poll at a gaming conference says? I see this type of tunnelvision with video games/television/movie industry types all the time. Why do they think that their industry is so important? Oh my god, who gives a shit.

PedroCandeias 15y ago

My girlfriend is 27. She has never touched a console and doesn't own a personal computer. She absolutely loves Angry Birds and Tiny Wings on the iphone. Whether or not Jobs should take credit for that is irrelevant. What's important is that a revolution is happening in video gaming and all smartphones and tabs, regardless of maker, are playing an absolutely HUGE part in it.

vacri 15y ago
I was unaware that your girlfriend outweighed the preexisting gaming community. It's a casual gaming revolution - see also facebook - not specifically an iOS gaming revolution.
- PedroCandeias 15y ago
  That was anecdotal evidence of what I thought was the pretty clear and relevant point that casual gaming, from Bejeweled to Farmville to Angry Birds, is bringing video games to a host of people who previously refused to touch a controller. These people may easily outnumber what you refer to as the "gaming community" and, for them, Jobs was the face of the device they play on most of the time. In short, the article sounds as though it was written by someone living under a rock and/or refusing to acknowledge the revolution afoot. Given how everyone seemed to be focused on comparing video game industry legends to one another, I thought it was a point worth making. Judging by the downvotes, though, guess not. Oh well.

mun2mun 15y ago

If Steve Jobs is that much serious about gaming then he would have taken the acquisition offer from Bungie first time, not after hearing that Microsoft also wants to buy Bungie. Source http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-bungie-at-first-how-microsoft-burned-apple.ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-... .If they bought Bungie then there was a chance that Mac would have been a gaming platform not PC or XBox. iOS devices emerging as a popular casual gaming platform is a side effect imho. The credit goes to casual gamers who plays games for time passing. By that same logic one can easily say that Mark Zuckerberg is the pioneer in gaming, in a sense that he brought gaming to 800+ million user.

Bud 15y ago

Here's my rewrite of the headline: Forbes Columnists' Influence Massively Self-Inflated Mine even has the side benefit of being true.

vacri 15y ago

This is just the Recency Effect. Jobs has been in the media a lot because of his death, so people think of him more, much more than those of even a few years past. If Bill Gates had died instead, the poll would have shown the same kind of effect, as he would have been in people's minds as they took the poll. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect

dhugiaskmak 15y ago

Did no one here own a Mac prior to the introduction of iOS? It's a plainly undeniable fact that Jobs refused, year after year, to do anything to make the Mac a viable desktop gaming platform despite developers and publishers begging him to do so. (Valve's Source games [HL2,TF2,L4D,etc], which came out nearly six years after the first PC release, is the exception that proves the rule.) The reason that games are a success on iOS is due to the fact that the graphics support was already there for other purposes. If an extra chip was required in order to enable that level of gaming Jobs would almost certainly have killed it.

dbattaglia 15y ago

I mostly agree with the points made in this article (I grew up on 8 and 16 bit Nintendo), but still I wonder if the majority of the folks at that conference are actually iOS game devs? Would not be surprised at all, the low barrier for entry and high potential for profitability compared to PC and console game dev seems much greater on iOS nowadays.