Look at the current console generation though...MS and Sony had to absorb big losses for several years before their console became profitable. As a corporate executive, when you see the very fast growth in mobile game popularity, sales, and technical capability, are you going to be as willing to gamble that much money again? As Epic's president points out, how can you even be sure your new console will be faster/better than mobile's by 2014/2015, which is when Sony and MS are rumored to be launching their new consoles? The potential for disaster is high. I'm not sure why you keep saying that. The PC market doesn't work that way.
Surely mobiles are just playing catch up though. If the tech is available for mobiles it surely would be available for consoles too.
If PC software wasn't free... I mean if... um demos only yeah.. demos and free indy games. Anyway if not for these and huge discounts like digital distro, pc gaming wouldn't be feasable either.
Old GUNNS4HIRE has some interesting thoughts on the situation including the idea of considering portables and tablets as consoles themselves.
More reports that the iPad 3 will be coming out sooner rather than later, or in this case early 2012. http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6330108/ipad-3-coming-early-2012-report?tag=updates%3Beditor%3Ball%3Btitle%3B1 Gives me a great excuse not to spend the money on one at the moment. Some of the games available on iOS have been tempting me for a while and it really does have much better support in that department than Android so I don't think it is if I will buy one anymore, more when. Also it will be handy to put my 3 year old daughters games on as it annoys Mrs Grim that she just takes her phone whenever she wants to play something. I just wish they would slow down the refresh rate of the hardware, I am a little put off by the idea of paying £500 for something that will be redundant 10 months later.
Ipad is still relevant. Runs everything fine. Don't fall into that trap that noobs keep whining about. Hell my alienware ultracompact laptop running a core2duo at 1.3GHz is still relevant. The processors these devices have been using are plenty strong. Don't create that inferiority illusion for yourself.
I think this is the first game that I've seen that will only run on the iPad 2 and not other current iOS devices...Machinarium. Looks like it was originally developed in 2009 as an indie game on PC. http://amanita-design.net/games/machinarium.html
Why have they restricted it to Ipad2? Is it for ease of porting or what? I've played this on PC and it's a nice game,
I guess it just didn't run well enough on the A4 chipset, which is single core and has lower graphic capability than things like Tegra2. I think it's supposed to come out for certain Android devices as well, and also the RIM Playbook.
Who knows...that's the "official" story from the developer though. They may just be unsure of what the market will be like for this game and don't want to spend extra time optimizing for lower tier devices.