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Opinion: Spore Origins and the iPhone's growing domination of handheld gaming

How EA Mobile's stellar title is evolving iPhone into a serious threat against traditional mobile games and Nintendo DS

Opinion: Spore Origins and the iPhone's growing domination of handheld gaming

The release of Spore Origins last week marked an important evolution for iPhone. In the face of competition from mobile, Nintendo DS, and even an iPod version of Spore, it was the iPhone iteration that proved fittest. It's a surprising revelation – for the first time, we're witnessing an iPhone game emerge superior to all of its handheld rivals.

Obviously, this places Apple's handset on the map in terms of being a viable and compelling platform. We've known for several weeks now that there's money to be made on the App Store. Sega has been rolling in the dough with hundreds of thousands downloading Super Monkey Ball and other publishers including Gameloft and Publisher X are also reaping rewards.

Spore Origins, however, represents more than a financial opportunity. Here is a game that transcends its parallel iterations to deliver a high quality experience. It's an excellent mobile title, but more importantly it's a fine game in its own right. EA Mobile is succeeding with Spore Origins on iPhone because it created a fundamentally great game that feels native to the device.

Instead of approaching iPhone as though it was just another handset on which to port the game, the company took on a different strategy and it paid off. The advantage of having a larger file size was seized to included nearly twice the number of levels as the mobile and iPod versions. Utilization of the camera for unique creature skins also sets the iPhone edition apart. In short, it's bigger and more fully featured than its mobile counterparts.

While that same claim can't be made against Nintendo DS's Spore Creatures, there's a distinct difference between the two games. Spore Origins feels organic and fun – qualities glaringly absent from its DS 'incarnation'. It's worth mentioning that implementation of touch controls and the presentation is far better on iPhone, too.

All of this comes at a cheaper price. High quality titles delivered at a lower price are sure to attract attention. The example Spore Origins has set should be followed by the legions of iPhone game developers out there: make games that are pure, natural, and fun and then give it to us at a reasonable price.

As more games like this appear on the App Store, expect the market to give more credibility to iPhone as a serious platform. Nintendo DS won't be going anywhere, but unless it has some surprise to counteract the growing momentum of this new generation of mobile gaming it will soon find itself having lost the sizzle of being the cool handheld on the block. It's a point Stuart touched upon in his editorial outlining Apple's surprising push last week to transform its devices into gaming machines.

Nokia learned this lesson the hard way, sitting back stunned while Apple outflanked N-Gage with an army of cheaper games. Nintendo, with its extreme confidence in the face of competition, may head down the same path. Should more multiplatform titles exhibit a higher quality or more entertaining appeal on iPhone than DS as in the case of Spore Origins, then Nintendo will have something to consider.

For you, the gamer, it couldn't be any better, though. The greater the competition and drive to create compelling experiences, the better the game regardless of the platform. And that's all we want, after all.

Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.