Having sex with an unconsenting rock.

Two consenting adults is very different.

PS: same goes for marriage.

And finally, DVD copies simply translate spoken text and pop them up as digital subtitles. For some text and sign heavy anime, that's not good enough. I have a fansub version of Azumanga Daiho where not only do they translate every sign, but they also pop up some footnoots explaining obscure cultural references, for those interested. Yes, that level of detail isn't for everyone, but for a lot of anime fans, it's quite nice.

Tiger is pretty well supported, and that's 5 years old. And I'll echo the others that the Windows XP thing was a complete fluke, and had nothing to do with MS wanting to support people for a while, but because they did such a piss-poor AND late release of their next OS (Vista), that XP remained the de-facto OS for about 9 years. If Apple had waited 7 years to release Leopard and it had sucked, they would be in the same boat. The reason why Apple stops supporting OSs faster than MS is because their users seem to upgrade a lot faster. Maybe it's a trust thing, maybe it's a lack of complexity thing, I'm not sure. Usually a company will stop supporting previous versions when the install base gets to be a negligable percentage. So blame Mac users for keeping with the times.

Sorry, but the poster is right. Humans and animals alike are hard-wired to enjoy things that are familliar to them. There may be the paripheral fascination with exploring new territory, but by-and-large, humans are very slow to accept new things, and are much more likely to choose the familliar over the unfamilliar. In the right setting, with the right mindset, people can be willing to branch out a little, but for the most part, it's contrary to our nature. Playing a song over and over again, in the background (as radio usually is), is a good way to build familliarity, and thus, a comfortable center for individuals. So, when people go down to the record store to buy some music to listen to on a regular basis, they buy the things they've heard, that being the stuff that DJs have shoved down their throats.

Even those of us who claim to enjoy exploration only do so because the act of exploration itself has become familliar and comfortable with us, but we all have our self-imposed limits.

That's really tough to compare. Console manufacturers make the bulk of their money off of game sales. The consoles themselves are usually loss-leaders, except for Nintendo, who consisantly sell their hardware at a profit or at the very least, break even. If you're comparing sheer hardware sales figures, of course the DS has sold a lot more than the iPhone, it's twice as old, and was a quick seller right out the gate. But if you're talking profit made off of games themselves, it's a lot harder to say. Every person who ever put a piece of software, no matter how small, on the App store paid apple $99. I think larger companies who wanted more front and center distrobution may have paid more (not sure). Apple is sitting back and raking in the profits. So is Nintendo. Both business models seem to have worked wonderfully.

I would agree with the first half of your post, but I would disagree with the second, that phone gaming is not taking off. In the past year, I've seen more and more large-scale developers creating phone games. First the Japanese companies like Square-Enix are starting to make iPhone games because it really works over in Japan, and why not port them to the US? Expect to see Final Fantasy XIII Agito on the iPhone. Now more and more US games are having spinoffs or ports to the iPhone too. Assassin's Creed saw one, Spoor saw 2, Rockstar released a GTA for the iPhone that's getting raive reviews. Civilization, Sim City, Broken Swoard (adventure game), and don't forget the Korean market like Zenoia. And that's just a few of the big boys. You're fooling yourself if you think that the iPhone gaming market isn't taking off. Sure, the innitial price point for iPhone games was far too low for most large companies, but that's already changing. We're already starting to see $20 iPhone games, and that will be more and more common. It's all about supply and demand. Sure, grandma won't be getting that $30 Final Fantasy Agito game, she'd rather get that $0.99 Bejeweled game, then again, S-E will make far more profit on the somewhat fewer sales on their game.

To summerize, the iPhone gaming market is skyrocketting. And it's going to quickly turn into any other gaming market, with high priced games and low priced independant titles. It's just basic ecconomics.

Define what you mean by "serious". Point and Click adventures (Myst, Zork, and the like) I would call "serious" games, and those work great on a small touch screen. I've heard that the iPhone version of Myst is one of the finest out there. Turn based RPGs also make a lot of sense on a touch screen. Final Fantasy and the like. At 60 hours+, it doesn't get much more "serious" than that. I've played a number of really great platformers with great control systems for the iPhone... yes, not as "serious", but yet another genre that I've seen first hand can be done well.

If by "serious" you're limitting yourself to FPSs... then yes, the iPhone is not idea. But Who the Hell limits their deffiniton of serious gaming to "FPSs"? I consider myself a serious gamer, and I don't even like FPSs.

Yes, and at the same time, you'd alienate millions of individuals who don't need a game system, and see the additional controls as a waste of pocket space. The iPhone is already a fairly big device for most people to be carrying around in their pockets or on their belts. More controls means larger size, which means less portable. Most business people would see game controls on a phone and immediate look else-where. Putting dedicated gaming controls on a phone is just a bad idea. Contextual buttons make a lot of sense. Sure, they lack tactile feedback, but they're pretty much the only way you're going to get game controls that actually make sense for a phone to have.

Exactly. Consoles evolve. As much as it is a pain in the ass for consumers, it's been happening for over 30 years, and there doesn't seem to be any signs of that stopping. The DS is nearing the end of its lifecycle, and there are already rumors of a next generation Nintendo handheld in the works. The Wii will probably follow suit within about a year or two more. These days, at least the first half of a new generation will maintain backwards compatability, as the DS and PS3 did, to give time for game developers to ease into new hardware and so that adoption rate isn't disuade by the lack of backwards compatability to larger libraries. That makes sense, and it seems to work. I don't really agree with Nintendo or Sony's decision to eventually kill off BC mid-generation, but it seems to have not hurt them too much. The DS2 or whatever will do JUST FINE.

That's because their based on older control schemes to begin with. New Super Mario Bros is based on a series that goes back to 1980, and everyone grew up with playing it on a DPad. To a certain extent, you have to build a game from a ground with the system's control scheme based in mind. That said, after having played and beaten Soosiz which is very much like Mario Bros, I can say that if done correctly, you can actually have fairly traditional control methods on an iPhone and still have it be completely playable. The reason a lot of ports fall apart is because many companies create "virtual D-Pads" on the side of the screen. The buttons are WAY too small to be precise and they're far too touchy. Soosiz uses big left and right buttons (without an up and down) and a big jump button, but ya know what? the screen is wide enough that it really doesn't detract too much from the view, and greatly improves gameplay.

But if you build a game from the ground up, keeping in mind the characteristics of the hardware you have, you can almost always create something great. No, it may not be THE SAME as a game made for another hardware device, but it might be just as good. Thinking in terms of, "game X wouldn't be good if ported to another system" is really not that helpful, because game X wouldn't have been made the way it was if it was on another system, anyway. Curby's Canvas Curse would have never worked on the XBox 360. Metroid Prime 3 would have have worked on the iPhone the way it was. Bounce On would never have worked on the DS.

Okami to me just distracts you from the fact that the graphics are shitty by making them beautiful and artistic.

Actually, I tend to think the reverse:

Most games distract you from the fact that the designers have no artistic creativity, by spending millions in creating super high-tech photorealistic looking graphics that noone will care about in 2 years. Seriously, ten years from now, Okami will stand out a lot more in people's heads than most of the other 3D games, because the photorealistic games will look incredibly dated, where-as Okami will still look like a beautiful Japanese watercolor. Same goes for Golden Sun.

PS: Waltz of the Moon is probably my very favorite FMV ever, and that was over 10 years old.

Not neccessarilly. There are many games on the DS that hardly use the D-Pad, and I've found very playable control-heavy games on the iPhone, where I don't really even notice after playing for about 5 minutes. It's all about how you use the control schemes you have been given.

The biggest problem with the iPhone is that there's no standard in control schemes. Some companies do extremely well, and some are terrible at it.

Yes, and as good as mouse-keyboard control systems are, console titles (which use simple joy pads) outsell PC games like 3:1. Which either means that people don't care about control (which I would say is false), OR more likely, developers have learned how to utilize what control systems they're given, to an extent that most times, people aren't bothered by either.

It's all about what you do with the control scheme's you're given.

Agreed. Many times, graphics isn't about how advanced your engine is, but how creative you are with it. Still, probably my favorite graphics of all time are Okami, a fairly mid-budget PS2 game that blows away the graphics of most 360 and PS3 titles I see. The creators decided to go in an incredibly artistic direction with their graphics, but did them in sutch a way that they didn't require a lot of horsepower. In fact, the shots of the DS sequel (yes, that's right, DS), is remarkably similar, and the DS is one of the most underpowered devices out there. It's not how advanced your graphical power is, it's what you do with it.

Golden Sun is a dream too.

Not really. Phones and game devices use vastly different technology, and even more vastly different infrastructure. Infrastructure is the most complicated part of making phones. Working out networks, contracts, etc. By comparison, the infrastructure for game devices is a walk in the park. When you make a phone, you're somewhat beholden to the phone companies which hold all the cards. Game hardware manufacturers control their own infrastructures, like XBox Live and Playstation ("home" is it called? I don't have a PS3). Also, the interface designs and hardware functionality is quite different. It's not particularly intuitive to combine a phone with a gaming handheld and not lose a bit of one side in the process. You hold them differently, the speakers locations for each are not ideal for each other, handhelds usually sacrifice some portability for ergonomics, phones must maintain an even smaller form factor. The two are really very different devices. The fact that they have screens and are essentially computers is the only major similarities. The control systems that are typically ideal for handhelds don't really make much sense for a phone. So then you either have tacked-on gaming controls which take up more space than your phone functionality needs, or you sacrifice gaming control to make up for the portability that a phone needs.

That's why contextual control devices like the iPhone are probably the MOST ideal. They're deffinitely not perfect, but they do both things relatively well without sacrificing too much. Now its a up to the game manufacturers to create control systems that are ideal to the non-tactile nature of the device. For instance, I've played a few very playable platformers on the iPhone like Soosiz (which uses large virtual left, right and jump buttons), Bounce On (which utilizes the tilt functionality of the iPhone remarkably well, for control). But on the flip side, Sega's port of Sonic the Hedgehog (which simply places a tiny virtual D-Pad) is almost entirely unplayable. This isn't Apple's fault, it's Sony's fault. Bounce On and Soosiz are both very similar to Sonic, and they play extremely well, so it can be done.