Apple's Steve Jobs A Bigger Influence To Gaming Than Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto: Simply Baffling
If this upsets you, don't worry. You're not alone.
It's become increasingly difficult to denounce Apple and its contribution to the video game industry.
Not that anyone should. Steve Jobs and his talented engineers in Cupertino are chiefly responsible for putting smart phone games on the map, with a series of wonderful devices that play host to such mega hits as Angry Birds and Infinity Blade. Nokia got it wrong with its deceased N-Gage. Apple, meanwhile, got a heck of lot right with the iPhone.
This news that Steve Jobs is more influential than Nintendo, well, that makes us a bit sad.
No, we didn't make that up. This comes from a London Games Conference survey of 1,000 people who work within the video game industry, who filled out a questionnaire ahead of the event's November 10 start.
Of those polled, 26 percent feel Steve Jobs has had the biggest impact on gaming. Valve's Gabe Newell followed him with 16 percent, while Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto grabbed seven percent, Tim Berners-Lee four per cent and Mark Zuckerberg (Really?) three per cent.
Allow that to sink in. Jobs and his company, despite not releasing games for the iPhone and iPad, somehow beat Miyamoto, one of the most talented video game designers the world has ever seen, the same guy who gave us Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong, the same man that inspired an untold number of folks to create their own games. Just a measly seven percent? And what's Zuckerberg doing on this list? We seriously doubt the Facebook king had games in mind when he created his social networking website several years ago.
But wait, it gets a bit worse. Seventeen percent of those participants voted the iPhone as the number one product that shaped games, followed by the Wii with seven percent, Xbox Live with three percent, the original PlayStation with three percent and Steam with two percent, which ultimately begs the following question: who are these people?
Seriously, do they develop for iOS exclusively? What about the original NES, the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2? Didn't Sega contribute just as much with the Genesis?
Obviously, this group doesn't necessarily speak for the population at large, but the results are a bit unsettling nonetheless.
Most importantly, it makes us feel like old men, waving our canes in the air and complaining that the younger generation doesn't know a thing about gaming history. We'd be quick to remind them that when Apple was pushing personal computers upon the masses, Nintendo was busy salvaging the damaged video game industry. It was Mario, not Angry Birds, that pulled gaming from the fire.
What we don't like is the suggestion that such results are a sign of the times, and that over the next several years, a new generation of gamers will associate their favorite hobby with Apple, and not old stalwarts like Nintendo, Sega and Capcom.
Please, give us a moment to wipe away some tears.
