Will better mobile games be the death of the video game consoles?
Horn, an action-RPG designed for Android and iOS, is being billed as the action game that tablets and mobile phones have been waiting for. The game has impressive graphics, and does look quite a lot better than the majority of mobile games. But murmurs that this is the beginning of the end for consoles are overwrought, as usual.
Mobile gaming is an expansion of the gaming industry into a more casual gaming market, but it has a long ways to go before wooing gamers away from their controllers and big-screen TVs.
For one thing, touch screen gaming is a poor replacement for a controller.
For another, mobile games tend to be short. Horn supposedly clocks in around 10 hours, which is pretty long for a mobile game but pales in comparison to many console titles.
Horn does look like a fun title. Open levels, monster fights, swords and crossbows, and a soundtrack from Journey composer Austin Wintory.
You can watch some gameplay footage of Horn here. The graphics really are impressive, but I have trouble imagining myself swiping away at a screen during combat.
I suppose there's potential with touch-screen technology to create really interesting combat - swords that follow the exact arc of your swipe, for instance - but the limitations are obvious.
The most popular console franchises like Call of Duty aren't going to translate to touch-screen easily, even if they do migrate to a free-to-play model that lends itself to a mobile business model.
The future is impossible to predict, of course. Mobile is evolving and so is the gaming industry.
We know that the graphics capabilities of mobile devices are getting better rapidly. Meanwhile, touchscreen latency is dropping, and it's safe to say that the latency on future devices is going to make current-gen phones feel slow and clunky in comparison.
Better graphics and faster, more responsive screens are going to push growth in mobile gaming and innovation. But this doesn't mean the end of consoles or PC gaming. Playing on your television or computer monitor is a very different experience than on smaller iPhone or iPad screens.
It's possible that Apple will find ways to integrate its mobile gaming and mobile devices with your home entertainment center, and that could present a new suite of threats for traditional consoles, but I still find rumors of the death of consoles greatly exaggerated. For now.
Horn is being developed by Phosphor Games. Zynga is the publisher. The title will be released later this year on Android and iOS.
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