iPhone: Not the Future of Gaming

Tech writers raised much ballyhoo regarding the adoption of the iPhone as the preferred gaming device of the masses.  There is one problem with this:  the iPhone is simply too expensive.  Apple sells their latest phone at $650 as the base price (additional storage raising the price in $100 increments).  The iPhone 5s pushes approximately 115 GFLOPS of graphical power for that amount of money.  The forthcoming PlayStation 4 on the other hand delivers 1840 GFLOPS for $400.  The PlayStation 4 provides more value for the dollar compared to an iPhone 5s.  Other devices beat it or are at least competitive with it.  I've assembled a table to display relative GPU efficiency of devices:

Gaming Efficiency
Device	iPhone 5s	PlayStation 4	Xbox One	3DS	Wii U	Lumia 521*	Vita
Cost	$650	$400	$500	$170	$300	$150**	$200
GFLOPS	115	1840	1230	4.8	352	19.2	51.2
GFLOPS per dollar	0.177	4.6	2.46	0.0282	1.173	0.128	0.256

*Assume it runs Adreno 305 GPU.  There should be similar Android phones in that price/performance range.
**Nokia/Microsoft cut the price to $100 recently, but they may be taking a loss and the nature of cell phones means a new model will be out next year.  So, $150 makes a good base price for comparison.
(Source for device GFLOPS:  http://kyokojap.myweb.hinet.net/gpu_gflops/)

With a voice and data plan, the iPhone 5s costs a user about $1,000 per year.  A typical family can't afford to give their children iPhones purely for gaming.  The iPhone 5s is so expensive that for the same price a person could buy a $50 pre-paid basic phone, a PlayStation 4 or desktop computer, and avoid a monthly cell phone bill.  Phone carriers subsidize the cost of the phone as part of the monthly bill (taking money from their standard plans to pay for the phone), but the costs are still too high for most families.

Additionally, a new iPhone comes out every six months to a year.  Keeping up with that pace drains the finances of the average consumer.  Consoles typically last at least five years before a replacement shows up and used games allow players to avoid $60 lemons.  Even copies of brand new console games drop after a while (see Greatest Hits versions of games on PlayStation).  PC gamers can upgrade graphics cards and make use of Steam sales to purchase games cheaply.  The iPhone is a money sink that practically requires cheap games to make up for the high costs of ownership.  And cheap games are not necessarily good games despite the hype for indie and mobile developers.  Not to mention that some mobile games push downloadable content heavily, sometimes costing over $100 to obtain every feature in a game.

GFLOPS aren't the be-all and end-all of gaming, but even in other areas the iPhone is lacking.  Fast-paced games require buttons; a touchscreen isn't good enough.  Using third-party controllers won't work well because developers would need to plan for multiple input schemes (such as one controller which includes shoulder buttons and another that doesn't).  Despite its far lower GFLOPS, the Nintendo 3DS at least contains buttons allowing for fast-reflex games and every developer can assume they are present during the development cycle.  The iPhone also does not allow for external SD cards or the swapping of batteries whereas far cheaper smartphones from competitors do.

Expensive smartphones and data plans have their uses, but their total cost of ownership is far too high to function as dedicated gaming devices.  They could be casual gaming devices, but casual gaming devices don't need to cost $650 and push 115 GFLOPS.  If your job, if you have one, doesn't involve constant communication, then you probably shouldn't buy something like an iPhone.  At that point it's just a toy and there are cheaper and better toys out there.