Apple Gaming Job Opening Less Than it Appears

Apple made a rare appearance on Gamespot's famous Rumor Control feature this week, checking out a buzz that Apple is planning to introduce an iPod capable of playing better games than Brick and Parachute:

According to the engineer, an Apple hiring manager named Mike Lampell is heading up a group inside Apple's storied iTunes division. The group is specifically hiring for "C/C++ coders with a ‘gaming background.’" The engineer says the project in question was described to him as "super secret," and Apple would not even tell him the exact nature of it until he had been hired and signed a non-disclosure agreement.

So is Apple readying the portable console Pippin successor we've all been waiting for? I know I've been hoping to get all the power of a Performa 6116 in my pocket for years now!

No. They're not.

I think this rumor is likely a lot less than it seems. The job in question is "Consumer & Games Partnership Manager" at Apple. "Partnership" is the important word here.

What we're looking at is third-party support for games on the iPod, possibly to be sold through the iTunes Music Store. At most, maybe Apple convinces games developers for the Mac to sell their products through the Apple store.

To be honest, it's a good idea – cell phone-like games would be just fine on the iPod, and it's a way to highlight games from smaller developers on the Mac if they go that route. But there is absolutely no way Apple is bringing out a portable games console.

Why? Because it is a market ably served right now. Nintendo is the juggernaut with the GameBoy Advance and DS platforms, and the Sony PSP certainly has a large installed base (though no system-selling games).

Apple is notoriously shy about entering markets where other companies have the innovation side of things sewn up. PDAs post-Newton, the cell phone market, etc. I really do challenge you to find any diehard portable gamers who aren't seeing their needs met by either the DS or the PSP.

Additionally, the iPod does not and has never had feature creep – the addition of capabilities that dilute the core function of the device. To truly make the iPod a useable device designed for games, the media playback interface would have to be altered.

I started to overthink this and came up with a scenario where the rumored touchscreen iPod could be a DS-compatible platform for games that rely heavily on just one screen through downloadable content, thereby ganging up on Sony with Microsoft's other rival, but it's too ludicrous to consider.

Nintendo is the Apple of games. They're not going head to head any time soon.