Apple is expected to begin shipping a new game-playing tablet computer in March.
Set to be unveiled later this month, the Wall Street Journal says (via AFP) the device will let users watch movies and TV shows, go online and play games.
Boasting a 10-11 inch touchscreen and rumoured to be named "iSlate," "iPad" or "iTablet," the computer could carry a $1,000 price tag, according to analysts.
Piper Jaffray & Co analyst Gene Munster also said that the device may support the 100,000-plus applications currently available for Apple's iPhone.
So does this mean Apple are going to start taking games seriously? My next Mac will have the power to run Windows and that'll be straight on (albeit reluctantly) once the design stuff is loaded up so I actually have a nice wide choice of new games to play. No more second-rate FPS using a pad and in low definition. No more overly expensive games that profit Microsoft as much as the game developers. However with a necessary but annoying purchase of Windows directly because of Apple's attitude.
Apple could have seriously got into the games market before the Playstation, but they didn't. They could've done so again before the Xbox and they still didn't. It was believed to be Apple's desire to remain business orientated but then they brought iMacs and OSX, both clearly aimed at the home market. Colourful and unneccesarily fancy that wasn't required by the professional community. But still the company refused to take games seriously.
I know Steve Jobs is a music and movie fan, but someone should've have stood up to him and explained that he's continually misunderstood games and on this subject he's simply wrong. When Apple wants to enter a market, whether it's phones or music players or online music and movie services it's proved pretty astute but with games they've unbelievably never cared.
I guess there's no 'missing the boat' when it comes to games as they'll be around forever now, and console makers have shown time and time again, new companies get involved and old ones die off. So is this new product Apple's push into the market? I was beginning to think the cloud-computing technological jump would possibly suit their style of doing things.
Or maybe Steve Jobs has to disappear before Apple are free to join the games industry.
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