The problem with this poll is that it works just like "greatest movies of all time" polls. People have the attention span of mayflies.

But given that the responses were:

  iPhone: 17%
  Wii: 7%
  Xbox Live: 3%
  PlayStation One: 3%
  Steam: 2%

Then again, if you're an avid fan and/or professional, you ought to be polled on things looking forward. Much respect to the original game developers, but anyone who is in the industry today who is going to focus on the great accomplishments in the 8-bit era are going to find themselves in the same trouble as Nintendo's current revenue trend.

Nintendo Wii units shipped: 89 million

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_conso...)

As of March this year, Apple sold 100 million iPhones.

So let's put things in perspective, Nintendo is an absolutely amazing company in the gaming space and has outsold all their competitors (with the exception of Sony PS2) and has sold far more than Apple across their product lines. I am not saying mobile gaming isn't huge (And perhaps handhelds like GameBoy/DS/PSP should be given their credit here), but to give Apple and Steve Jobs credit for shaping the gaming industry more than the real titans of gaming who have actively shaped it for 20 years? Bullshit.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/250-million-ios-devices-sol...

It's close to the same logic that a pirated game equates to a lost sale, which it does not.

I don't really understand the piracy analogy.

I'm not exactly comparing their purposes but the reasons people buy them. To do a proper comparison you would have to ask every single iOS device owner if they bought the thing for games, as the main reason for the purchase, to compare them with a device that is only good for gaming. You cannot assume to compare purchase numbers between two devices if people buy them for different reasons even if some features of the two products overlap.

It's the same comparison that people keep doing with PCs and consoles. Everybody buys a console for gaming (which is slowly changing, granted) while not everyone who buys a PC does so for gaming.

In fact, I think that apple base turned 100-250 million folks into casual gamers is more influential than yet another console.

I don't think I'm getting my point across very well. I'm not disputing that a large number of people use their iOS devices for gaming, which is good.

I'm just saying that you cannot necessarily compare two devices on a 1-to-1 basis using sales numbers if the two devices are not comparable 1-to-1 in their usage. The iOS devices are versatile in nature and are suitable for multiple tasks. It's not proper to compare every single sale of an iOS device against every single sale of Nintendo's products. You can make estimates and guesses but I don't feel a 1-to-1 comparison can be made nor be fair.

To make a comparison like this I'd rather know the numbers of game titles sold per device. That comparison works for me because the purpose of buying the game is to play it, nothing else.

I didn't. My message is to please use recent figures for the entire platform, not old sales numbers for just iPhones. Also, nowadays Apple sells more iOS devices than Nintendo sells handhelds and consoles. Nintendo and Sony had a head start, they've been passed by Apple in just four years.

From my observations, facebook has had a much larger impact on gaming than iPhone has. I have plenty of older relatives that'll tend to a virtual farm on facebook but won't play games on their phones.

No it doesn't have to be. Miyamoto is unquestionably the most innovative game designer but Apple really changed the industry from magic in a box to hey the 16 year old down the street just made $10,000 with a game he made by himself.

The future of casual gaming, sure. That’s already true, I would say. However, there are a lot of games that are far better suited to be played on a couch or sitting in a nice comfy chair with a mouse and keyboard, and PCs/consoles are much better suited for that. If anything, the iPhone and iPad have only stolen the market from portable devices like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. “Real” consoles are hardly threatened.

While, Angry birds and Zynga brought large sections of population into gaming, their involvement in hardcore gaming is still minimal. I will possibly be downvoted for this, but the amount of research that has been contributed by hardcore game development companies far surpasses the amount that casual game developers have produced. There is a visible differentiator between the two segments of gaming - and it will probably always be there.

"Might" as in I don't know how these AAA game publishers are organised internally. If the console division of Capcom sees decreased profits while the mobile division sees increased profits [1], does that mean that people and capital can get reallocated from the console division to the mobile division?

[1] http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/26/non-mobile-capcom-profits-...

Now, if you're saying that at some point in the future I'll be using my phone for gaming by plugging it into my TV via HDMI and using a keyboard/mouse combo via USB or Bluetooth, then sure. But at that point it's no different than what I'm doing now.