Roughly Drafted have got an interesting article of the future possibility of the iPhone (and the iTouch) being competitors to the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable.

At first blush, one likely wouldn’t think of the iPhone as being in the same league as handheld gaming consoles. However, when Apple showcased a half dozen prototype apps at the SDK launch, fully half of them were games. Clearly, Apple isn’t going to be ignoring games on the iPhone.

The most obvious competition the iPhone faces is the leading Nintendo DS and the distant runner up, Sony’s PlayStation Portable. Incidentally, both gaming units appeared on the market in late 2004; the iPhone benefits from being nearly three years younger, and therefore based on considerably more modern technology.

However, gaming isn’t an easy market to break into.

Apple have an advantage here in that the iPhone and iTouch are not sold primarily as gaming devices, and therefore that are not aiming at the gaming market in the same way as Sony and Nintendo have done with their handheld consoles.

For Apple, the games market will be a nice addition to, rather than the driving force, behind the iPhone and iTouch.

The iPhone is in a significantly different class of performance, has far more internal resources for games, and is equipped with a variety of other hardware–from its camera to its ubiquitous (if slow) mobile network to its multitouch high resolution display and accelerometers–all of which have to power to unlock entirely new classes of games and other more serious applications.

As a handheld console, this feature set makes the iPhone a bit like the Wii, with interactive new gameplay features, and a bit like the PS3, with higher performance gaming specs and additional online and media capabilities. Buyers won’t have to decide if they want a handheld game console; they’ll get it for free when they buy the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Further, because Apple is attaching game development as a sidecar dessert on top of a device that is primarily monetized as a hardware sale (boosted by retail and accessory sales, media sales, and carrier revenue sharing), developers will get more bang from their buck and will incur less risk developing games for the iPhone. The iPhone has also already proven itself as a very desirable smartphone, even before the arrival of any native games, ameliorating the worries of a whether games developers should invest in the platform.

The iPhone’s development tools are more approachable to a wide audience of developers already familiar with the Mac, they’re significantly cheaper to obtain and get started with than other consoles, and game distribution will be much easier and more lucrative because Apple doesn’t need to squeeze fat licensing fees out of its developers to make money. In fact, Apple will do best by continuing to give developers those groundbreaking 70% royalties on their software sales, encouraging a wide and deep gaming market to develop for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I do have a guilty confession to make here in that I bought an Apple iTouch a while ago. I’d love to say I bought one with my head, but my heart had a big say in it as well, as the device is a joy to use and sleek to look at. However, I’m not convinced that the device will ever make a suitable gaming replacement for the PSP. I may be proved wrong, but I can’t see how the iPhone or iTouch can provide the all round gameplay interaction with the touch screen interface that a device with a hardware interface can.

I recommend you read the whole article on roughyl drafted, asit does make an intersting read.