iPad 2 : A Gaming Console?

Apple has launched the iPad 2 to nearly universal glowing reviews. It’s lighter! It’s thinner! It has a cool magnetic cover now! But gamers were skeptical. After a year of promises about the “next great gaming platform,” the original iPad failed to deliver on expectations.

What Steve Jobs called “the most successful consumer product ever launched” met with very little enthusiasm from the gaming community. While visually impressive and selling 15 million units, the number of quality exclusive games was minimal. From a gamer’s perspective; there was very little incentive to purchase the expensive and heavier iPad in lieu of the nimble and versatile iPhone 4. Yet we can always count on Apple to improve its creations.
The leap from the original iPad to the iPad 2 is no different. What was once a technological curiosity is now a finely tuned machine, one that’s garnering praise from game developers and critics alike. The iPad 2 inherits the same 1024×768-pixel display as the original iPad. But behind that screen is a much-improved gaming machine. The iPad 2 has 512MB of RAM (the original carries half that – 256MB) — and a 200MHz bus speed, likewise twice that of the original.
The iPad uses the Apple-designed AS processor, a new dual-core processor that Apple claims can perform twice as fast as the 1GHz A4 chip that powers both the iPhone 4 and the first-gene rat ion iPad.
While the processor might be the workhorse of a machine, graphical capability is essential for games. The A5 processor promises twice the performance of the first-generation iPad, but Apple claims the iPad 2′s graphical speeds are as much as nine times faster than its predecessor’s. Of course, this increase in hardware performance needs software that’s optimized to take advantage of the multiple processor cores, and so far a scant few titles on the App Store are even attempting to do so. Only a handful of developers have offered updates to their iPad titles to utilize the iPad 2′s hardware. Games like Epic Games’ Infinity Blade, EA’s Dead Space, Gameloft’s Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, and Firemint’s Real Racing 2 are some of the more visually impressive games on the iPad, and these look even better on the iPad 2 thanks to recently released updates.

As developers have only had a brief period of time to develop for the new iPad, in time we should expect games to be built specifically to take advantage of the A5 processor and the superior graphical capabilities of the device. Whether these new games are weeks or months away remains to be seen.
But perhaps the best sign of things to come for iPad gaming is Apple’s improved support for HDTVs and HD video. The iPad 2 has video mirroring, ensuring that once you have connected the device to the HDMI adapter, the iPad will display the contents of its screen on an external monitor. Sure, with the iPad 2′s 4:3 aspect ratio, you may have to tweak your television settings to see the entire picture. But the initial results are quite promising. It’s no wonder that Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, recently told Venturebeat that the iPad 2 is “fantastic for gaming.” Epic Games has traditionally been known for its Unreal Technology and developing the hit Gears of War series for the Xbox 360. But last year. Epic demonstrated their belief in the potential for the mobile platform by producing the visually stunning iDevice bestseller Infinity Blade. Now, other big-name developers have echoed Rein’s early sentiments as other traditional gaming houses begin to take mobile gaming more
The iPad 2 represents not only a step forward for the mobile gaming industry by offering the most powerful mobile platform ever, but the versati lity of its AV Adapter means that Apple is now treading into console gaming territory. Just as you can play Gears of War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on your home television, so can you now play Angry Birds, Infinity Blade, and Tiny Wings.
Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka recently told the South by Southwest Interactive conference that he feels confident that to the rise of mobile gaming. While no one wants to write the epitaph quite yet, the Angry Birds creator has a point: Hardcore console gamers can scoff at the importance of “casual” gaming on the mobile platform all they want, but the millions of purchases on the App Store, the fact that the most talked about game of the last year was on the iOS, and the investment of traditional console gaming houses (like Epic Games, Electronic Arts and Capcom) in the mobile platform suggests that the iPad 2 should be taken very, very seriously by gamers. Console and computer gamers can scoff at their peril.