Right now, there's a special event going on at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. According to Engadget, it's a fairly small event consisting of about two to three hundred media personnel, and the big thing that I've been predicting for a while has come true:
Games for the iPod
I had been talking about the iPod as a game development platfom ever since the release of the color-screen iPod with my colleagues -- most scoffed at me, saying that Steve Jobs hates videogames (I still have no idea where this comes from). As a casual game platform, I find it to be serviceable -- you have a scroll wheel, you have 5 buttons that can take input. While I doubt anyone will be playing complex button mashers like Super Street Fighter anytime soon, casual games like Tetris and Solitaire should be pretty easily available. The price for the games? $4.99, downloadable through the Apple Store. Hopefully we'll see a renaissance in game development as more indie developers go through Apple as content publishers instead of the big ones, who likely will avoid this market or attempt to compete with their own services.
Jobs also announced new improvements to the iPod (new headphones, 6.5 hours of battery life) at a lowered price $249 for a 30GB iPod, $349 for an 80GB iPod. The iPod nano is being revised in aluminum and colors: with the 2GB available in aluminum only for $149,
4GB nano in blue, pink, green silver for $199, and the 8GB in black only for $249.
There's a second generation iPod shuffle only $79, having a capacity of 1GB, and includes headphones and dock.
The iTunes video store will now be distributing video at 640x480 resolution, and movies will now also be available -- $9.99 for older movies, and $12.99 for new movies. They'll be available on the same day as the DVD release.
And the last little item being introduced is the iTV, a flat mini looking device designed to be the interface between your TV and your computer. It's not being officially announced until 1st quarter 2007 (and likely under another name). There's no power brick attached to it, with the following spec list: 802.11 wireless, USB2.0, Ethernet, HDMI connector, component video, analog audio RCA, Optical Audio, and comes with the little white Apple remote. Can be hooked into receiver or directly into the TV. It's very FrontRow like in its features and will be available for $299 in 2007.
The iPod got a tiny refresh in capabilities but no change in design, which leads me to believe that they'll likely reveal a new design in January at MacWorld. The nano and the shuffle both underwent extreme changes in look and feel, which I suspect will do well for those products. The only question that remains now is when a full screen video iPod will make its debut.
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