What Happened to the Apple-Bandai Pippin?
Video games already are one of the largest entertainment markets out there. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have controlled the market for the last two decades. We have the Playstation series, the Xbox, and the multitudes of Nintendo consoles. Where does a company like Apple factor into this? in recent years, we have seen the iPhone take on personal gaming in direct competition with the Sony PSP, but Apple had already made steps into the gaming market with the Apple-Bandai Pippin.
Nobody really remembers the Pippin. The goal was to create a CD-based system of personal entertainment that could plug into any standard television set. It sounds a whole lot like a console system to me. However, with an initial cost of $599 USD resale, the unit was branded too expensive for a console. To put this in perspective, the N64 sold for a paltry $199 USD on intial release. Keep in mind that when the Pippin was being developed the Nintendo N64 wasn't even on the market in Japan yet.
The problem with the system was not in its design, which was more akin to a stripped down PC than the typical gaming console. (To me this sounds like the Miscrosoft X-Box 360.) In 1994 when Apple was engineering the Pippin one could not imagine the wonders of the gaming world in even 10 short years. I say that it is time for Apple to revisit the Pippin idea.
Being that right now there is quite a lull in the rumors flying around, a new system from any of the big three (Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony) this would be a perfect time to start on the project. Apple certainly has the market visibility and clout to pull off such a venture. Not to mention the intel chips being put into all new Macs and the present. The Pippin had a tiny little PowerPC chip capable of only 66 Mhz.
If Apple were to put some real time and energy into a dedicated gaming console we might actually get something pretty cool. Imagine all of the research going into control schemes nowadays at Apple being transferred into new gaming control schemes. Even the Pippin had a mega-neat track ball built right into its controller.
So Apple, man up and make me some games. I don't think that I am alone in this plea. Don't get me wrong, I love the X-Box 360, but Microsoft is just such a huge organization that nothing it does goes right. It took almost 3 generations of Xbox to actually get a (mostly) bug-free product.
I'm crossing my fingers and praying to the electronic gods that be. I'm ready to return to the days of Apple gaming glory.
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Comments
Apple is great at finding a new way of doing something, but I’m not so sure they’d be able to make something that effectively competed against the gaming consoles. Unless they did it differently (perhaps like the iPhone has been a backdoor into gaming).
What glory days of Apple gaming are you thinking of?
I was thinking about the days back when Apple was the leading company in computer entertainment. I’m talking about Nanosaur, Vector Tanks, etc etc.
A Mac Mini already has more than enough gusto to do just about the same work as an xbox.
Does it matter who makes the games machine you’re after?
I mean, what is it that makes you wish Apple did it instead of the others? They’re far enough out of this market that they’d have to do some catching up. And it’s a cut-throat business with small margins.
Let’s be honest though. The kind of thing I’m proposing would be on a monumental sale. In times of economic depression or recession or whatever-you-want-to-coin-it, entertainment sells. Video games are huge. Imagine the absolutely wild hysteria surrounding something involving Bungie and Apple working together again like in the Marathon series.