While Apple has been widely credited with expanding the gaming market, [Seamus] Blackley believes it was never its intention to do so. “They hated videogames,” he says. “The victory of games is utterly complete with Apple. It’s a total victory.“They tried real hard to make the iPad about word processing and music, and the audience just doesn’t want it. It’s beautiful. You don’t need to have a games strategy anymore.”
Historical revisionism like this burns my ass.
Seamus Blackley is the guy credited with initially coming up with the concept of the Microsoft Xbox; he’s a really smart guy and the game industry and gamers owe him a debt of gratitude. Blackley’s opinion of Apple and its infamous antipathy towards games is widespread throughout the game industry, and it’s not without historical precedent, at least on the Mac side of the fence. But Blackley is absolutely, unequivocally wrong about the iPad.
By the time the iPad was ready for service, the Games section was already the single biggest segment of the App Store. Loads of game developers had signed on to create content for the burgeoning platform. Apple was already focusing development and engineering to improve the gaming experience on iOS, and it knew full well that iPad users would be playing plenty of games.