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Steve Jobs has used tonight’s iPod-centric press gathering to signal a new era in portable gaming – and it’s one that the outspoken Apple CEO claims complete ownership of.
In a sharp change of tact from his previously reserved approach to the handheld gaming sector, a bolshy Steve Jobs claimed that the iPod Touch alone now outsells the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP combined. He claimed that a total of 1.5bn games and entertainment apps have been sold for the device.
And that doesn’t even take into account sales of the games-friendly iPhone and iPad. In total over 120m iOS (that’s the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) devices have now been shipped to retail.
A new version of the iPod Touch (pictured) was also revealed. It includes the retina display debuted with the iPhone 4 as well as a rear-facing HD camera, front-facing camera to Facetime video chat and 3-axis gyroscope control. It will launch next week.
Jobs added that Apple currently activates around 230,000 such machines per day while 200 apps are downloaded worldwide every second, reaching a total of 6.5bn since the App Store went live.
The company also confirmed the release next week of the next version of its iOS software (iOS 4.1) that will include, amongst other things, the long-awaited Xbox Live-like Game Center service.
Other additions include the uploading of HD video via wi-fi, TV show rentals, improved performance on the iPhone 3G and a fix for the proximity sensor problems that some iPhone 4 users have been reporting.
