Steve Jobs' Retirement

It's a fair viewpoint, but one that's all too often bitterly entrenched rather than reasonably stated. As Apple's success has grown, the irritation of the Apple refuseniks has swelled past all reasonable bounds - and in the games industry, a business traditionally populated with gadget fans, tinkerers and technically minded sorts, that antipathy is firmly rooted, enough so to make the "debate" over Apple's market position unfairly skewed.

The realities cut through any personal feelings about Apple. Whether you think open source matters, or Flash matters, or iPods are overpriced, or iPads are just overgrown iPhones, doesn't matter. What matters is that tens of millions of these devices are sold every year, far outstripping the sales of dedicated games consoles, and that billions of dollars of revenue subsequently flow through the Apple-controlled App Store, much of it destined for game developers. Apple has created an ecosystem that's healthy, thriving, growing and profitable, and rolling your eyes at the consumer sheep who buy such products without understanding why open source is so important to their Angry Birds experience is both futile and ridiculous.

In thinking about what Jobs' decision to step aside might mean for Apple's position within the games industry, it's worth bearing in mind that Jobs himself has often been suspected of being resistant to the encroachment of videogames on his devices. A couple of half-hearted efforts to woo developers to OSX in the early 2000s aside, Apple under Jobs has been remarkably lukewarm about the prospect of games on iOS or OSX. It was only when games on the iOS App Store exploded, eating up a massive proportion of the store's turnover, that Apple reluctantly recognised the inevitable and began to promote gaming as one of the headline features of its devices.

Even then, Jobs has never seemed entirely at ease with the popularity of videogames on iOS. Games have featured in his keynotes, but unusually for a man recognised as one of the business world's best public speakers and presenters, he seemed awkward and ill at ease talking about videogames - the words from his mouth were clearly not his, the phrases and terminology foreign to him. Jobs is a media guy; as well as dominating music retail with iTunes, he also spent some of his time away from Apple building up Pixar, and later used Disney's acquisition of Pixar to earn himself a position on the Disney board. He is not, however, a games guy, and has never been comfortable with the success of games on Apple's platforms.

With Jobs' departure, then, it seems plausible that rather than simply continuing business as usual - which would be no bad thing, given how good business has been in recent years - the company may actually embrace games to an even greater degree. Where Jobs reluctantly accepted that games were an inevitable and core part of iOS' success, his successors may understand the true importance of the industry - not just to iOS, but also to the Mac platform, whose lower overall sales compared to behemoths like Dell shroud the fact that discounting bulk corporate purchases, Mac systems are incredibly popular among the consumer demographics who actually count as potential gamers.

That a man as young and as successful as Steve Jobs has been forced to step down from his company for health reasons is a sad and unfortunate thing, but Apple's growth and development will undoubtedly continue - not least since much of Jobs' talent lay not in the hands-on management of the firm, but in the creation of a team of skilful, like-minded designers and managers around him, who will now continue his work. Moreover, it is not spin to suggest that in the medium term, Jobs' departure could be an upside for the games business. Apple is rapidly becoming one of the most important companies in the games market - and if its new administration is more switched on to gaming than Jobs was, the firm's growth as a games platform holder will only accelerate.