What’s that, every tech blog on the internet? The iPad 3 has been delayed, possibly due to “Retina display issues”? Would this be the iPad 3 that Apple hasn’t bloody announced yet, let alone offered a release date for? The one that DigiTimes and other papers with an accuracy rate just shy of a golfer using a loaf of bread instead of clubs said would arrive in September? Or maybe November? Or maybe whatever month they hit on their calendar with a dartboard, to get you to report on their story that carries no weight whatsobloodyever?

How about the iPad 4? Has that been delayed too? What about the iPhone 7? The only thing that’s been delayed is the tech industry’s return to common sense and reporting on news rather than rumours.

From the Google Blog and other sources, Google is to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn. Naturally, Larry Page’s note bangs on about how great Motorola is and how terribly unfair everyone’s being regarding so-called “anti-competitive patent attacks on Android”, along with, laughably, saying the “acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform”.

Like hell.

Google has already been tightening its Android ship and this will further continue to do that. At best for Googorola’s competitors, they’re now going to be competing against a company that has the potential to produce something Apple-like in its integration of hardware and software. Bar the low-end market (unless Googorola goes for that too), they’re screwed if the new superteam gets that right.

But I think this acquisition is good news for everyone aside from existing Android vendors. It should ensure better Android devices in the future and also give Apple a kick up the bum regarding improving iOS and iOS devices. It’s also further vindication that Apple’s got the business model right: control the hardware and the software and you create a better user experience. HP gets this. Google now, seemingly, is starting to understand this. All we need now is another big press release that Microsoft has bought or merged with Nokia and we can look forward to a hugely entertaining scrap as the smartphone and tablet vendors aim to better each-other.

Update: Note, of course, that this could also be a patents land-grab, which would be a massively missed opportunity for Google. I’m being more optimistic than that, though. I think Google’s starting to understand that its ‘open’ system is merely open to being screwed up by vendors, and so it wants to put a stop to that. If not, that shows a stunning lack of vision. However, quotes by Android partners saying they are behind the deal mean nothing. Their businesses largely rest (at present) on Android’s success, so they were hardly going to respond with “screw you, Google”, although there is also some truth in this acquisition potentially safeguarding Google and Android to some extent against the Apple/Microsoft patent threat.

Kotaku’s Mike Fahey has decided to copy and paste a commenter’s whine-fest and has entitled it:

iPhone Games Just Aren’t Any Fun

Maybe not, but this teardown is sure going to be.

I can’t count how many demos or $1 games I’ve bought since I got an iPod Touch back in 2008. Every day I was looking for new games to try out, be it on the poorly-organized App Store charts or on mobile gaming-dedicated websites. If it was free or cheap and looked half-way decent, I’d add it to my Touch and keep it around for a rainy day, or a slow day at work.

I downloaded lots of games, but only free or cheap ones, and, as everyone knows, every other system’s best games are the ones that are free or cheap!

Puzzle games, adventure games, RPG’s, Angry Birds. They all provided minutes of fun. And then I’d delete them.

I have the attention span of a — SQUIRREL!

Download a demo. Play it for a life/round/minute. Delete.

Also, I have zero staying power, because I’m not invested in the games. Tsk, eh?

Download a $1 game. Get the point. Delete. Actually have some increment of fun playing something. Never come back to it again. Delete.

Strangely, I never thought that maybe I was downloading the wrong games.

I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m sick of it. These ‘experiences,’

I like scare-quotes. They enable me to belittle iOS games really easily.

many based off similar ‘experiences’ from other companies selling similar Apps, are lifeless. Sure, Tiny Wings is beautiful to look at, but after getting to level 6 and having the sun set, I stop caring.

Also, those classic, highly focussed arcade games, such as Robotron, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Defender and Missile Command? All rubbish.

Sonic the Hedgehog? Sorry, touch-screen controls for platformers can disappear along with the US economy. Hero of Sparta made me both stop caring AND curse the controls at the same time.

For some reason, I thought games specifically designed for other systems would work well on the touchscreen. In other news, my microwave is rubbish for frying eggs.

To be blunt, iPhone games aren’t fun.

To be blunt, I AM TEH HARDCORE GAMER!

When I look at my iPod Touch as a gaming device, I throw up in my mouth a little bit. It’s not a gaming device.

I’m slightly obsessed about the ‘hardcore gamer’ thing. And a little weird.

It’s a music player.

If we ignore every other app than ‘iPod’ and ‘Spotify’.

If it was an iPhone, it would be a music player and a phone.

If we ignore every other app than ‘iPod’ and ‘Spotify’ and ‘Phone’.

I have used it for games, or rather, tried to use it for games, for over three years now, and not once have I experienced my ‘Tetris Moment’ (Gameboy) or my ‘Lumines Moment’ (PSP) or my ‘Advance Wars Moment’ (GB Advance). That moment when all that the system is and can be is absorbed into your brain. It’s a moment of brilliance which is rare, and after three years of trying to find it amidst the mass of pointless, moronic, copycat, or just plain impossible-to-control ‘games’ on the iPhone platform, I’m done looking for it.

There are no good games for the iPhone at all.

No more wasted time trying to find a diamond in the rough.

Every other system has 100 per cent great games. Phew!

It’s beyond a needle in a haystack now. The App Store is a wasteland that I no longer feel the need to trudge through. There’s so many things wrong with it that the occasional mildly-amusing cheap game that I may be missing won’t matter.

I hate the future.

I’m going to make a prediction: games on the App Store will suffer their own market collapse at some point in the next five years.

PAGING JOHN GRUBER AND HIS CLAIM-CHOWDER MACHINE! PAGING JOHN GRUBER AND HIS CLAIM-CHOWDER MACHINE!

Be it through lack of innovation or consumer indifference, the store will cease to be the money-printer it is right now.

PAGING JOHN GRUBER AND HIS CLAIM-CHOWDER MACHINE! PAGING JOHN GRUBER AND HIS CLAIM-CHOWDER MACHINE!

How many times can people pay $1 for a game they’ve already downloaded fifty times under a different title?

No other games company and system ever recycles IP.

How many in-game lives must be lost to horrible touch-controls that can only be rectified by actual buttons?

I don’t understand multitouch, nor how to avoid games with rubbish virtual controls.

How many minutes must be wasted downloading and installing the next mini-game, only to delete it minutes later because you’ve seen all there is to see?

The Civilisation series is rubbish—there’s just this guy, standing on a field, surrounded by inky blackness. I DELETED IT RIGHT AWAY.

My time is more valuable than that.

Yet not valuable enough that I can’t spend some time writing a poorly thought-out rant about iOS gaming.

I’m not against indie games, or even spirited re-imaginations of existing games

Unless they’re on the iPhone.

but I am against the devaluation of games as fun.

Because if you ignore the thousands of fun iOS games with plenty of depth, there are no fun iOS games with plenty of depth.

The iPhone is a great device (when people don’t drive with it), and kudos to Apple for innovating in a space that had become stagnant with boring cell handsets, but games shall no longer grace my iPod Touch, or my iPhone if I ever get one.

I’m a gamer. I play real games. On real systems.

REAL MEN USE BUTTONS! AND PLASTIC CARTRIDGES! AND PAY OVER THE ODDS FOR BOTH!

Bloomberg reports that investors are starting to argue Nintendo should ditch its Nintendo-only stance and offer games for other platforms:

“Smartphones are the new battlefield for the gaming industry,” said Ohki, a fund manager at Tokyo-based Stats Investment Management Co. “Nintendo should try to either buy its way into this platform or develop something totally new.”

I’ve criticised Nintendo quite a bit recently, but I also suggested the company has multiple options regarding how to continue. One of them would be to do a Sega and go multiplatform, but that would almost certainly kill Nintendo’s (usually) profitable hardware line dead. The Nintendo ecosystem is a differentiator, an Apple-like take within the gaming industry. It’s potentially a benefit, not detrimental. The problem Nintendo faces is Apple itself’s now a competitor, and so the Japanese gaming giant needs to repsond to a changing market.

I don’t think this means suddenly releasing iSuper Mario Bros. or iMario Kart (although if Nintendo did, Angry bloody Birds would be off of the top of the charts for good), but it does mean changing its stance relating to game distribution and embracing more indies. Ultimately, Nintendo needs to stop remembering the good ol’ days of expensive bits of plastic and figure out how to rip off the App Store. Make Nintendo games cheaper and more easily accessible and ensure there are more of them, and there’s a good chance the 3DS’s successor won’t be the hardware equivalent of throwing in the towel. But carry on with ‘more of the same’ and trying to convince handheld gamers to part with 30 to 50 quid for a single game in 2013 and you’ll be on a hiding to nothing.

Epic Games President Mike Capps, talking to IndustryGamers:

I think that’s the real challenge for us now, rather than worrying about the difference between a couple consoles and some order of magnitude, whether 3X or 4X. It’s about how do we deal with iPhone 8… if you watch where the gamers are going that’s where they are. Your iPhone 8 will probably plug into your TV, or better yet, wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience with good sound. So really, what’s the point of those next-gen consoles?

iPhone 8? I’ll be amazed if this doesn’t happen with the iPhone 5, since gaming over AirPlay is already possible (if sometimes a little laggy) with the iPad 2. I don’t think next-gen games consoles will vanish overnight, simply because they are, relatively speaking, much more affordable than an iOS system (which would require several devices and an Apple TV for wireless gaming streams), and also because Apple still doesn’t entirely get gaming itself. However, should Apple add AirPlay mirroring across its entire line, the Apple TV would go from being a niche concern to, potentially, a 101-quid add-on that turns any iPod touch, iPhone or iPad into a games console. At that point, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony would have a massive fight on their hands.