The iPhone (and the iPod Touch, but we’ll shorthand this by calling them both the iPhone) and the Wii (used to be called Revolution — too obvious?). What do they have in common? Motion sensing? Sure, but that’s not my point. Thing is, they both change the game. Not the games we play, per se, though that is part of it. They’ve changed the WAY we play games. They’ve changed, and continue to change, the audience for and consumer of games. They’ve brought the terms gamer and gaming into the popular culture like no other device before them.

Wait, before you start sharpening your stakes and firing up your comment flames, I mean no foul. The current generation of consoles has been a part of the change, too. More powerful and less expensive hardware has lead the way to a culture in which video games are as popular as and as commercially successful as more traditional forms of media like books, television, music, and movies.

I’m not saying the iPhone is better, objectively and finally, than the PSP, as in the well-researched and written IGN article that claims the same, nor am I saying that the Wii is better in and of itself as a game console. I am saying, however, that the iPhone and the Wii are better as gamer enablers. They enable a larger range of people to play video games. And isn’t that a good thing?

The iPhone is an Apple product. Apple lost the personal computing wars, despite having been the ones to foster the revolution itself. In the last decade, they sat comfortably at number 2, happy to be a BMW rather than a Ford. But then Apple, the trend setter, the computer for the rest of us, did something game changing of its own. It created the iPod. No discussion of the iPhone can take place without mentioning the iPod. Thousands of songs in your pocket, or so the slogan goes.Consumers were no longer bound by the data limits of a CD. They could put the equivalent of hundreds of those shiny disks into their new devices. And carry them around. And listen to ANY song from that list without having to figure out what disk, what track, and navigating to it, waiting for the disc to spin up, etc. etc. What was itself only the product of a few years before, the CD, was now aiming towards obsolescence, slowly sliding down the garbage heap of “that’s so last year.” And Apple, the downtrodden, became a media company. They built the players, they took over the distribution, they made it cool. What did they do next? Sit back and relax? Enjoy the tons of money they were raking in? No, they became a cell phone maker.

What? Cell phones? Cell phones –even smart phones– existed WAY before Apple came along. Well, young padawan, so did MP3 players. But really, Apple put the MP3 player, and now the smart phone, the iPhone, on the map of everyone and their Uncle Francis. The iPhone changed the game. And then it BECAME the game. As recent as three months ago, Apple began showing video games as part of their normal advertising and special event media. They began talking about gaming. The iPhone, with it’s distribution model already in place, its rockstar status already guaranteed, became THE next mobile platform. See above, again: there were portable devices that played games before. Even ones that accessed the internet via wifi. But the iPhone took that game and changed it all. After a decade of talking “convergence,” one device actually did it. One device that lets me check email, watch video, listen to music, BUY music, and play video games. I can BUY video games right from my CELL PHONE. How future is that? It’s rocket-car, jet-pack stuff, honest.

Let’s turn for a moment to the grand old daddy of video gaming, Nintendo. They’ve been doing fairly well this generation, right? Their new handhelds practically print money for them. Their game characters and franchises are beloved by millions of gamers. People even had Game Cubes. I know I did. Then along comes…a Revolution. See what I did there? So clever I am. The Wii. The little, tiny, crappy graphics, waggly stick remote thingy that looks like some kids toy or…well, kind of like something kajillions of people want in their freaking living rooms. Part of it, I’m sure, is price. But people will buy what they like, regardless. Just look at the PS3 — see what I did THERE?

What makes the Wii a game changer is this:  video games are no longer solely the purview of sweaty pre and post adolescent boys with the social skills of a corn nut. Suddenly, thanks in part to a brilliant marketing campaign, and in part to the design of the thing, people of all generations are playing games on the TV screen. Suddenly, people I work with who have grandchildren want to know where to pick up “one of them Wii things.” See, they even know the name. Maybe it’s not such a silly one, after all.

So we have the Wii, and the iPhone. Yes, they both have their flaws. Neither one is a powerhouse when it comes to chipsets and RAM and all that good stuff. Neither one is the “ultimate” device, something a purist would love (at least until it got popular like some early 90s band that FINALLY makes the scene, only to be cast aside as a “Sell Out”). What they both do is change the paradigm, shift things to the middle, the center, the place were most of us reside. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m a grown up. I don’t have hours and hours of time to perfect all the combo moves in any fighting game, much less the time to invest in 20-hour plus story/frag fests of most large console releases. I’m not a great gamer; I’m not going to be in a documentary about gaming of the first decade of the new millennium. Most people are that way. Many of them would never have even DREAMED of owning a system that mainly only plays video games, like the Wii. But they own one now. The genius of the paradigm change was to simplify, study usability and how people interact with video game consoles. Nintendo, for whatever reason, figured out the next level of that connection between human and machine. They changed the game. And they’re printing money with their new found success.

Apple, always a strong advocate and study of the usability of digital devices, was already poised to make an impact in new media. From podcasting to desktop video editing, they’ve been at the forefront of each new digital paradigm shift. And they continue to do so, but I don’t’ think even THEY realized that they’d be changing the face fo video gaming. Let’s go back to that hypothetical adult who also likes games. Might have an XBox at home, might even have broken down and picked up a DS Lite at one time, planning to take it out into the world on a commute, or at work on a lunch break, or whatever (hypothetical, of course. This isn’t about ME, for heaven’s sake). So they do that a couple of times. They might feel a bit silly pulling out what looks to be a glorified GAMEBOY out at the lunch table. The DS stays at home, more often than not, after that. Their “portable gaming experience” is engaged in primarily at home, or on the vacation, “with the kids.”

But then along comes Apple. Sneaks a damn cellphone into their pockets. It does eMail! The Web! Out in the real world! It’s slow, but it WORKS! It makes SENSE. It is usable, and fantastic, and a beauty of design, user interface and marketing campaign. And pretty soon, it starts running little programs on it, called apps. And HEY, you can just buy these real cheap things, and OMG, there are GAMES in this music store (which also sells TV Shows and Movies — for a Music Store, it was pretty confused at first)! And this hypothetical “grown up” might have grabbed Super Monkey Ball for $10 at launch. Ten bucks is MUCH closer to an impulse buy than $30, the general cost of new hot DS games. And then he might buy some cheaper games. And some free ones. And pretty soon, he’s walking around with a whole freaking library of interesting, fun, challenging and, yes, sometimes flawed, games in his pocket. In a device that he takes with him religiously anyway, since it’s his freaking cell phone.

I think you see my point. The game has changed. Gamers have changed. Games are changing, and so are the places we play them and the devices we play them on. How do we know the game has changed? Take a look at the competitors: I can buy games for my PSP now, right from my PSP. The new Xbox 360 Dashboard/NXE thing has Miis, I mean, Avatars. The emphasis on reaching people, connecting with them, making interactions simple and rewarding, is everywhere. I believe that the Wii and the iPhone are major change agents.

Like it or not, this is the future. Thank goodness the future wasn’t spreadsheets, but video games. I’m a pretty happy hypothetical dude.