Normally when a game starts I will attempt to skip through the numerous splash screens which detail the variety of parties involved in the production of the game, (much to their annoyance I’m sure). However, every now and again one splash screen will appear which fills your heart with hope that you are about to embark on gaming greatness.

In my case that splash screen is the one that displays the fact that the game is built using the Unreal Engine. A platform which has introduced us to some of the most rich and rewarding gaming experiences across all major devices has another hit to its armory in Horn.

If you’ve experienced the Unreal world before you know what to expect. Horn for iPhone and iPad is played in a expansive, rich and detailed environment that fools you into believing that you’re not on a handheld device but on a console instead.

This beautiful environment is the backdrop of the story of Horn, a young boy who finds himself in a world where all but a few humans have been turned into giant rock creatures called Golems. Horns task is to return these creatures back into humans.

Unlike some other titles where the environments are so rich that your character has limited interaction with them with Horn you are able to go where you wish, within reason of course, by simply tapping on the screen. This makes movement very easy although not always 100% accurately.

Combat makes up a large part of the game as you attempt to take down the many monstrous creatures. The combat system is similar to the Infinity Blade titles where timing is the key to avoid your enemies attacks and take advantage of their weaknesses. It works impressively well and I took great satisfaction in defeating each on the monstrosities that I came across.

Horn is not just another hack ‘n’ slash game though. For as many battles that you’ll encounter there are as many puzzles to be solved and this balance keeps things interesting and entertaining as you uncover the secrets of the world that you have found yourself in.

Even more depth is added to the game thanks to the various weapons and magic that you get to work with and upgrade as you progress through the game.

The game’s beauty is enhanced by the wonderful voice acting that accompany the story telling parts of the game and the orchestral score provides a wonderful backdrop to this engrossing game.

Zynga is a game company that some people either love or hate and if you are on the hate side of the argument then Horn could be the that changes your mind. For everyone else, just go out and by this game and be ready to lose yourself in a wonderful world of mystery, combat, puzzles and entertainment.

The only problem I’ve had with the game is the fact that even as a universal application there is no ability to sync your progress between multiple devices which would be nice.

What we like

• Console like graphics
• Console like gameplay
• Engaging storyline
• Engrossing gameplay
• Easy controls

What to know

• No device syncing

When your catalog consists of some of the biggest, most popular and dominating titles in mobile gaming you could be forgiven for resting on your laurels and continue to milk that money cow. That’s not the case for Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the makers of the Angry Birds series who have released Amazing Alex for iPhone and iPad into the App Store.

Amazing Alex uses previously successfully implemented techniques, it’s a physics based puzzle game with usually 3 star per level rating system for each level, and as those features have worked before there’s no reason why they shouldn’t work again…..right?

Alex is a young boy with a taste for creativity and problem solving and in the style of toppling a chain of dominoes, only on a much larger scale, you are challenged to help Alex produce a daisy chain of events to clear each level.

The initial levels get you started on how you play the game, even showing you where you should place the range of objects that you are given to utilize on each level, and because of this you may be fooled into thinking that Amazing Alex is going to be a simple game that you can rush through in a matter of minutes.

However, that is soon to be shown as a wrong assumption to make as when the placement guides disappear the levels immediately get more complex and as you continue to the Classroom, Backyard, Bedroom and finally onto the Treehouse the levels become more and more challenging, especially, if like me, you want to get three stars on each level.

There are over 30 objects at your disposal across the levels and as these become unlocked they are also made available to build your own levels which has the potential of adding an endless number of levels for you to play with.

Creating your own levels is very easy. You have all of the objects that you’ve unlocked and can place them anywhere on the screen with guidelines for legal and illegal placement. The final step is to place the 3 stars on the screen which act as the measure for other players to complete the level.

The ease of both creating your own levels, sharing them online and then downloading other players levels is amazing. The only issue I have with the custom levels is that there is no rank of them, either via voting or just the number of downloads to help you find the best custom levels available.

As you might expect from Rovio the whole game looks polished, cute and engaging. Something else that Rovio seem keen to do is keep their iPhone and iPad versions of their apps separate rather than universal. Why they do this, especially considering that there are no differences between the two versions is beyond me. Needless to say if you want Amazing Alex on both your iPhone and iPad you’ll need to pay twice and play it twice as there is no synchronisation of your progress between the two versions.

Of course Rovio promise multiple free updates to add more levels and based on their previous history there should be quite a lot of them! Quite what they plan to do with the GameCenter integration with no leaderboards and only one achievement remains to be seen.

What we like

• 100 challenging levels
• Infinite user levels
• Simple controls, challenging levels

What to know

• Limited GameCenter integration
• No way to get the best user levels

N.O.V.A. 3 as the name suggests is the third in the the first person shooter series which follows the explosive exploits of Kal Wardin as he fights for no lesser prize than humankind itself. If you haven’t played either of the previous N.O.V.A. that’s not a problem, (although you may go back to them after playing this), as the game stands on its own and the short intro will soon get you up to speed.

As previously mentioned the whole look of N.O.V.A. 3 is completely immersive as the rich, massive, interactive environments are a pleasure to behold. Starting in and around the derelict buildings of San Francisco, through alien spacecraft and an explosive fire and ice wasteland the worlds look incredible.

As we’ve all come to learn though, games require more than just graphics to be a success and N.O.V.A. 3 is more than just eye-candy, in fact it’s one of the closest experiences to having a console in your pocket that I’ve ever played on a mobile device.

The audio helps this with the overall experience too, from powerful gun-shots and explosions to great voice acting and background music the aural experiences is excellent, especially if you listen with headphones.

The action comes fast and furious, right from the start and you will need fast fingers to keep yourself alive. These fast fingers have to be balanced with the amount of ammunition you have as supplies are limited especially if you don’t want to if you don’t want to increase the cost of the game by stumping up more of your hard earned money to upgrade your weapons and abilities.

The downside of the scarce ammunition though is exacerbated by some less than perfect controls. There’s nothing substantially different in N.O.V.A. 3 from other first person shooters but they feel unpolished and the limited customization ensures that we will have to spend quite a while with them before you feel at ease.

Spending time with N.O.V.A. 3 though is something you will want to do though as the rewards are worth it. A compelling, if short, campaign mode is great to play but the addition of not only a local wi-fi multiplayer but also an online version, via Gameloft LIVE, is going to have you hooked for months.

Six different multiplayer game modes as well as weekly tournaments keeps things interesting and as long as you put in the time to learn your skills so that you aren’t re-spawning every 30 seconds the online modes ultimately make N.O.V.A. 3 {$6.99} a very rewarding experience.

All this comes at a price, not the $7 that it’ll cost you in the App Store, that’s a bargain, but the 1.5 GB of storage space that it will take up on your iOS device. You may need to manage some space before installing this monster!

There are games that push the limit of mobile gaming and make other companies step up, N.O.V.A. 3 is one of those games and you don’t want to miss the bandwagon.

What we like:

• Stunning graphics
• Enjoyable campaign mode
• Challenging multiplayer gameplay

What to know:

• Quality comes with size!
• Limited control customizations

Following the release of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, Apple Inc. (AAPL) experienced heavy adoption of its first smartphone, leading to the release of the second generation phone. After initial support for web apps AAPL also announced the App Store, which revolutionized the landscape of gaming on mobile devices. Many third-party app developers created apps tailored to the iPhone and iPod touch, and gave the iOS platform boost and rival with Nintendo, Microsoft, and other gaming platforms.

On Thursday, it was revealed that Apple has hired former Xbox Live marketing executive to help grow iPad and iPhone gaming initiative. With an update to his LinkedIn profile, Microsoft Marketing Manager for Xbox UK, Robin Burrowes, revealed that he has been hired to help push gaming on iPhone and iPad to further success.

Burrowes tenure at Microsoft saw him work on Xbox for roughly seven years, where he was most recently responsible for all product, business and marketing management of Xbox LIVE in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. For Apple, he’s the latest in a series of high-profile British gaming recruits, following the hire of Nintendo’s public relation’s chief Robert Saunders last year, as well as Nick Grange — who also at one point ran public relations for Xbox, as well as for gaming heavyweights Activision and Electronics Arts.

Microsoft released the Xbox 360 and took over a large percentage of the consale gaming market, with services such as Xbox Live. Apple gave the company some competition with the iPhone 3G and the App Store and has now hired one of Microsoft’s employees to try and get Apple even higher share in the gaming market.

Apple currently has over 550,000 apps in the App Store, 20% of which are games, making the hiring of Burrowes an obvious choice for Apple. iPads, iPhones, and iPods are gaining traction in the mobile gaming market, being considered portable gaming platforms, competing against other systems such as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.

{via iMore}

John Carmack and his team at id software are all very talented developers. And their pedigree is well established in the dungeon crawler game genre. I am personally a fan of id’s software. Carmack’s career has more or less spanned the same era in the computer industry as mine, and we specialise in similar fields of CG. So I find his occasional blogs, and more frequent tweets on his coding experiences to have a familiar feel to them in their approach to technical problems and the logic behind solutions to those problems.

Carmack is a geek, and as such he is genuinely happy to share what he finds, and even post past creations for free as open source bundles. In many ways his approach to developing the Rage Tech engine for the iPhone has been more akin to a true indie bedroom hacker’s modus operandi, than that of the increasingly more cynical mainstream iOS developers. id have shared access to early software ideas, and spoken with the gamer community on pretty much all of their recent projects. The Rage engine, and Rage the game for iOS is no exception. And john has shared his solutions to problems he found when developing the more tricky technical aspects of Rage.

Put simply Carmack has done what few people who have, or are still developing engines for iOS have done. And that is leverage the Unix underpinnings of iOS, a strong knowledge base of how to code a game engine spanning back to an era when hardware was much less powerful, and the similarities between desktop Open GL and mobile OpenGL ES to produce a scaled down, but ambitious console style engine for Apple’s mobile eco-system. For the past 18 months some of you may know that I have also been involved in producing a similarly ambitious engine for a very different genre of game, also for iOS. So id’s progress in producing more immersive, more “grown up” (if you will) iOS games is something I am really keen to see succeed. Just as I am also keen to see Epic produce something special with their engine for iOS.

But recent news from Epic, and what we actually got with Rage / Rage HD have me a little concerned. Infinity Blade, the game based in Epic’s new iOS engine and the “Epic Citadel” environment shown in Epic’s free technology demo on the App Store, is looking more like a basic ring based combat game, albeit a pretty one based in a cool environment. And Rage is basically a rail-shooter. Again, sure it’s a damn good rail-shooter. But it’s not a real FPS with facial hair, and certainly not an RPG. Nor does it look like it’s going to embrace multiplayer anytime soon.

Now there are reasons why developers are A: scared & B: having genuine problems putting fully blown RPGs on the iPhone. Some of those reasons are very simple. When the average price of a game on the App Store is $1.99, and an RPG or FPS of any merit needs a massive development team, and tons of development time for game assets like textures and models, and let’s not forget the coding, it is very hard for anyone who is not independently wealthy or backed to the hilt by big publishers, driving established IP to produce something of that scope. Believe me, I know, I’ve been working on an RPG for iOS now since the first iPhone hit the stores. And we’re not close to getting it finished this year even!

But in id and Epic’s case, they are backed by large publishers, do have strong IP, and they can ensure that a product gets promoted so that it sells. They also have the gaming pedigree to bring something more ambitious to the iPhone than EA.

When interviewed by TUAW Carmack had this to say:

There is absolutely zero doubt,” he replied, “that you can technically do an excellent, full-featured FPS game, because these devices are more powerful now than like a previous generation Xbox. They’re still multiple intervals away from like a 360 or a PS3, but they’re in the same order of magnitude, so there’s no doubt that you could compile and build a wonderful FPS.” We have seen a few good FPS games out there (NOVA and Archetype come to mind), but as Carmack said, “they’re not as large of a success as Angry Birds.

Apparently id plan to bring other aspects of the Rage universe to iOS before the full Rage FPS / RPG is released on consoles next year. Carmack hinted at a racing game as one of these titles (there is a lot of racing in Rage – as well as killing mutants). So it seems the plan is to give us bite sized tastes of the Rage universe as teaser ads for the main event on home consoles. Which is disappointing. We get those kind of AAA title tie ins from all the other publishers.

So, is it technically possible to bring a decent FPS to the iPhone? I certainly think so. And so does John Carmack. Is there a market for it? I think so too, and hope I am not wrong as I have put 2 years of my career into one.. so far.

One of id’s fears for Rage was that the massive download for Rage HD would turn App Store customers off. So they produced a lower resolution version, identical in every other way, but without the HD moniker. In actual fact it has turned out so far that the HD version of Rage was the most downloaded version of the app by far. “Rage” was languishing at number 30 in its slot in the App Store, while “Rage HD” was number 1 on launch day. So I would say there is a market for 750MB or bigger game downloads, and games with more scope, as well as more grown up violence or mature strategy than your average run of the mill iPhone “snack” game.

One of the reasons Rage is not a fully roaming FPS on the iPhone is because if the game has control over what you see, and when you see it, and from what angle, then a lot of the game environments, and enemy flow can be predetermined before hand so that assets such as textures and sound effects, as well as models are all cached into memory at the appropriate time. This reduces load times, and frame stutters when trying to get very high fidelity graphics to the screen.

With the month or two of serious development that Carmack has been able to put into Rage a fully featured FPS was probably not on the cards. But they have laid some great groundwork with a mobile version of their engine. The underlying technical reason for why you can’t roam freely around in Rage Mutant Bash TV on iOS is really all about the level design. Unlike the mutants and collectable objects the environment textures in Rage are all predicted based on your “flight path” through the game and pulled in and out of memory mapped space as and when needed. SO levee design at the moment is a big one way only database.

Whilst that system could theoretically work with you free roaming, going backwards through the data, and perhaps allowing you to look in any direction in a room at any time would mean that a lot more data is available immediately to the game engine. Something that is beyond the scope of where id are with the Rage Tech engine right now.

It is interesting, surprising and refreshing to me, that id did initially start supporting older devices with Rage. i.e. Pre 3GS devices which only support the older Open GL ES 1.1 standard for graphics. And according to Carmack, that is still pretty much the case in Rage as we see it today on the iPhone. But the market for gaming on those devices is seen as very small now. So any future product from id would seem to be planned for 3GS devices and newer, as well. This is a similar conclusion, and identical initial approach that I took with my first iOS engine; Virush 1 is completely Open GL ES 1.1 compatible. Where as our new internal development engine Virush 2, whilst still able to fall back and run on older devices is 100% focussed on OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics. In other words – shaders!

I would expect that more reliance on shaders, and putting a more flexible database together for Rage on iOS is where John Carmack would like to go next. It’s certainly the route I have taken with the engine I am working on. But the issues of getting assets into memory on time in a free roaming game with a large scope is really what separates the very good engines from the good ones. A lot of this is to do with the quality of imagery we as players expect today. Sure the devices we have in our hands are comparably powerful to last gen. consoles. But in last gen. consoles we weren’t quite pushing the same boundaries with data-set sizes, texture resolution, or screen quality in the case of the iPhone 4 and iPad for example. Nor were we exploiting networking, multiplayer or even social networking the way we do now. All of these things, on a system in our hands which is also checking for mail, accepting push notifications, playing 3D sound, and running accelerometers and touch screens off of a tiny battery are huge concerns for game makers pushing the boundaries.

Some of John’s later comments on his own blog about how the Rage engine came together for iOS seem to hint that he has based quite a lot of it on earlier code. But he would rather re-write it from scratch. I too know that feeling!

All in all it seems that the future of a full fledged id FPS on iOS is something that may come in the future. And may come sooner rather than later based on the positive feedback that Rage HD : Mutant Bash TV is getting.

I fervently hope so. My mind is firmly fixed in developing space RPGs. A far more niche genre than dungeon crawling. But id’s link to Bethesda, and the thought of the likes of a full Rage for the iPad, or Fallout even makes my mouth water.

Is something more like Doom, Fallout or Wolfenstein what you expected from the gameplay in Rage for iOS? Or are you super happy with what we got, and excited for more of the same? Have your say in the comments…

Editor’s Note:

This post is a part of our series of opinion articles, in which we encourage our writers to present their opinion on something they feel strongly about.

Mirrors Edge for iPad [rating: 4.5/5]

Stylish looking iPad game with the gameplay to match!

Over the last couple of years Mirrors Edge has been released over a couple of different platforms and while it has met critical acclaim it never seemed to make it into the heart of the gaming masses. Now it’s being released on the iPad to a new potential audience and if you haven’t tried it yet maybe now would be a good time. That being said while buying a 99 cent game is no risk even if you don’t like it paying the introductory rate of $12.99 for Mirrors Edge may make you think a little.

Mirrors Edge is based on the ‘sport’ of Free Running where participants run through cities jumping, sliding, vaulting over, under and through anything they can find. You take the role of Faith Connors who is fighting against a Big Brother government hell bent on there control methods to keep their “perfect society” perfect.

This is the basic of the single payer story mode. Running across the rooftops and through the buildings to outrun and defeat your pursuers as they try to gun you down. There are no guns for Faith however, her weapons are her agility and guile in evading those who aim to bring her down.

From the moment you launch the game you will be struck by the stunning HD visuals and unique style of the graphics from the stylistic white and red menu’s to the stunning city roof tops the game looks great.

That being said once you launch the game you don’t have long to study the beautiful scenery as you will be too busy launching Faith into her acrobatics.

All the controls are done via gestures on the large iPad screen. Swipe left or right to send Faith running in that direction, swipe up to make faith jump, down and Faith will slide or roll after landing a large fall.

There are also contextual gestures, swiping up while next to an advertising hoarding and Faith will run along it. These controls will need to come 2nd nature if you are going to make it through the 14 levels.

As you progress through the levels Faith will also need to put her skills to defeating numerous enemies using the same skills as she uses to navigate the environment.

14 levels is not a huge number especially for $13 however they are challenging and should keep you entertained for a a decent amount of time at least.

That being said the single player story mode is not the only option. In addition there is the Speed Run where you can race through any of the levels that you’ve unlocked through the Story Mode for the fastest time. After your first run through any of the 14 levels you will be up against your fastest previous time in the form of a ghost which not only adds to the challenge but also help you pick up tips on where you can improve your moves.

You should then be able upload you times to the online leader boards and also download the ghosts of other racers, however on the numerous attempts I tried to do this I was unable to view the leader boards let alone download a ghost racer. Hopefully this we be resolved in a future update.

We’re not over yet though as there is also a 2 player mode that is played on a single iPad. The screen is split in two and you and a friend can battle it out with all the same moves in Race Mode or Rival Mode.

With the addition of these two extra modes on top of the Story Mode, achievements in the form of badges and the option of hunting down the hidden badges the $13 price tag suddenly doesn’t seem so step after all.

If you are looking for an engrossing, great looking title that utilizes the iPad’s large screen and touch capabilities that will enable you to show off the future of mobile gaming then you need look no further than Mirros Edge from EA.

The Good

• Great looking and stylish gameplay
• Perfect control system for a free running game
• 2 player mode on a single iPad

The Not So Good

• Online leader boards and ghosts not working

Price: $12.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Released: Apr 01, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.0.0
Size: 110 MB
Language: English
Seller: Electronic Arts
© 2009 Electronic Arts Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Rated 9+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.2 or later.

iPhone hacked

On the very first day of the yearly hacking contest Pwn2Own [dvlabs.tippingpoint.com] the iPhone was hacked again. To put that into perspective Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, Firefox 3 on Windows 7, Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.6, and iPhone OS 3 were all compromised during the competition. Interestingly Google’s Chrome was the only one left standing. But that was simply because no-one tried to hack it!

Although the iPhone has been very publicly hacked in various ways over the last few years. At this particular competition, and according to it’s metrics for a successful hack, the iPhone was not hacked in 2009. So this was technically the first time for this event.

The successful hack this year involved using a “zero-day” flaw in mobile Safari which allowed access to text messages. The hack managed to get around both the iPhone’s Data Execution Protection, as well as requirements that all code be signed.

iPad hacked

We reported a few days ago that “legendary” hacker Geohot had cryptically announced on his Twitter feed, and also on his blog, that he had potentially hacked the iPad.

While it’s not clear whether this is a valid claim or not, what he appears to have done is to find an exploit in the latest Apple iPhone OS (3.1.3) (and underlying technologies) which will allow users to jailbreak, and then also reboot their iPods and iPhones without them needing to be tethered to a computer each time.

Prior to this most recent hack any user of newer “i” devices running the latest release of Apple’s iPhone OS weren’t able to easily free their devices from Apple’s walled garden for software and OS updates. In theory, according to Geohot (aka George Hotz), this process should also work for the iPad.

It’s unclear when this “exploit” will become public, as viable holes in Apple’s OS are becoming fewer and fewer. Apple patching them with each new release. So it may be that these latest efforts get held back from the public until a more significant OS update is pushed out by Apple. Perhaps even until the rumoured OS4.0, which some think will unify the iPad and iPhone OS.

Media and advertising become the focus for some on the iPad

We theorised earlier this week that as well as the massive push for games on the iPad; with perhaps 50% of the titles available for it at launch expected to be entertainment of the gaming flavour. Another category which will dominate it’s catalog is expected to be rich media versions of existing traditional book and magazine publisher’s fair. Part of the driving force behind publishers investing in this format is the expected revenue stream they can generate from advertising.

We reported about this in our article on what apps to expect on the iPad, and in a piece on how advertising will perhaps be different on the iPad [touchreviews.net]

An article in AppleInsider discusses some of the opportunity and ways advertisers plan on exploiting the iPad. Two of the key buzzwords in use in the run up to the iPad launch are interactive advertisements and dynamic content.

Great!

Amazon, Barnes & Noble plan to ride the iPad e-book train. May be late to the party though..

Amazon rolled out it’s Kindle software for Mac a week ago, and hinted at iPad support. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble believe that they have something to offer to augment the iPad eBook space, despite Apple having their own eBook app and the iBookstore. Amazon claim to be tweaking an iPad specific app, which will make great use of the device’s screen real estate. Unfortunately both companies admit that their apps most likely won’t be available at launch.

More good news is that Apple has penned a deal with Perseus Books Group, a larger independent publisher that also handles distribution for some 330 small presses and publishers.

Apple posts impressive gains in the gaming market

We reported, earlier this week, on Apple’s impressive market share gains in the entertainment sector this last year. Based on US figures alone it is clear that Apple’s share of the entire revenue of the US gaming industry has grown from 1% to 5%.

On the back of this information and the positive way the iPad launch seems to be going many market analysts have revised Apple’s share predictions (AAPL) to closer to the $300 mark by the end of the year. As of this article Apple’s shares are at yet another high of $230.90.

AdMob and Nintendo release game market information of their own.. DS to go 3D!

In my opinion, in something of a knee jerk reaction to the rumours of Apple’s own forthcoming advertising integration into iPhone / iPad OS revisions, as well as their growing market share in entertainment and media, AdMob released the results of a survey which claims that 70% of iPhone developers plan to develop for the Android platform in future. As I noted in our article on this here. we need to remember that as independent as AdMob are at the moment, they are in the process of being bought by Google, who make the Android OS. Also the amount of people who they actually surveyed to get the figures quoted in that report are a massive 108! That’s not a typo!

Having said all that it seems obvious to me that any successful developer working on the iPhone and using AdMob as their advertising sub-system would look for a similar system when porting successful apps to Android. And if you have a successful iPhone app why wouldn’t you port it to the next most successful mobile operating system; Android. AdMob are now positioned perfectly to be that solution with their libraries which now allow integration into Google’s Android SDK.

Nintendo in a strange move this week announced rather sketchy details of their next portable gaming device. Its next handheld console will be launched during the financial year to March 2011. It will be fully backward compatible with existing DS software. And it will have a 3D display without the need for special glasses.

I believe Nintendo see an assault coming on two sides to their current business model. Microsoft and Sony now have motion covered, and the prices of the PS3 and 360 are set to come down in the second half of their lifespans. Apple is also aggressively eating into the mobile market place for games, albeit at Sony’s expense right now.

Nintendo are well known for their penchant for trying to sell old hardware for as long as possible. The Wii is a perfect example, as well as many moons ago them having the colour GameBoy in house long long before they actually started selling it; preferring to milk the black and white GameBoy market for as long as possible.

They did the same thing then with regards to backwards compatibility when they allowed the Colour GameBoy to “colourize” old game cartridges. Right now I don’t think Nintendo have a 100% solid plan of exactly how the “3D” DS will work, or if it’s even a viable market.

But they want to keep consumers, shareholders and developers on board going forward while Apple, Sony and Microsoft start nipping at it’s ageing heels.

First details of what we can expect in the iPad AppStore start to trickle out

It appears that the intention, at least, for the iPad and it’s apps is to raise the generally accepted base price for software. This is something which many devs will welcome. Although it has to be said they have always had the power in their own hands to stop competing in the legendary iTunes App Store “race to the bottom” on pricing. So I have to wonder how long this higher pricing model will last once more devs launch their own products and try to compete with existing launch titles.

Touch Reviews reported on some of the leaked App Pricing and launch titles for the iPad here

Flight Control and Real Racing for the iPhone are currently $0.99 USD and $4.99 USD respectively. Both are well liked and respected games; garnering many accolades and almost universal praise. The iPad versions of these games, Flight Control HD and Real Racing HD, will be $4.99 USD and $9.99 USD. Further comparisons between iPhone and iPad pricing presents similar results.

Most apps seem to carry the HD moniker, and are generally ported versions of already successful apps from the iPod and iPhone.

iPad media subscription packages start to leak

We reported here that iPad Subscription pricing for newspapers and magazines have started to leak out.

The Wall Street Journal will be available for $17.99 USD/month, Esquire will charge $2.99 USD/issue, and Men’s Health will go for $4.99 USD/month. Some of these subscriptions are less than current print prices, some are more.

As noted in that article, it remains to be seen how these packages will be received by iPad users. Pricing floats either slightly above or below the current price for physical media for most of the subscription packages.

Lots of media outlets seem to be pinning their hopes on paid content as the panacea for their declining industry. As many of them seem to have set the iPad launch period as a kind of line in the sand to start charging for their own web site content by placing their top news and articles behind pay walls.

My attitude towards this strategy is still the same.. Good luck with that.

Well, one more working week to go until the world as we know changes… Are you excited? Let us know your thoughts below. Did we miss anything?

Microsoft has today released some screenshots of a couple of 3D games that are currently in development for the Windows Phone 7 Series. Is it just me or is that an awfully big mouthful for such a small device?

Anyway, the images look interesting, but this is not an impressive enough couple of titles to excite people into buying another flavour of handset, in my opinion. Perhaps we’ll see more this week.

First up is “The Harvest” which is a Diablo re-imagining featuring destructible environments. That is under development by Luma Arcade.

Next is “Battle Punks” which is under development by Gravity Bear. This is, and I quote, “a sword-fighting Facebook game”. Your guess is as good as mine!

Microsoft also, unsurprisingly, confirmed that Direct3D is the only graphics API supported on the Windows Phone 7 Series. This seems a super dumb move to me. All current OpenGL apps / Games will have to be ported. Whilst that will be fine by large publishers, and those developers that already work with Direct3D, it will alienate the already very large developer base who are working on Android, Apple and just getting started on Palm’s mobile devices. If you remember I reported recently that Palm have just opened up access to their OpenGL ES API in a new addition to their SDK launched at GDC. Consequently Microsoft are going alone again on their own 3D graphics API “Direct3D”. While everyone else uses OpenGL ES. This will not aid Microsoft in quickly generating a vibrant App Store of their own with contributions from developers out there with successful existing mobile games.

When the Zune Store was announced many successful iPhone developers were approached and courted by Microsoft and turned the software giant away. I can see them having the same reaction to the Windows Phone.

Android already suffers from app market fragmentation because of the multitude of devices with different specifications out there. Apple is heading that way with the two flavours of silicon it already has in it’s iPhone, iPod and iPad. But they all at least use the same graphics API. I know that small indies are not going to want to support yet another API and another set of hardware, especially when frustratingly they know the silicon underneath is the same.

So it seems we will again have two distinct camps in gaming land. This time in mobile gaming land! With XNA developers, inexperienced in mobile game production, having to hit the ground running if we are going to have any real indies producing for this new phone.

Microsoft has been on a mission for quite some time to establish itself as dominant in the games market, at any cost. One of it’s more underhand weapons in this effort is it’s own proprietary graphics API. One would have thought they had learned their lesson, along with Sony, with the advent of the Wii that the gaming landscape is unpredictable nowadays. It’s not a beast which is easily corralled anymore. Right now both Sony and Microsoft are kind of directionless because of the massive shift in the games market over the last two years. Although interestingly it’s now Sony that are picking up speed in the console market. And this is purely speculation on my part, but if Sony are really going to bring their own “iPhone & iPad killers” to market, as is rumoured, I would expect whatever API they choose for 3D graphics to at last have some kind of high level abstraction that is more akin to OpenGL ES than anything else. If not a full OpenGL ES API from day one.

Perhaps Microsoft intend to go the opposite direction to Apple, Google and Palm on this, and instead of encouraging the indie market simply buy up studios, leverage existing IP in house, or even create new studios in a mobile gaming war similar to their XBox campaign. Good luck with that.

The bottom line is all this does is limit choice for consumers, and make developer’s lives harder, while these big companies fight out battles to have different APIs control the same chips!

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]]> https://touchreviews.net/microsoft-unveils-first-3d-games-windows-phone-7-series-direct3d/feed/ 2 https://touchreviews.net/iphone-game-developers-outnumber-competition-research/ https://touchreviews.net/iphone-game-developers-outnumber-competition-research/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:12:57 +0000 https://touchreviews.net/?p=5039 Read More]]>

Some numbers came out recently that reinforce what a lot of people would just guess based on their intuition. Game Developer Research (GDR) recently released its 2009/2010 survey of game developers. The numbers empirically prove the notion that the iPhone dominates the mobile gaming market. According to the survey, iPhone game developers outnumber Nintendo DS and Sony PSP developers two to one. I’m sure there are many reasons (read excuses) Nintendo and Sony would give for this dominance in developer numbers but the numbers don’t lie and I would suggest a couple of counterpoints to those reasons.

The first reason I’m sure Apple’s competition would give is for the ease of entry into the developer market. Nintendo and Sony would say that their developers are highly trained professionals with years of education and experience in their craft. iPhone developers, they would claim, are largely an untrained lot; not schooled in the complex and rich world of proper game development. I would take that argument however and turn it on its head. It is the ease of entry into the market that has made the iPhone gaming platform so successful. There are no artificial barrier to entry into the development marketplace. Anyone with a hundred American dollars and the time to invest in learning the SDK can become a successful game developer. How many otherwise unappreciated talents have become successful game developers because of the openness of the iPhone platform?

It is a revolution in the gaming industry that is comparable to the breaking of the Guild system in the Middle Ages. When skills like carpentry or masonry moved from being secret, inherited knowledge to knowledge any one could acquire through learning, people flourished based on their skills and merit, not on their ability to be initiated into the secret knowledge. Similarly, now that any one can learn the secrets of game development, the schools, corporations, and development houses that guarded that knowledge must now give way to any one who has the time and talent to learn it.

The second reason I’m sure Apple’s competition would give is for the types of games under development. Nintendo and Sony would say that their games are large, feature-rich multimedia experiences. iPhone games, they’d argue, are small and crippled lesser cousins to their creations that are easier to develop and push out. That of course is a ridiculous notion. Anyone who’s played some of the larger gaming experiences on the iPhone like N.O.V.A, F.A.S.T, or Field Runners knows they rival any title available for the DS or PSP. And usually at a tenth of the price! The quality (and quantity) gaps between iPhone games and its mobile gaming competition has largely been filled since the release of iPhone OS 3.0. The notion that iPhone games are somehow lesser than DS or PSP games is one that may still be part of popular wisdom but it simply has no basis in fact.

What do you think? Is the fact that there are twice the number of iPhone game developers just a statistical abberation or an indication of which way the mobile gaming market is moving? Is this the end for purpose-built gaming devices like the DS and PSP? Weigh in with your comments below.

By: Erin Peterson