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All Articles Tagged gaming
Oh yeah — Looks like in the near future that OnLive thing might just take off and lucky iPhone users will be able to play along with their PC gaming friends. However, many roadblocks still exist. Steve Pearlman OnLive’s CEO Says:
I’m afraid we are not announcing a date for availability of OnLive on particular cell phones just yet. We have further development to do, and we need approvals from some cell phone makers before we can release OnLive to the public. So, for now, OnLive on a cell phone is only a technology demo. But, for those of you who have been asking about OnLive on cell phones, the answer is yes, it is coming. And, it is REALLY cool.As a gamer, this is rather exciting. Not only what it means for the iPhone, but for gaming in general. Perhaps we won’t need apps on our phone anymore for game playing, we just “tune in” to the latest games and play from where we can. I can dig that.
The OnLive service will begin in Winter 2009, however they are currently looking for beta testers. You can sign up here.
[via Engadget Mobile]
Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata loves his MacBook and his iPhone, and firmly believes Nintendo and Apple aren’t competitors (they appeal to different customers), and any talk of it makes him uncomfortable.
Yet Apple is most assuredly aiming at gaming (even if John Carmack thinks it’s between clenched teeth), especially with the funner iPod touch ever, and its game-heavy marketing.
With Nintendo profits down 52% for the first half of the year, and Apple selling record numbers of iPhones and reporting 100,000 apps and 2,000,000,000 downloads (with games weighed heavily among them).
Even with a dedicated gaming device like the DS (and perhaps a new platform on the way next year?), and a high-profile set of first-party properties like Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Pokémon, etc. those are tough numbers to look at. And Nintendo isn’t kidding themselves about that:
“If we can’t make clear why customers pay a lot of money to play games on Nintendo hardware and Nintendo software and differentiate ourselves from games on the mobile phone or iPhone, then our future is dark.”
Still, there are no plans for a WiiPhone (no matter how cool that might sound to us!), though an Amazon Kindle-like model, where the end-user doesn’t see any of the cell network bills, does appeal to Iwata.
Likewise, we can’t hold our breath for even older 1st party GameBoy titles to show up on the iPhone either. At least not anytime soon.
[Wall Street Journal -- thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Warning that its profits may decline, Wii and DS manufacturer Nintendo played the “current economic conditions” card but also laid a new one on the gaming table — increased competition thanks to Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.
The newly launched Nintendo DSi is seen as a partial response to Apple’s new gaming model, according to Electronista, which includes an on-device digital App Store, rather than the cartridge based physical media traditional gaming companies have thus far preferred.
Still, if the next edition of Mario has an Apple or Steve Jobs looking boss level, we’ll know Nintendo is taking it seriously…
Is this a triumph? Portal running on an iPhone? Not really, according to Gizmodo:
The video says the demo was made using the Unity Engine, which means they took some Portal assets and made a small demo with them. They didn’t take the full game and squish it onto the iPhone; what you see is probably the entire thing. There’s no way the Source Engine is running on the 3G. Maybe the 3GS, but not the 3G.
Not yet! But we figure they’ll keep on trying until they run out of cake… or Valve pulls an ID an actually releases a game for the new 40+ million unit iPhone/iPod touch platform. Right Valve?
According to Business Insider, just 1 year later, Apple’s iTunes App Store has made the iPhone the hottest gaming platform on earth:
Apple became not only the hottest mobile platform in the world — which around 15,000 developers have made software for, and all of its major rivals have tried to replicate — but arguably the hottest gaming platform in the world. No other platform has had such a rush of developer and consumer interest in the last year.
BI highlight big name developers like EA, Sega, and Gameloft jumping into the iPhone, but also great new studios forming around it like ngmoco. And with iPhone 3.0 and its 1000 new APIs like P2P gaming and in-app purchases, they suggest we might not have seen anything yet…
During the WWDC 2009 Keynote, Apple announced that over 40,000,000 iPhones and iPods touches had been sold to date. We know what that looks like in the smartphone market space, but now Gizmodo has done some research and shown us what that might just look like in the gaming platform space as well. (See graph above).
Might explain why we see so many games already, and as Gizmodo points out:
Combine this with the fact that the faster graphics support in the iPhone 3GS is going to make it a pretty damn good gaming device, you’ve got a juicy target for game developers to hit.
Game on…
(Peggle Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)
With all the talk recently about Peggle, I was surprised that it hasn’t been reviewed (although it did get a “quick app” and a pick of the week) so I thought I would download and give it a try. And, well, Peggle has managed to crack my “regular game rotation” that currently consists of only a few other games.
We’ll avoid the obvious question (why live in a SIM world when you can live in the real one), and the metaphysical (maybe you’re just a SIM in someone else’s iPhone already…?) because, frankly, no one cares! The Sims 3 is — finally! — out for the iPhone and iPod touch:
Play with your Sim using touch and accelerometer controls while exploring stunning 3D open-world environments. Customize your Sim with personality traits and physical characteristics, as you decide whether to fulfill their destiny…or not. Do good or mischief. Fall in love or watch them get dumped. Pick a fight or make a friend. Good or bad, enjoy the ride with The Sims as they experience everything “real” life has to offer. ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE!
If you try it out, and manage to remember the rest of us still exist, let us know how you like the Sims 3 for the iPhone, okay?
[Thanks Andrew for the tip!]
ngmoco has gone and set up a little media tournament, taking place on Twitter, with their hawt new game, StarDefense. Suiting up on TiPb’s behalf is yours truly, and you can follow my progress, and everyone’s progress, through the elimination rounds via @ngmoco or individually:
- Rene Ritchie/the iPhone Blog (@reneritchie)
- Chris Foreman/Ars Technica (@foresmac)
- Brandon Boyer/Boing Boing (@brandonnn)
- Bryan Barletta/148Apps (@BryanNO)
- Eli Hodapp/Touch Arcade (@hodapp)
- Tracy Erickson/Pocket Gamer (@TracyErickson)
- John Davidson/What They Play (@jwdavidson)
- Victor Lucas/Electric Playground (@Victor_Lucas)
- N’gai Croal/Hit Detection (@ncroal)
- Patrick Kelpek/G4TV.com (@eXxy)
- Levi Buchanan/IGN
Best of luck and… bring it on!
