Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, is quoted in the WSJ as being bullish on iPhone and iPod Touch gaming:
“I think the iPhone and iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in the mobile games market this holiday season.”
His VP of iPhone and iPod marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, meanwhile, spoke with T3 recently about his views on the iPhone and iPod Touch in the gaming space, wrapping up strongly with:
“if you squint your eyes you can see a future where you say it’s amazing the things you’ll see as far as gameplay, and we know from working with these developers and the things they tell us they’re working on, especially original content ideas, I think they’re going to blow everyone away. Because again the computer power and the 3D graphic power here [iPod Touch] is significantly greater than what you have here [picks up Nintendo DS]. So this allows people to do significantly higher quality games. And the Touch is always in your pocket, whereas you can’t always carry some other games consoles.”
So while cut and paste and turn-by-turn may still be complicated, Apple may actually be putting some muscle behind gaming this time — something they’ve never historically done well on the Mac.
Still at issue, however, is whether low price points and an unwillingness among some consumers to pay for premium apps will drive the bigger developers away (thanks Julien for the tip!). Dieter and I would happily pay $20 for Jobs of War or Grand Theft Auto: Cupertino Vice, but with people complaining about $1.99 puzzlers, we may never see the Mario or Halo of the iPhone. (You get what you pay for is a cliche for a reason?)
What do you think? Does iPhone gaming have a bright future? Would you pay for premium play? And are you ready to ditch your Nintendo DS or Sony PSP yet?
The realtechVR team has released their first iPhone game, Laserlink:
Become the Master of the lasers with LaserLink, and recover every diamonds in each level. Create junctions to allow generating a laser between two points of connection of color in order to recover the diamonds ones.
If you’re interested in puzzlers, let us know what you think!
[The Lightning Reviews are over, but from their ashes rise... the Forum Reviews! TiPb has assembled a crack team of App-aficionados, and every week we'll be bringing you a few of their very best reviews right here on the blog. And be sure to check out TiPb's iPhone App Store Forum for even more!]
Brian passed on this tip from Kevin Doel. Looks like Tetris is being ever-zealous in broadly defending their “look and feel” trademarks:
Phunkware’s Shaker game is being pulled from the market in about 5 hours. The
Tetris Company contacted Apple claiming the game is too close to Tetris for comfort.
If this is legit, and you read this post in time, and the FREE game at all interests you, walk — don’t run — to the App Store and grab Shaker now!
With all the hubbub surrounding the App Store these days, the blogophiles among us may forget that, for casual users, everything is pretty sweet. Browse. Tap. Download. Launch. For mobile gaming fans this is especially true. Check out the Top Apps list, and you’ll routinely see games hogging most of the spots. Don’t think this has escaped attention either. Says Block Breaker Deluxe (available via the iTunes App Store) developer Gameloft:
With some competitors due out next year, Apple is looking to capitalize on their virtual monopoly of these types of games, and with the success of their iphone games so far, they look certain to sustain a strong share of the market for smartphone games for some time to come.
As if to prove their point, Block Breaker Deluxe looks to be a bright, innovative take on the classic genre, and will no doubt appeal to the casual gaming audience the iPhone (and Apple) is hitting so well with as of late.
Whether the push from Android Market eventually forces Apple to change their current developer relations process or not, in the gaming space at least, everything on the iPhone is apps!
For the last two weeks we here at TiPb have been taking a deeper look into Apple’s “Game On” push.
Can anyone really doubt Steve Jobs is trying to make the iPhone/iPod Touch into the next big portable gaming device? Stop and think about it, he took the idea of a portable MP3 player and made it into a device that has dominated the music business ever since. Now, according to Jobsy, “you could make a pretty good argument [the iPhone is] the best portable device for playing games on.”
Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Mobile Strategy at Jupitermedia’s MobileDevicesToday.com, chimed in:
The not-so-subtle message was, ‘If you’re thinking about buying something like a PSP or a DS, maybe you want to think again because we’ve got this cool device that does all your mobile stuff and, by the way, is a pretty excellent game platform as well’
Steve Palley, Editorial Guru for Vivendi Games Mobile said:
The iPhone is going to make the mobile games industry into everything we always wanted it to be but failed to achieve.
Even Nintendo’s Denise Kaigler, VP of Corporate Affairs spoke out regarding the iPhone:
Any time you have a new company enter an industry, it’s always good for the consumer. It gives them choices and we welcome that. But we have found over the last 20 years, despite all the choices consumers have had, that the Nintendo devices have enjoyed a great deal of success.
I really can not argue with Nintendo’s comment. Nintendo is the king of the hill in the handheld gaming industry. Many have tried to overtake them, all failing. Here’s what I’m thinking, though, Apple may not be the top dog at the moment but by the time the next iPhone is released, Jobsy might just be saying “I told you so!”. Give the App Store a year to grow, software developers time to get the most out of the hardware, etc… And then lets see how things start to shake out. What are you guys and gals thinking?
(Not one, but two premiere game reviews on TiPb today. If you haven’t already checked out the review of The Force Unleashed for the iPhone, go get your Star Wars on)
Given all the hype these past couple of weeks — heck, these past couple of years — you probably don’t need much introduction to Spore, so we’ll keep it quick. Spore is a game about evolution that works via a little intelligent design: you start out as a helpless, single-cell organism and work your way up the food chain. On the console and PC versions of the game, this eventually leads you to intergalactic conquest.
In Spore Origins for the iPhone ($9.99 at iTunes), that process is scaled back quite a bit. Over the course of 30 levels you stay pretty much at the single-cell level, adding various eyeballs, feelers, spikes, and the like as you tilt your way through the primordial sea, gobbling up smaller creatures and avoiding the larger ones.
We at TiPb have been waiting for Spore ever since it was announced. Heck, we were hoping it would come to the iPhone well before that. Does it live up to our expectations? Read on…
Read the rest of this entry »
(Not one, but two premiere game reviews on TiPb today. If you haven’t already checked out the review of Spore for the iPhone, go get your evolution on!)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Mobile) for the iPhone by THQ Wireless is available for $9.99 via the iTunes App Store. Alongside Spore, it’s one of the highest profile games released so far for the “funnest iPod (and iPhone) ever”.
Now, Star Wars was the first movie I remember seeing in the theater (which, yes, makes me old and tells you something about how big a deal actually going to a movie theater was in the days before PPV, torrentz, and home cinema!) I had a lot of the toys. I played a lot of the video games, from the early Nintendo fare that drove the sound track so far into overuse I still cringe when I hear Jawa, to the truly epic Battlefront II on the original Xbox. I even have had the prequels Jedi-mind-tricked out of my consciousness (”not the Star Wars you were looking for…”)
So yes, Star Wars is in my DNA every bit as much as Apple. Put them together and — even absent Megan Fox — and The Force Unleashed pretty much had me at announce. But would it hold me? Does THQ deliver Empire-class sizzle, or Phantom-style fizzle?
When Steve Jobs uttered the statement that “Now you can make a pretty good argument that the [iPod Touch/iPhone] is the best portable device for playing games on”, did you nod your head in unison? I have my money on you saying no—the iPhone is a great device, to be sure, but a gaming device? Leave that to Nintendo you probably thought.
Why? Because the Nintendo DS has sold close to 80 million units since its inception. The numbers speak for themselves, the Nintendo DS is the king of portable gaming. So what would it take for the iPhone to knock the DS off of its throne? Well, that’s what we are here to tell you.
Read on to see how the iPhone can take on the Nintendo DS!
Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” event brought a sneak-peak of Gameloft’s latest iPhone (and iPod Touch) offering, Real Soccer/Football 2009. Well, it’s now available via iTunes App Store, and according to Gameloft:
This dynamic game takes advantage of the iPhone’s touch screen allowing players to pull off spectacular moves with the touch of a fingertip. There are almost 200 teams available to play and real player names, tournaments and exhibition games and a soon to be introduced multiplayer feature.
Apple’s pushing OS X Touch as the “funnest” mobile gaming platform yet, which is market speak for wanting it in more markets. With accessories like the gaming pad on the horizon, the already 100 million in sales is only the beginning.
Sure, the PSP (see our iPhone vs. PSP article for more!) and DS dominance won’t be going anywhere any time soon, but Apple’s combination of communications (with the iPhone) and media and data management present considerable differentiation and appeal all their own.
And for Apple, at this point it means gaming is all gravy.
