iGame Radio

Why would I want multitasking while gaming on my iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad? On a desktop when you’re gaming, you are often focused on the game for the length of the experience, with nothing running in the background to get in the way. But if you play a lot of casual games that allow for windowed play, then you know what it’s like to have email running in the background, or a call come up in Skype, while you game

With mobile gaming on an iPhone, there’s a lot more propensity for interruptions during gameplay. You’re happily Doodlejumping, when an SMS from your Significant Other pops up. Or your mom calls. Or a push notification alerts you to email from your boss (wait, you were supposed to be working??). You deal with the interruption, then you have to wait for Doodlejump to load again, and start all over.

With multitasking, that mess ends. Your game will be right where you left it, hovering in wait-and-see in memory for you to start it up again. No more lost time due to waiting for the game screen to load, and no more frustration at knowing you’ll have to play a level all over again.

This multitasking ability, of course, relies on two very important things. First, each app that wants to take advantage of multitasking in the iOS4 system must update their apps to reflect that. Second, Apple will have to approve them.

Right now Apple is urging developers to update their apps to the iOS4 in time for the OS launch on June 21st. There are hundreds of thousands of apps on the app store, a large proportion of them games, but how many of them will actually decide to update in time for the iOS4 release? You can believe that games with high production value and large studios backing them will. But what about the smaller studios? What about freemium games? What about low production value games like iFart, etc? What would cause them to update to iOS4 so quickly to take advantage of such features as multitasking?

Perhaps forcing an update like this is a good way to weed out better quality games from the not so good, but it may also cause game studios with a tighter budget to wait longer. Since it takes time to do an update (time=money) these companies may not see a real benefit to the features that an update would bring right now, most of which would not impact their game, and a few of which they would have to remake their game altogether to use (such as the gyroscope feature). Unless gamers impress upon them a real need to have these features now.

Apple’s approval process is not the fastest in the world either, with companies complaining of delays in approval of updates as well as inconsistencies regarding rejection reasons. Apple will have to focus much more on approving apps for the iOS4 during the next week and a half…and away from approving other apps. Which will mean even more delays for those other apps. This could also cause smaller game companies to decide to wait a while until things calm down.

In the end, I predict far fewer games actually having the multitasking feature available at iOS4 launch, and indeed for months after that, then are in the App Store now.