iGame Radio

We’re catching up on some cool iOS games that have been released in the past week or so. First up is Terrafarmers HD by Alawar Entertainment. A standard time management sim with a rather unusual storyline, in Terrafarmers your goal is to grow alien plantlife and take care of wild alien creatures as you move from planet to planet bringing them to life. There are 16 planets to play in with 67 total levels, along with OpenFeint and Game Center integration. The graphics are pretty sweet, too. You can download this iPad game for $2.99.

Squishy’s Revenge is a clever looking sliding puzzle game by Toy Studio. In Squishy’s Revenge, you have a certain number of moves for each level to slide your pieces into the right slots and hope to get Squishy to the correct location. The puzzles make you think and include cool powerups, like teleportation portals and such. You is available as a universal app for iPhone and iPad for free, with in-app purchases for level packs. Which seems to mean that you will download a demo, and receive more of the full game if you pay through in-app purchase.

Lastly, Big Blue Bubble has released Fling a Thing, a flinging platform game. The “thing” is a creature made up of coalesced parts that actually looks pretty awesome. You stretch and release to fling it around the screen and capture bubbles in the air within a certain number of shots. There are powerups to help you out as levels increase in difficulty, and in-app purchases of additional stars to help unlock worlds or powerups. You can download the game for iPhone/iPod Touch for $0.99.

Back in July, Astroslugs was released for iPad. Now the puzzle game has been released for the iPhone/iPod Touch as well, with a major update to the iPad version too. The player must gather energy at different planets by solving puzzles that activates “slugballs”, releasing energy for his spacecraft. To solve a puzzle, the player must draw the ancient hieroglyphs of the Astrolugs’ ancestors in a limited game area. The update includes 20 more planets to explore, an in-app purchase to open all planets instead of doing it in-game, and bug and performance enhancements. You can get the iPhone version for $0.99.

Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack is an iOS game by Be-Rad Entertinament, Croteam and Devolver Digital released ahead of Serious Sam: BFE. You’ll be able to pursue Same by directing the Headless Kamikaze through 40+ levels and challenge modes. The game looks to be a horizontal platformer sporting iconic art from the Serious Sam series. The game is available for $0.99.

Big Blue Bubble has released a sequel to their rope burning game, Burn the Rope: Worlds for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The goal of the game is to burn as much rope as possible without letting the flames burn out. As the flames only burn upwards, the phone must be rotated to keep the flames going. Along the way different types of bugs crawling along the rope can help or hinder players as they try to solve each puzzle. The game sports 100 levels, four themed worlds, and a mini-game called Endless Burn where the player tries to collect as many bugs as possible. The catch is that as the player collects bugs their flame trail gets longer, and if they run into the flame trail the round is over. Burn the Rope: Worlds is out now for $0.99.

UPDATE: I erred in the value I posted regarding the number of iPod Touches sold and my understanding of the percentages of gamers that Newzoo talked about, but my conclusion still holds strong (stronger even). Jobs stated that the number of iOS devices sold in total since the iPhone launched was 120 million. To be honest, I’m not certain where I found that 250 million number…it’s not in any of my notes or posts. Maybe it was playing too much Portal last weekend. In any case, 40.1 million total gamers over iPhone and iPod Touch in total versus 41 million for DSi and 18 million for PSP does not make for a #1 portable game device from the number of gamers point of view.

I would be interested in why Jobs does believe the device to be #1 in mobile gaming or that it beat out Nintendo and Sony combined. Perhaps he is being affected by his own Reality Distortion Field (TM). Certainly affected me (I mean, look at the numbers I tried to post).

During the Apple event of September 1st, Steve Jobs made an important statement. He said that the iPod Touch was the #1 portable game player, beating out Sony and Nintendo combined, with 1.5 billion game and entertainment titles downloaded to the iPod Touch alone. But is that just rhetoric, and what does it really mean?

A new survey by games market research firm Newzoo found that 40.1 million people in the US are playing games on iPhones, iPod touches or iPads. This is based on its International Gamers Survey 2010, which claims that iOS accounts for more than half the 77 million mobile gaming audience in the US. This is still behind the Nintendo DS with 41 million gamers and well ahead of Sony’s PSP with 18 million.

So, based on this survey the iPod Touch is not the #1 portable game player with respect to the number of gamers playing on the device.

Jobs also stated that over 250 million iPod Touches 120 million iOS devices have been sold since the devices had been released in September of 2007. Since March of 2007, the Nintendo DS has sold 115.31 million devices, and the PSP has sold 39 million units. Combined, they don’t even touch the number of iPod Touches sold Perhaps in Job’s dreams. The reality is that combined, they do overtake sales of all iOS devices, let alone iPod Touches.

However, a higher percentage of DS and PSP gamers play games on their devices, by 67% and 66% respectively, than do owners of iPhone and iPod Touch (45%) or iPad (32%). So, even though there are more iPod Touch owners, less than half are actually using the device to play games. Which means that of the 115.31 million DS users, 77.25 million are playing games.

Except that the number of gamers playing games on the DS is pegged at 41 million by the Newzoo study. Clearly not every DS sold over the past 3.5 years is even in use, let alone in use by a gamer. Can we say the same for the iPod Touch, though? 250 million iPod Touches sold does not mean 250 million current users Yeah, we’ll go back to that less than 120 million number. And 40.1 million gaming users which are 45% of the total user audience for the iPod Touch would result in a number of 89.11 million current iPod touch users. Wow, that’s a high attrition rate from 250 million sold over 3.5 years. That would be 40.1 million gaming users in total on the iPhone and iPod Touch. 45% of that pay for their games, or 18.05 million, says Newzoo.

Certainly one survey does not change numbers or the direction of a conversation, but clearly there’s something interesting going on here. It would be interesting to see what future surveys find over the coming year. But based on the current numbers that I’ve been able to tease out, the iPod Touch is not quite the #1 portable gaming device yet.

Via Mobile Entertainment

This morning Apple issued a rather stunning press release, turning 180 degrees from their prior stance over the past year regarding third party software in Apps on the App Store. They are making changes to the iOS Developer Program license, particularly relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code.

The changes to the iOS Developer Program License will affect sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 specifically, and will do more than relax the above restrictions. However, the biggest affect of this will be that third party development tools, such as Flash and Unity, will now officially be given the go-ahead.

In addition, Apple has stated that they have published their App Review guidelines for the first time. These are the rules that Apple reviewers for the App store use to determine which apps make it into the store and which ones are rejected. Developers have long wanted to know what procedures are used to accept or reject apps, so that they can fall within the correct parameters. The lack of knowledge has caused great concern for many and suspicion of retaliation for some. As stated in the press release, “We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store.”

Yesterday, shortly after the Apple September 1st Keynote event, I appeared on the MacJury to discuss and adjudicate the revelations Steve Jobs made. Hosted by Chuck Joiner, I appeared alongside Dave Hamilton of the Mac Geek Gab, Chuck LaTournou of Randomaccess, and Don McCallister of ScreenCastsOnline. We had great fun chatting up this content filled keynote and all the implications therein, including the importance of Apple streaming the thing. Yeah, every little detail is important. ;-)

I, of course, had a lot to say about Game Center, and the lack of information still provided in the keynote, what the new iPod Touch will mean to gaming (and Job’s comments about it being the #1 mobile gaming platform now), and the gaming possibilities that AppleTV 2.0 will represent.

Go, listen. It’s a fun-filled hour of Mac geeks chatting about their favorite subjects.

The Apple event today was all about the music, as could be inferred by the invite with the guitar in the background. But game treasure could be found all around if one knew where to look. Jobs gave us more information about Game Center, we saw a wonderful demo of an Epic Game in development on the new iPod Touch, and we discussed the possibilities about the new AppleTV.

First up was the announcement that iOS 4.1 would be released next week. Read more

It’s been a couple of weeks since the historic announcement from Apple revealing the iPad, and the reactions have been an interesting mix of heavy criticism and excitement. The heavy criticism stems mostly from the geek community, that seem to feel that they have been betrayed. Months of hype that at sometimes felt like the inevitable return of the Messiah (or the Jobsiah?), the iPad was far less than many of us perhaps fantasized, though in fact really not that far off the mark from what most analysts and the geek community in general had expected.

Meanwhile, many developers are crowing about the potential the iPad has to offer. For example, former Facebook iPhone developer Joe Hewitt believes that the iPhone’s OS still has a huge amount of potential that hasn’t been tapped. “I felt strongly that all Apple needed to do to revolutionize computing was simply to make an iPhone with a large screen.”

But, to quote one of my all-time favorite movies, “I didn’t make him for *you*!!”

Yes, indeed, Steve Jobs did *not* make the iPad for you and me, fellow members of the geek community. But for your mom, your dad, your grandfather, and my stepdaughter who most decidedly wishes to identify as anything but a geek (while she gleefully texts and gmails her way through life), this is the perfect device. These are the media consumers that will be attracted to the iPad. To quote iShoot developer Ethan Nicholas, “The iPad is a computer for people who don’t like computers…if you have managed to convince yourself that the iPad is a useless, locked-up DRM-laden failure of a ‘computer’ before even touching one, I have two words for you: My mom.”

And, hopefully, they will be attracted to the games that the iPad has to offer. We’ve already seen a few offerings of those possibilities in what both EA showed with Need for Speed and Gameloft showed with N.O.V.A. Many more have already piped up with me-toos of games that they intend to show up on the iPad as well. Others have listed out games that they want to see on the iPad, or speculated on games that would work well for the platform.

Remember that quote of Joe Hewitt’s? That bigger screen really does make a bigger difference. Aspyr Media put out a game early in the iPhone game rush called Buggled. It was a cute little game about trying to touch all the ladybugs on the screen in order, and you could play two person. Unfortunately, the iPhone screen is so small that what could be challenging fun ended up being frustrating. Not to mention how many times the phone kept falling from their hands. My kids got tired of it after a while.

This game on the iPad, however, would be a blast. With a larger screen, it will be easier to find where you need to place your fingers, and easier to expand the number of levels to include. Most importantly, the biggest frustration of the game, the threat of dropping your iPhone, would be removed. Place your iPad on your lap or table top. Include more players. FTW!

But, what about online games? Many are Flash based, and as we well know from the presentation last week, the little blue lego tells us that Flash has been banned from the sacred iPad screen. Ain’t Adobe pissed (enough to use the pr0n card, no less).

Or is it? Adobe had already announced an iPhone tool that would allow developers to create native iPhone applications using Flash. They are in the process of expanding this tool for multiple screen sizes to use on the iPad as well.

Then there’s HTML5. The next version of HTML seeks to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in based internet applications, such as Java and Flash. There are even some preliminary HTML5 platform games that have been created, although they are very rudimentary. These show the potential and power of this new version of the web’s basic markup language.

But none of this means the end of Flash, or Flash-based games. Even if more online games will be using Adobe’s iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad tool and even if more online games start using HTML5 with javascript for the foundation of their game development, you can be sure that Flash will be around for quite a while at least.

So, what’s the conclusion that we can reach? The iPhone has proved that you don’t need Flash to have a healthy mobile game scene. And Facebook has proved that Flash games are extremely popular online. Both can coexist, and I’m sure we’ll see a hell of a lot of great games to come from both sides.

Got a trailer for the new Chronicles of Inotia sequel, A Wanderer of Luone. The iPhone/iPod Touch RPG game continues a heroic journey through a land of magic, companionship, and a never ending battle against evil. Choose from five different classes (I suspect that the developer has suspended the affects of gravity on the large assets of the female gender choices), control up to three members in your party, customize your characters, and enter into multiplayer battles. Over 200 single-player quests have been included in the game.

The game has been submitted to Apple and the developer, Com2uS is hoping the game will pop up onto the App Store in early December.

Com2uS has announced that their latest iPhone game, Sniper vs. Sniper: Online, has hit the AppStore. A first-person shooter, Sniper vs. Sniper features both a single-player and multi-player mode. You can engage in players from around the world head to head, or work in teams in Alliance Attack mode against terrorist groups. The single-player mode features a six mission campaign, including upgraded weaponry and achievements.

In the game, you locate your enemy using the tilt function of the iPhone, then tap to shoot. A missed shot will alert your enemy to your location. Interestingly enough, you can shoot more than just human enemies in the game…aliens, and even cats get targeted. Though that last one is part of an effort to round up starving cats for the pound, and you are shooting them with a tranquilizer gun.

The game is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, OS 2.2.1 or later, for $4.99.

Scoreloop announced today a new set of social gaming features available for iPhone and iPod Touch games. Core Social is Scoreloop’s white-label solution that integrates social gaming features directly into the user interface of the game. Players can, for example, review high scores online, compare achievements, and throw challenges at each other without exiting the game. Developers can choose which of the many features available to integrate into their game, then create a consistent experience, so that these social features feel part of the gaming experience.

Developers can also take advantage of Scoreloop’s Premium Integration Services, which will do the analysis and integration work for them. Developers that have already taken advantage of this tool include the studios behind Parachute Panic, Astro Boy, and Pee Monkey Jungle Fire (wait, what??).

For more information, pop on over to Scoreloop, or check out the games that have tried out the services.