iGame Radio

Splitfish Gameware has announced the FRAGFX Shark, a new power conserving precision mouse and FPS controller for the PS3, PC, and Mac. The FRAGFX Shark requires only a single AA battery in the split fragchuck and mouse that the company claims will provide 50+ hours of gaming time, with 500+ hours on standby. The FRAGFX Shark will be shown at Gamescom 2010, August 18-22.

Splitfish is providing full PC/Mac support, either as a gamepad or mouse/keyboard controller. You can play with the fragchuck even though the game is set for mouse/keyboard play. You can also dynamically program the motion and adjust the mouse sensitivity. There will be no firmware updates necessary, and the wireless technology works up to 2.4 GHz.

If you happen to be at Gamescom, you can check out the FRAGFX Shark and even play against International Call of Duty champ Dennis Dozier (zDD). A Teflon Hearts Team Leader and former #1 C.O.D. global leaderboard champ, Dennis will be taking on all challengers, trying to extend his tradeshow perfect record after leaving undefeated from E3 2010.

So, check out the show and check out the mouse and fragchuck (s’riosly, who comes up with these names??) and see if you can pwn the dude with the Alienware gear with your Mac Pro.

Science Fiction author and futurist Charlie Stross penned an interesting blog post today about just why Steve Jobs hates Flash, and the future of Apple (and PC) computing. The gist of the article was that Jobs, seeing that the PC market would be bottoming out literally within years, was attempting to save his precious Apple and move it into a new computing ecosystem. The remainder of the Silicon Valley world is flailing about, either equally terrified but not certain what to do, or taking less than effective action.

The picture Stross paints is an interesting one, Read more

Apple announced the dates of the Worldwide Developers Conference in a press release today. The 2010 WWDC is slated for June 7 – June 11 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. The conference will include five technology tracks to choose from: Application Frameworks, Internet & Web, Graphics & Media, Developer Tools, and Core OS.

This year’s conference will include labs in iPad development as well as Mac OSX and iPhone/iPod Touch development. The Internet & Web track promises to include help with HTML5, which will become a big part of animation for the iPhone and iPad.

The WWDC will also include the Apple Developer Awards, an annual event since 1997, as well as evening events such as Stump The Experts and the WWDC Bash.

Tickets to the WWDC conference are already available for $1,599. You can sign up for the event at the WWDC website.

Ambrosia Software, publisher of cool utility, productivity, and game programs for the Mac and iPhone, has announced a holiday sale. The Ambrosia Holiday Bundle provides savings of up to 70% off on their games & utilities. The sale runs right up until Christmas Eve, December 24th 2009.

There are two different bundles that you can choose from, at three different prices for each bundle.

The “work” bundle starts at $59 and includes:

• WireTap Studio
• Soundboard
• Dragster

The “play” bundle starts at a mere $19 and includes:

• SketchFighter
• Apeiron X
• Bubble Trouble X

Both bundles are priced at a 50% discount, and feature larger sizes with more products for 60% and 70% discounts (for example, you can pick up a bundle that includes both Aquaria and EV Nova for just $39!). Definitely some big-time deals there, so check them out.

Ever since the job posting on the Apple jobs site was discovered, the Internet has been speculating about what that might mean for Apple. Is Apple going to start developing games as a first-party publisher? That’s what everyone wants to know. That’s what many people want to believe.

But, according to an article at Slide-to-play, not necessarily so. Rob Fahey, a self-described games industry analyst, was interviewed and stated his thoughts that Apple was probably scrambling to play catch-up with making its iPhone APIs and platforms more game friendly.

“It’s leaping to conclusions to assume that Apple’s hiring suggests a secret internal game development team,” Fahey said.

According to Fahey, Apple moving into development would upset the balance too much to be worth it. It could cause burgeoning development teams to be outshone by the platform’s own creator.

“Even if Apple did have ideas about entering game development, it’s hard to see how they’d make it work,” he continued. “They’d end up alienating and annoying their developer community– not new ground for Apple, admittedly– and would face accusations of favoritism for their own titles in the App Store, no matter how scrupulously they obeyed their own rules.

Now, where I’m all for believing that Apple has no intention of jumping into first-party development/publishing of games…on the iPhone or Mac…I disagree with Fahey’s reasoning behind why. For one, I don’t believe that Apple would ever intend on getting into game development because Apple doesn’t see itself as a developer of software that doesn’t directly support its hardware or operating system. Consider that Apple could probably come up with a really good project management system (something to compete with MS Project, for example). But they never have. Because project management software doesn’t directly support the OS.

“What about iWork?” I hear you ask. Well, first off, iWork has been in development for years…not something that Apple is just now considering moving into a crowded market. Secondly, most everyone who uses a computer uses a word processor and some simple spreadsheet tools. Not so for project management.

“Ah,” I hear you say. “But what about iTunes!”

And to that I respond with my other reason for why Apple is not, and won’t in the foreseeable future, end up in the game development business. And it has nothing to do with Fahey’s ideas of “favoritism” in the App store (think Microsoft Games and Xbox Live Arcade). It has to do with favoritism within Steve Jobs. Jobs just doesn’t like games. He never really has. He *loves* music. Most every single keynote includes music of some kind, and Jobs has even been up there playing the guitar himself. He promotes music in software all the time.

But never games. The last time games were mentioned in a keynote that I remember was back in, maybe, 2004 (until Schiller’s keynote of WWDC this year).

I’m glad if Apple is working hard to make the iPhone a better gaming platform. Maybe they will actually work hard to make the Mac a better gaming platform as well. But don’t expect any games out of Apple anytime soon.

I’m not dead…just very, very busy. Podcast next week, on Wednesday, for reasons I’ll mention then.

Meantime, I figured you’d like this tidbit about the Mobius invite-only event. Microsoft-sponsored about what they are doing in the mobile space. The picture says it all. LOL!

At PAX last year I had a great interview with Chris Priestly, community coordinator for Bioware, about Dragon Age: Origins. I had just seen a trailer for it, and was excited and enthused about the idea of the game coming to the Mac, as many of Bioware’s games have done. So was Chris.

Apparently, not any more.

I found this snippet on the Bioware DA:O forums today, which doesn’t sound so excited or positive towards the idea of a Mac version of the game at all. In fact, the first response to the poster is typical of the responses received by anyone who asks about a Mac release now on these forums.

I did a review of the requests for a Mac version, or more information about whether a Mac version would be forthcoming, on these forums. Starting around PAX time last year, the responses from Chris and other forum moderators were relatively positive. They love the Mac community, the possibility of a Mac version existed, but there was nothing firm, and first and foremost DA:O was a PC game (read: Windows). Basically what you heard in my podcast with Chris.

Over time, as more requests came in, the responses from both moderators and other forum members became more negative. Worse, discussions were being shut down with the explanation that they were no longer about DA:O (yet, I found other discussions that had nothing to do with DA:O that weren’t shut down).

This is very disappointing. You’d think that, with more interest in a Mac version, Bioware would see more benefit in bringing DA:O to the Mac. Certainly I don’t expect them to commit at this time. But if they still love their Mac community, and are still interested in a Mac version, these forum responses are not the way to support that.

Torque 3D has released their third beta, announcing among other things limited Mac support.

• Basic Lighting
• TerrainBlock
• Water
• ScatterSky
• CloudLayer
• Toolbox
• pureLIGHT

GarageGames stated in their developer blog post that they have more to do before the Mac and Windows side of Torque 3D have the same level of support. “We’ve still got a ways to go to fully catch up on the Mac / OSX side,” said Brett Seyler, “but we’re moving quickly. Full feature and stability parity with Windows is our goal for Beta 4.”

GarageGames is offering Torque 3D at a $100 discount through June 30. After that the discount will be reduced to $50. So pick it up now while you still have the chance to pick it up cheap, and you might still have the opportunity to have a say in what does and doesn’t get into the final product for the Mac.

(Thanks to Macworld.com‘s Live Update and Jason Snell for this info)

Everyone’s been waiting to find out what Steve Jobs would announce this morning regarding laptops. Speculation ranged from a Mac tablet to a sub800 notebook, to even wilder thoughts. Reading the responses to the announcement, many people might have felt a bit disappointed by it. But for gamers, the announcement was great.

Read more