Game Center is basically Xbox Live for your iPhone

by Christopher Grant on Apr 8th 2010 1:59PM

We knew Apple was serious about treating the iPhone and iPod Touch as gaming devices, but at its iPhone OS 4 event (liveblog here) it just dropped the gauntlet: Game Center. "Gaming is extremely popular on the iPhone and iPod touch. We have 50,000 games," Apple's Scott Forstall trumpeted. "Let's compare that to the competition ... the PSP and DS ... we blow them out of the water." While we're not going to start pointing out relative quality differences here, we will say that iPhone now has one very powerful differentiator that neither the PSP nor DS have: "a social gaming network."

Forstall unveiled Game Center, which he said will make "gaming even better on the iPhone." With matchmaking, game invites, leaderboards and achievements, this is pretty much a carbon copy of Xbox Live, but on your phone (Windows Phone 7, beat to the punch!). This is a "dev preview for OS 4," which will be available today for you devs out there. Everyone else, you've gotta wait until "summer."

Tags: achievements, apple, game-center, iphone-os-4, iPod, leaderboards, matchmaking, Scott-Forstall, social-networking

Reader Comments (112)

Glad you iPhone users get some Live support now!

*iPhone 3G, 3GS users.

The original iPhone doesn't get this support? Sucks to be them!

Honestly, if you still own a 1st gen iPhone at this point, you're probably going to want to upgrade soon anyway.

Nice troll though. Keep em comin!

The original iPhone, original iPod touch get nothing. The second gen iPod Touch and iPhone 3G only get some parts, and no multitasking.

My Pocket PC with 32MB of RAM had multitasking, for heavens sake!

Multitasking is a must. My phone doesn't support multitasking. Really hate watching/listening to long youtube videos only for 20 minutes in getting "[Insert Name] Has sent a new text!"

My phone makes phone calls. There's some MP3 feature on there too, but you know what I do with it? Make phone calls. I don't even text with the damn thing unless someone text's me first. I'm the odd man out :)

I have a friend like you. He despises texts. I don't need too fancy of a phone. I text a ton and make phone calls. I enjoy my home run derby game. And internet browsing is great for bathroom breaks. Other than that though, it's still just a phone to me.

Agreed, br breaks with internet are awesome. Morph, you must not know very many girls or You're my dad. A single guys thumbs are always glued to the keyboard, not by choice either. I saw an article about a girl in her teens who got carpal tunnel in her hand from texting so much, it made me LOL. Just imagine how boffed your hands would be after some long ipad gaming sessions. These things aren't really ergonomic like a controller pad is.

With technology these days it's hard to avoid carpal tunnel. I've had carpal tunnel since I was 16 because of my PC technician and gaming background. On top of texting with phones it's too hard to avoid. Carpal Tunnel isn't pleasant.

I don't get how a luddite comment like 'My dumphone makes calls and that's good enough for someone that is living in a first-world country in 2010' gets upvoted that high on a tech site, but okay.

Maybe because some of us have realized that "jack of all trades" devices generally have issues?

He also made a genuine comment about his device. He's deserving of his honesty and belief of his device. Not all upvoting is for quirky and funny comments.

I just have no need for a smart phone. I literally have electronics all over the place in my house and anything I need to do on a smart phone I can do on one of them. My wife has a blackberry, but she uses that for her business. Similarly, I've got an iPod Touch, and I use it to play music. I've never upgraded the firmware because I'm not interested in apps and games. When I go out to someplace that I know I'll be waiting for a bit, I bring along my DSi. That's just how I roll.

I'm with morph on this one. Im a PC tech for a living, but I dont have a smart phone or a laptop. I have a work computer, and a home computer, and most of my time is at work or home. I dont feel I suffer on the 15 min trip between the two, and when Im away from the house the last thing I tend to want to be around is a computer.

I have an envy 1 ive been using for like 3 years and it still works just fine.

Admittedly, a smart phone would be fun to play around with now and then. But currently, I pay about $45 / month for my phone service, and I don't need to screw around with the internet often enough that I can justify paying $70-90 / month instead.

I'm not poor; I make a pretty good living. But I'm with you guys, I just can't justify a smart phone right now. It makes no sense.

Tuna, I have the 1st iPhone - I didn't know there was some necessity for me to buy every darn one they released. It did the same stuff up until this OS, so why exactly was I supposed to prioritize redundant phone purchases this whole time?

Also, I think this is a blatant and shameless ripoff of XBL.

My 1-year-old iPod touch 2G won't have multitasking!? Damn it.

Why is this posted on Joystiq

Because it is about gaming...clearly.

Yeah, and now the OS will have all the ads of Xbox Live as well.

OH SNAP!

Well I'm not going to try an reason with you (since 100% of your post related to the Developer conference have all been negative), but if you were paying attention you would have noticed that Apple is trying to make the Ads we currently see less intrusive.

Way to troll though!

*iAds!

It doesn't matter. Now, I pay for the device, the software, and the apps, now I get to have ads built into the OS.

But, he's right.... except unlike XBL, the ads make it free!

@NaeemTHM

He's right though. An ad is an ad, no matter how interactive you try to make it. The only way it's not intrusive is if it's not there.

If you had to wait for years of updates and upgraded hardware to get basic functionality, you'd be pissed too.

Cydia for the win, though. I hope the phone remains jail-breakable forever.

@rells009

Agreed, but if you've ever used an Android phone, a Zune HD, or any "smart" device you'll see ads. They're just always there no matter what. At least now if I click on an interesting ad I wont be taken away from what I'm doing.

Plus it's 100% up to the devs, as always, to put ads in their apps. Of all the iPhone apps I use, I've only seen ads in about 3 or 4...and they were free.

Really though? All this talk on Ads (specifically on XBL)They never bothered me, or are we sneakily tying that into an "XBL should be free" rant?

Heck, when Co.'s make those quick vids they slot on the XBL dash board, I'll watch them if it looks to be interesting.

My response to ads on any interface is, so what? Not like they pop up during game/video play.

PC - laptops? That's a different monster

"or are we sneakily tying that into an "XBL should be free" rant?"

Nothing sneaky about it, that's what we're talking about. I hope this does push Microsoft to rethink their online subscription strategy.

Competition's a good thing.

The problem with iAds, even if they're fun or interesting, they eat into my data usage. 3G isn't free or close to it. The way AT&T handles data this could be a problem.

#iFail

The ads are in APPS, not in the OS. App developers have been putting ads on free apps for as long as I can remember. Now they will be handled by the API, be uniform from app to app, etc. It's also opt-in. If devs of free apps want iAd, cool. If not, also cool.

Since when does AT&T care about data usage? That's what that $30/month iPhone data plan is for. You pay that, you get data. As far as I am aware, once you pay that $30, it may be metered, but certainly doesnt count against you.

Edward351, what does it matter they use data? The plans for iPhone are unlimited data. If it only allowed 10mb a month or something, then that would be a valid complaint - but you are just moaning for the sake of moaning with that argument. It's like me being mad that at&t sends me a text saying thanks for paying the month's bill...i didn't pay for that test, but its still a text being sent...omg! Data waster!

Um there are NO true unlimited plans

So you have used enough data that they shut down your data plan?

This is cool, I don't care what any other negative ned or nancy has to say about it: It's effing cool!

AGREE! I shat myself when I saw this on the liveblog. Totally unexpected and FRIGGEN AMAZING!

>_> That's a little extreme don't ya think?

Interesting...I wonder what this means for the Plus+ network and other Live rips. I hope they're integrated as well!

Sony inparticular is going to get completely left behind if it doesn't start making it's S-E phones gaming capable devices with PSN integration.

I agree, this makes that E3 PSP Phone rumor a necessity now...

However, they're going to need more than just PS1 games on the phone, they're going to need a beefy OS to back it up.

As far as Sony and phones go they pretty much suck..

Sony have taken a step in the right direction the xperia x10 which is android based.. Along with the 2 mini xperia's both with android.. I was thinking about getting it when my contract expires this year, but then a phone like evo 4g completely buries it, sorry to say but their phones suck because Symbian sucks.

They could work miracles and merge psn into android and adopt android as their primary platform that would be cool.

All modern mobile phones bury the psp, technology has moved on, they need to upgrade the psp..

What? Another free gaming service? Crazy! I thought they all had to cost money!

absolutely amazing.... now nitendo.. please.. even iPhone has a decent online comunnity, you're the only one left!

that also gives us a hint of the future of hendheld gaming.. for son and nintendo also. I bed the next generations will have 3G

If it's one thing Nintendo has proven, it's that you actually don't need a successfull online gaming community/social space in order to succeed.

Entertaining software sells systems.

it does not NEED one, but it does help. And besides, it is just so good for us, if you have used xbox live or steam you know what I am talking about... It's not about Nintendo succeeding, it's about what's best for us users.. And nintendo sure would get the profits for giving us what we want.

Nintendo isn't threatened, i don't think. The competition having vastly superior online integration (you can't even really call what Nintendo has a network. It's a service, but a network by nature integrates things) has posed no real threat to them at all in the console space.

I can't wait to challenge my friends to a whooping (no pun intended) game of Fart Machine Pro!!

Too bad 49,989 games are trash...

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Game Center is basically Xbox Live for your iPhone

Reader Comments (112)

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:01PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:03PM Dr Blight said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:05PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

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Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:16PM Morph156 said

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Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:32PM yinzjagz said

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Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:39PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 3:06PM Morph156 said

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Posted: Apr 8th 2010 3:47PM Duke said

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Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:15PM NaeemTHM said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:21PM Negatron said

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Posted: Apr 8th 2010 2:51PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

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