While we still don't think the iPhone App Store makes the do-everything cell phone a threat to the DS, we are impressed with the growing list of big-namefranchises being ported to the system. We can now amend that list to include the Bomberman series, with Hudson's with the recent announcement of Bomberman Touch: Legend of the Mystic Bomb.
A video trailer (embedded below the jump) shows what looks like a transparent, touch-screen d-pad placed over the on-screen action to control Bomberman, sort of like the interface for the earlier iPhone PlayStation emulator . According to Hudson, the game will include "classic Bomberman powerups and original special items" and take advantage of "the unique iPhone / iPod touch interface of flicking, tapping, and tilting with a built-in accelerometer." No word on a multiplayer mode, but with the iPhone's Wi-Fi capabilities, a local wireless option would hopefully be a no-brainer.
Bomberman touch joins water-based puzzle game Aqua Forest and the always lucrative Sudoku in Hudson's announced line-up for the iPhone.
Speaking to MTV Multiplayer, the developer of such epics as Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic confirmed that it is looking into games of a much smaller (physical) scale. Specifically, BioWare co-CEO Greg Zeschuk states that he finds Apple's iPhone "intriguing" as a games platform. Mind you, he's not saying development is underway, but he is a fan.
"Something that's as big a cultural and technical success as the iPhone is something you've really got to take a close look at," explains Zeschuk, adding that, "We've got a lot of folks looking at it." Zechuk's statements come just a few days after the project lead on BioWare's Nintendo DS RPG, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, revealed that the company is also investigating Wii and PSP dvelopment. Now BioWare just needs to look into developing for those LCD games you see at mall kiosks and it'll have all bases covered.
Well that didn't take long. Just a little over a week after announcing his departure from Electronic Arts, former EA Blueprint head Neil Young – an 11-year veteran of the mega-publisher – has revealed his latest gig: ngmoco. Never heard of it? Well, that's because it's brand new; however, if Mr. Young and every other business-minded human eying up the iPhone market is right, you'll be hearing plenty about ngmoco.
First, what's the name mean? Young tells Newsweek that it stands for "Next Generation MObile COmpany" (what, you didn't totally see that the first time?). Alright, but what does that mean? He tells Gamasutra the company is a "publisher that is specifically focused on games for the iPhone and beyond." So, not just the iPhone, but "that class of mobile phone" – touch screen, network connectivity, accelerometer, et al. Young isn't looking to develop games at ngmoco, but rather to commission, finance, and produce titles, hoping the brand name and institutional knowledge will help ngmoco's titles remain visible in what he expects to be a busy, competitive marketplace.
Most interestingly, he talks about how Apple's forthcoming AppStore will rebalance the mobile gaming industry's reliance on carriers. Now, he says, the average revenue per user on mobile phones is "$7.50 or $8" compared to $45 on the PSP and $62 on the DS, leaving a great deal of potential there given the right product.
Source – Departing Electronic Arts Executive Neil Young Talks to Level Up About His New Venture Source – Q&A: EA Vet Young Reveals iPhone Publisher Ngmoco
Following Sega's Super Monkey Ball iPhone demo during today's WWDC Apple keynote, Pangea Software's Brian Greenstone took the stage to show two games they have been working on, Enigmo and Cro-Mag Rally, both games that date back to at least2003 for the developer. Said Grenstone, both games took "three days to get each game up and running -- totally playable."
No other news is available. Monkey Ball notwithstanding, it's kind of disappointing we haven't seen anything from known iPhone devs Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, id Software or Gameloft. Pictures of Cro-Mag Rally for iPhone after the break.
Now this is what we're talking about. Digital Legends Entertainment was the last of three game developers presenting at today's Apple keynote (the other two being Sega and Pangea), and they showed off an action-adventure title due out for the iPhone in September.
Our friends at Engadget had this to say about the game: "Looks a little like God of War, graphics somewhere between DS and PSP. Pretty friggin' impressive. N-GAGE has been after games that look this good for years." We don't know the title, although our best guess is Nightfall Dragons (found on the developer's website). More pictures after the break.
In case you're currently not tuned into the WWDC Steve Jobs keynote, Apple's Scott Forstall and Sega's Ethan Einhorn showed off Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone. According to Einhorn, after eight weeks of development, the developers have created 110 stages.
While we haven't had a glimpse of the game in action, Engadget had this to say: "Crap, these graphics look unbelievable compared to anything we've seen on a cellphone before. Seriously, these are DS-quality graphics, easily." We'll update with more info and video as soon as we can find it. [Update: video posted after the break!]
With the impending launch of the iPhone App Store promising to finally (officially) bring games to Apple's all-in-one portable, a Forbes editorial is again floating the idea that Nintendo's DS may be facing a threat to its market-leading portable perch. The editorial notes that the iPhone combines the touch-screen and microphone of the wildly popular Nintendo DS with the motion-sensitivity of the wildly popular Wii. Add in the support of Sega, EA and Ubisoft, along with the ability to download games wirelessly through the App Store, and you have the makings of a portable gaming game-changer.
The piece makes some good points, but we think we're going to join with The Motley Fool, MacWorld and ZDNet in the ranks of those skeptical that the iPhone is going to take the gaming world by storm. The reasons for our skepticism include the iPhone's high price point, limited on-board storage space and the lack of major announced titles (Super Monkey Ball and Spore will only get you so far).
The MacWorld writer probably summed it up best: "The iPhone, at its heart, is not a gaming machine. Not in the way that the DS is, where every design consideration is given to one task, and one task only: playing games." Hey, since we're already talking about wild speculation, there's always a chance Apple and Nintendo could just merge and make the upcoming "battle" moot.
Touchy-feely casual game news now, with Ubisoft revealing plans to bring its Games for Everyone range to everyone who has an iPhone or an iPod Touch. In an interview with CasualGaming.biz, Games For Everyone executive producer, Pauline Jacquey, explained that Ubisoft wanted to target a wider range of platforms, including those used for listening to music or yapping with friends.
"We don't want to keep it too narrow," said Jacquey. "We'll be making games not only on PC, PS3 and 360, but on iPhone and iPod touch as well. When it comes to the mobile industry, Ubisoft sister company Gameloft looks after that and I'm not in charge of it. They will be borrowing more from the Games For Everyone range."
She neglects to mention which games or brands we can expect to be iPhoned in, but an informed gamer will tell you that they'll probably have titles ending in "z." You know, Dogz, Hamsterz, Beyond Good & Evilz ... those types of thingz.
Attention "jailbroken" iPhone owners: Touch Arcade reports that it's now perfectly okay to Bonk your wunderphone without having to worry about its purty glass screen cracking. Emulator author ZodTTD (shall we kneel before him?) has ported the nifty TurboGrafx-16 emu, Temper, to iPhone as – wait for it – temper4iphone.
Temper was originally developed for the South Korean GamePark 2X handheld and ran ROM- and CD-Based titles designed for NEC's 16-bit system, which was a smash in Japan (as the PC-Engine) but enjoyed modest success in the West under its Turbo-fied moniker. As you can see from the embedded video, the emu is already plenty impressive. Unlike its GP2X counterpart, there's no support (yet) for CD-based game images, but compatibility with TG-16 ROMs (if you don't own the game, don't download em, 'kay?) is said to be high. Like previous emulators ported to iPhone, the retro console's controls are recreated on the touch screen.
Apple is expected to launch its "2.0" refresh of the iPhone along with the iPhone App Store in just a couple of weeks, and we'd be jazzed to see a proper Virtual Console-esque suite of "sanctioned" emulators offered for download via the service.
Advertisements have shown us that the iPhone is a tool with a wide array of functions -- YouTube perusing, calamari ordering, and astronaut deafening, to name a few. But no commercials have warned of the iPhone's (and the iPod Touch's) sinister, newly implemented abilities -- fragging, railgunning, and gibbing. We speak, of course, of the handheld's recently developed Quake 3 Arena application, which uses the device's touch screen and accelerometer to crudely recreate that warm, familiar mouse-and-keyboard feeling. Just thinking of the possible on-the-go LAN parties we'd be able to hold is making us consider finally trading in our Zack Morris phonebrick for Apple's sexy cellular device.
Joining the ranks of Electronic Arts in game development for the iPhone, Gameloft and id Software have announced their commitment to Apple's portable. According to its press release, Gameloft intends to develop over 15 titles.
In a post on Slashdot, id's programming wizard John Carmack lauded Apple's 70% royalty deal and distribution deal. As for the SDK, Carmack said, "Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good -- a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds." Id also noted it had to put in an application for development like everyone else. Can we get an official version of Doom now?
News about Spore coming to the iPhone is pretty exciting, sure, but seeing video of the accelerometer and touchscreen-controlled sim really has us sold. Apple finally released streaming video of their iPhone SDK presentation yesterday and, thanks to the magic of YouTube, we have an edited segment of just the Spore component tucked away after the break. iPhone as a gaming console? Like we couldn't see that onecoming.
During Apple's iPhone SDK press conference today, we got a glimpse of the device's gaming capability with two titles: an in-house project dubbed Touch Fighter and Electronic Arts' Spore.
Touch Fighter is a 3D space shooter using OpenGL technology. You use the iPhone's accelerometer to steer (via moving the device around) and touch the screen to fire. Our friends at Engadget (who are liveblogging the event) also noted that an optimization screen showed it was running at an impressive 27 to 30 frames per second.
EA's Travis Boatman took the stage to show off the company's first product to come out of the iPhone dev kit, Spore. Initial pictures indicate that it's the mobile version shared by other cell phones. You use the accelerometer to move your creature and, of course, there are customizing options as well. [Update: EA confirmed that Spore for iPhone should be out in September, and that they're "actively using the new iPhone SDK to develop games for the iPhone OS." John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, said, "The animation technology in the iPhone OS enables us to build awesome games. I think iPhone consumers are going to be blown away by the games we create for this platform."]
While tilt-sensitive cell phone gaming is apparently nothingnew in Japan, domestic developers/hackers have been slow to create games that take advantage of the iPhone's built-in accelerometer. Enter Trism, a simple, match-three puzzle game from semi-pro developer Demifroce that twists things around by changing the way blocks fall as you twist things around.
A GameSetWatch interview with the developer reveals more of the story behind the game's ten-day development, and includes an excellent video (embedded below) of the game in action. Unfortunately, the forthcoming demo version will only work on jailbroken phones, but the developer says he'd love to sell the game on iTunes once the official iPhone SDK is unveiled. Apple, are you listening?
In the opening keynote of the Game Developers Conference mobile component (being the section dedicated to gaming on cell phones, not some wheeled stage rolling down the hills of San Francisco), Gameloft president and CEO Michel Guillemot tackled supposed "myths" surrounding the mobile gaming sector, drawing attention to several issues currently inhibiting the industry's growth. "It's not the stagnant, tiny market that some people predicted it to be," he noted in his "Fast Life, Fast Media" presentation. He insisted that the perceived slowdown in the market was only temporary and not too dissimilar from that seen in the rest of the industry towards the end of a console cycle.
With various handsets expected to be in the hands of 4 billion people by 2010, one of the market's primary challenges lies in distribution through the multitudes of mobile carriers. Problems listed by Guillemot include non-standardized data costs across various characters (i.e. how much does it cost to transfer the data to your phone?), as well as the sheer number of SKUs that accompany each game release. If Gameloft produces 5 games per month, with compatible versions for 1,000 handsets in 10 different languages, it ultimately releases 50,000 different SKUs.
Despite the considerably quantity of releases, Guillemot insisted that quality must be uniform across all SKUs -- "as perfect as possible," because a consumer is unlikely to try the same game on different handsets. The iPhone was singled out as a handset that, at least in its current form, actually has a negative impact on the mobile gaming industry. Since the phone doesn't support any games yet, Guillemot considers every additional iPhone consumer to be a loss in the mobile gaming audience as a whole. Still, he predicts that touch-screen gaming, coupled with advanced handsets and the standardization of distribution costs, will lead to a new growth spurt for the mobile gaming industry in the latter half of 2008.
