Do you love iPhone gaming but think the screen is too small? Are you enormous sausage fingers getting in the way of most of the on-screen action? The iPad may be your answer, if you’re willing to shell out at least $499. With all iPhone games currently playable and scalable with pixel-doubling, all your purchases will instantly transfer over to Apple’s new super device.
Developers now have access to the new SDK tools to develop native apps and games for the iPad, so you can expect some bigger games to appear shortly after the device launches in March (April if you want the 3G version). Gameloft and EA are two developers already on board for the iPad.
My take on the iPad, or iTampon as it’s being called, is that it’s a huge iPod Touch with not much upside at the moment. No multi-tasking, no Flash support, and an awkward virtual keyboard make me very leery of a purchase. I’m happy with my iPhone. Until Apple gives me a reason to need to the iPad instead of my iPhone and MacBook Pro, my money is staying in my wallet.
ZOMG could this be the horizon cresting harbinger of doom for the PSP and DSi!!?? Okay, so maybe not the imminent harbinger of mobile gaming doom, but it is on the horizon for sure.
For now, it’s just a demo of the tech that Epic’s put together, which relies on the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics powah in the 3GS and latest iPod touch. But, the killer point is that Epic is planning “to make this available to licensees at some point in the near future,” meaning we could one day see games running Unreal 3 on the iPhone. And since the engine will run on the 3GS only, it seems that tipping point with games we worried about, where iPhone and 3G users don’t just get worse graphics, but are actually shut out of entire games, isn’t so far away.
That means you 3G and Touch users could potentially be APPLEPWNED….again.
For now, Epic tells Anand we’re going to see Unreal running on another mobile platform at CES. Which, on a broader scale, shows that mobile gaming is about to get a lot more serious now that mobile chips are powerful enough to deliver legit gaming experience. Could we really be seeing the beginning of the end for dedicated handled gaming consoles, like the DSi, and PSP? It seems, for once, more possible than ever. We just need better controls.
…and more money. This has got to be worrying Sony and Nintendo, a lot. Hit the Gizmodo link at the bottom for a smattering of video evidence.
It is somewhat surprising for Apple to reveal any information at all these days so it’s nice to see the recently released list of the top downloaded applications at the App Store for 2008. Apple has also listed the top albums, movies, podcasts and what have you but we are more concerned with games here at Loot Ninja so we’ll just stick to what we know. So without further ado we have the top paid and free games of 2008 from the App Store.
One might assume that the iPhone, iPhone 3G, 1st generation iPod touch and the 2nd generation iPod touch all have the same equipment under the hood but Handheld Games Corp. is able to prove otherwise. In a recent demonstration to prove that their game works on all of Apple’s devices, they serendipitously discovered that the 2nd generation iPod touch was much faster in loading the game.
In the video we have linked below, there is a clear winner in initial load time. The difference is alleged to be an unannounced processor boost in the 2nd generation iPod touch from 412MHz to 532MHz. All of Apple’s other portable devices run at 412MHz including the iPhone 3G. This is reminiscent of the old days when Apple quietly bumped the Mac mini without telling anyone, even the customers that were ordering it. The the order showed 1.42GHz, the label on the bottom of the computer showed 1.42GHz but when looking through the system profiler for some reason the processor speed was listed as 1.5GHz.
It isn’t necessarily a bad thing that Apple has been withholding this information from the general public. A customer would be getting more than what they paid for, a somewhat rare occurrence for consumers. Protip: purchase a 2nd generation iPod touch if you want to experience the best gaming Apple has to offer.
This problem occurred to me a few weeks back when I was writing a review for an iPhone game and I felt that it’s unfair that the iPhone is the device always named when it comes to reviewing games from the App Store. Because of this, I have decided to include the iPod Touch in all of my future reviews. The iPod Touch is just as capable of playing games as the iPhone. Apple even has a commercial where the user is playing only games on their iPod Touch and the slogan reads, “The funnest iPod ever”. The problem for me is the fact that “iPhone/iPod Touch” is annoying to read, write and even say aloud.
I have tried to use the combination of “iPhone/iPod Touch” for a couple reviews but it isn’t working for me. I even tried to eliminate using either name entirely, but when a person says, “Apple’s gaming devices” fourteen times it just sounds wrong. Why not just separate them you ask? Well, if I used, “iPhone and iPod Touch” every single time, I would have a ridiculous number of “and”, “iPhone” and “iPod Touch” in a single article. The previous sentence alone proves my point!
What I am asking is, can anyone think up a new way to combine the words or has someone already done such a thing? If so please let me in on it. I mean seriously, the Wii Remote gets Wiimote, why can’t the iPhone/iPod Touch be iPouch? Alright, so my example was god awful but you get the idea.
Steve Jobs could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. Apple fanboyism is at an all time high these days but you don’t have to be a fanboy to appreciate the amazing sales numbers from the iPhone and iPod. The iPhone 3G has outsold its original counterpart in a single quarter and Apple has already beaten its self-imposed goal of 10 million units with the Holidays still ahead. The iPod has also had it’s highest sales numbers in a non holiday quarter. Why am I dropping all these sales figures you ask? Well, it’s not just about the iPhone and iPod anymore, for me it’s also about Apple’s iTunes App Store.
The App Store has been a huge success in terms of creating revenue for third party developers that never would have had a chance in a regular market. Simple applications that cost as little as $0.99 are making it easy on developers to generate extra revenue to make bigger and better applications. As we speak, the App store has had over 200 million downloads of various applications and over 5,500 different applications to choose from. That number should exceed 10,000 in less than two months. Many questions still remain to be answered as to how many of these applications are free and how many are games.
I came across this interesting story. It turns out a British man in the late 70’s came up with the idea for the iPod and has the drawings and the patent applications to prove it. He could not afford to pursue the idea and it sort of fell out of his ways. Apple has acknowledged that he had some hand in the invention, but only has paid him a small consultancy fee. This guy wants a shit ton of money, but it looks like he is SOL. Should Apple pay this guy or just laugh all the way to the bank as they sell 100 iPods every minute?
Today is Apple’s big keynote address and Steve Jobs will be front and center to deliver all the wonderful new toys and updates we can expect this year. What we all hope to hear about is the wildly anticipated Apple 3G phone which may or may not be revealed today. The buzz across the internets is that MS will try to one-up their counterpart by announcing a Blu-ray compatible Xbox 360 before the 10 AM(PST) keynote in San Francisco. Its 12 PM now on the east coast. A couple hours away. What do you guys think?
You may have noticed I’ve been a bit absent the past few days. If you were jumping for joy, you’ll be glad to hear I’ll be down for the count for a bit longer. My Dell laptop decided to kick the bucket, a mere 2 weeks after the warranty expired. So I’ve decided it’s time to take the plunge and switch to Mac.
I picked up a 15″ MacBook Pro yesterday from my local Apple Store. I got home to discover that they keyboard intermittently stops working. Just my luck. Anyway, I’m heading back to the Apple Store in a bit to exchange this out for a different laptop. I should be back in full force tomorrow afternoon/evening.
While I’m away, if anyone has an recommendations for cool apps for Mac, or good versions of FTP or SSH software, let me know in the comments.
In case you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, we setup a custom Webclips icon for the devices. With the firmware updates released yesterday at MacWorld, you can now add Webclips, or shortcuts to web sites, on your homepage.
I went ahead and created a cool little icon to display on the devices instead of showing the page contents. So go fire up your iPhones and iPod Touches and add us as a Webclip. You know you want to
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