Is Apple serious about games this time?
Apple has always had a hot and cold relationship with game developers. They’ve occasionally hinted at core-level API support and better integrated hardware for the Mac. They’ve even showcased luminaries from Bungie, id Software, EA and other developers during Steve Job’s MacWorld Expo keynotes. Most every time, though, the thunder has died even before the last of the faithful have shuffled from the cavernous Moscone Center conference halls.
Now, Apple appears to be ramping up the hype again, this time touting iPhone and it’s updated 2.0 platform as a legitimate player in the burgeoning market for mobile games. At Monday’s WWDC 2008 keynote, Jobs and friends demoed a number of games in development. One in particular showed that iPhone may be able to compete (at least on a performance level) not only with other mobile phones, but also against dedicated game platforms like PSP and Nintendo DS.
Enigmo, by Pangea Software, has been around for a while on the Mac. It’s a 3-D puzzle game where you’re given a number of tools to try and manipulate various liquid droplets from point A to point B. Each type of liquid (water, oil and lava) has its own physical properties and behaves differently with the various obstacles and tools at your disposal. It’s a game that seems to be perfectly suited to the touch-based controls on iPhone and shows off some serious processing power as well.
Along with Super Monkey Ball from Sega developers are showing that they can utilize iPhone’s unique qualities in their games. I’m hoping that these are just two of many more to come.
Via Pangea Software
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Came across this to add to it:
“Sophisticated games such as Electronic Arts’ ambitious new god-game, “Spore,” are already slated to be released for the iPhone at the same time it goes on sale for PCs, Macs and the Nintendo DS. Travis Boatman from EA showed off a project based on Spore that the videogame giant’s developers cobbled together in two weeks that took advantage of iPhone’s accelerometer and touch-screen interface to guide the evolution of a hungry microorganism.”
The only problem I see is the same one that Nintendo is currently dealing with; you hit the wall of innovation pretty fast when using motion controls as a primary input.
The games I really like to play benefit greatly from tactile feedback of buttons. The GBA emulators and stuff I’ve used on the iPhone/iPod Touch felt really cumbersome because of the touch controls. It is really good to see Apple taking an active interest in gaming though… the hard part is keeping third parties interested too.