Apple's got its eye on mobile games

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In the eye of the typical beholder, Apple's iPhone is simply a popular device, great for fun, on-the-go applications-and phone calls.

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But mobile-game publisher Neil Young sees the iPhone as a catalyst for a revolution in entertainment that's beginning to spread from mobile devices to the home.
Users of the iPhone and Apple tablet iPad already are setting the pace for spending on games and other apps, so it "seems inevitable" that these devices will jockey for space on the TV, says Young, 41, who helped produce big-name video games at Electronic Arts before leaving to start his own company, NGmoco, in 2008.
"We are 12 to 24 months away from being able to disrupt the living room with experiences that you might be playing on an iPad version four, but projecting ... to a TV in your living room," he predicts. It'll be "every bit as good" as the experience of playing a high-end console game today, he adds.
With more than 200 million devices running Apple's mobile operating system-and 100,000 games available-Apple has transformed the traditional mobile-game marketplace. Spending on mobile games is expected to account for 15 percent of all spending on game software this year, rising to 20 percent in 2015, research company Gartner predicts.
That momentum has Apple flexing its muscles in the marketplace. And, because those who play games are more willing than downloaders of any other app to actually pay for content, analysts don't expect Apple's star to fade anytime soon. IHS/Screen Digest expects the sale of games in Apple's App Store to approach $2 billion worldwide in 2011, up about 75 percent from 2010. The closest mobile-games rival, Android Market, is forecast at $170 million for 2011, the firm says.
To be sure, console games played on systems such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 remain the dominant force in video games, accounting for about 40 percent of the projected $74 billion to be spent globally on games in 2011, Gartner says.

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Hit video games still sell very well. First-person shooter game Call of Duty: Black Ops has earned Activision Blizzard more than $1 billion in sales since its November release. But sales of console games have plateaued in recent years, with mobile and online games supplying most of the industry growth.
Apple's ecosystem, which lets players shop for apps in the iTunes Store, benefits gamemakers and players, says IHS/Screen Digest analyst Jack Kent.
While more smartphone owners have Android-based devices (38 percent) than iPhones (27 percent), the Apple device has shown more growth recently as Android sales flattened among new buyers, according to research firm Nielsen.
IPhone gamers are dedicated, too, playing about 14.7 hours each month, compared with 9.3 hours monthly for Android-based mobile gamers and 4.7 hours for owners of other phones.
"IPhone and iPad users tend to be more voracious consumers of apps, which brings in more developers," says Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen.
Development of mobile games takes months compared with years for top-tier console games. That allows mobile-game developers to more quickly shift gears to meet players' desires.
A hot trend: Free games that let players buy virtual items, such as Zynga Poker and Tap Zoo, have begun dominating the App Store's top 10 grossing apps list, meaning that consumers are spending as much or more on items in free games than on paid games, according to Strategy Analytics AppTRAX.
"Business models are certainly shifting from a simply à la carte model to one focused more on engagement and getting users to buy virtual goods to enhance the game-play experience," says Strategy Analytics' Josh Martin. "This is a trend I expect will proliferate globally both on iPhone and very quickly move to other platforms."
Traditional video game powerhouses are responding to mobile games' momentum by adding new gimmicks and technologies to their devices. So far, those efforts have met with varying success. Nintendo's new handheld game system, the $250 Nintendo 3DS, offers glasses-free 3-D games, but sales have been slow since its March release.
Sony's motion-sensitive PlayStation Vita, expected to begin its global rollout this holiday season ($249-$299), has a state-of-the-art touch-screen that offers richer colors and uses less power, plus a rear touch-pad and built-in cameras. Also in the works: the PlayStation Suite, an initiative that includes an open operating system for creating games for Android phones and other PlayStation Certified devices, including the PS Vita and Sony Ericsson Xperia Play phone.
Among gamemakers, Activision Blizzard has announced Call of Duty Elite, an online service to connect Call of Duty players and provide improved features. Some features will be free, while others will require a paid subscription.
Some traditional gamemakers are hopping on the mobile game bandwagon. No. 2 publisher Electronic Arts has beefed up its mobile and online offerings with acquisitions of companies such as Chillingo (Angry Birds ), social-network game publisher Playfish (Restaurant City) Firemint (Flight Control) and PopCap Games (Bejeweled). An update to Firemint's latest game, Real Racing 2, lets players see the behind-the-wheel point of view on the TV, connected via an HDMI cable, while using the iPad 2 as a steering wheel and map.
With the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, Apple has "delivered on the promise of mobile," says Travis Boatman, senior vice president at EA Mobile. "It's like a blank canvas. It allows game designers to create any kind of interface they want for their game and change it on the fly, too. They are not constrained by the physical hardware, and that opens up a lot of innovation and new types of game play."
And social-gaming powerhouse Zynga, which made its name on Facebook and earlier this month filed for an IPO that could value the company at $20 billion, has brought games such as FarmVille to iPhone and iPad. It also recently announced plans to bring Words With Friends and Zynga Poker to Android devices.
Other long-term hard-core gaming developers that have embraced the iPhone include Id Software, which offers the new Rage HD, as well as redesigned mobile versions of classic first-person shooters Doom and Wolfenstein.
And Epic Games (Gears of War) even rejiggered its game development engine so mobile-game makers can use it. The studio's own game, Infinity Blade, which has surpassed $10 million in sales, got rave reviews for raising the bar in terms of high-quality graphics and game play.
Blockbuster, high-quality game releases aren't going away, they are "going everywhere," says Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski, repeating the mantra of fellow Epic executive Vice President Mark Rein. "When users get used to a certain caliber or quality of game, there's no going back."
As for Young, he comes by his iPhone devotion honestly. Even when he was working on console games for Electronic Arts, he queued up with millions of others to buy the first iPhone. "When I got the device and I took it home, I noticed very quickly that I wasn't using it really to make telephone calls," he says. "I was using it to browse the Web and look at my stocks, check my e-mail and watch video or listen to music."
The more time he spent with the iPhone, Young says, he realized "The device had this unique blend of usability and capability that was actually changing how I was using it and how much time I was spending with it."
When Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the App Store and the game-development tools in March 2008, Young says he knew "this was going to change the consumer's relationship with the content."
Three months later, he founded NGmoco ( next-generation mobile company) with a $5.6 million investment from venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. NGmoco launched its first two games-MazeFinger and Topple-in October 2008.
Three years later, Young and NGmoco are expanding to help developers redesign their iPhone games for Android devices and create iPhone games with their ngCore technology.
Sounding as much like an economics professor as a games enthusiast, Young continues to see games trending up. "There are hundreds of millions of people, if not billions of people, that play games," he says. "That is a good macro."

Computer Games: Better Than Sex?

A survey of 2052 people was commissioned by Doritos in advance of the launch of its new Doritos Dip Desperado Facebook game, and it discovered some interesting facts about the game-playing habits of men and women.

For starters, 49 percent of the women in the survey said that they played "online games" -- though whether this was StarCraft II or CityVille wasn't clear. This 49 percent figure, however, is just 1 percent behind the figure for men.

Of these 49 percent of women who play online, 84 percent said they enjoy their gaming sessions. Compare that with the percentage who enjoyed working out (62 percent), shopping (71 percent), having a bath (75 percent) and doing the nasty (70 percent) and we can hastily jump to the astonishing (and possibly flawed) conclusion that women think games are better than sex. (No comment on some of the adult tweaks to Kinect.)

Further interesting facts from the survey: 17 percent of women (about 1 in 5) admit to playing games in bed (fellas, you're clearly doing it wrong) and the fairer sex spends 23.1 percent of their time online playing games compared to 22.3 percent for the hairier sex.

So from this, we can therefore deduce that the way to a lady's heart is clearly, in fact, through her guild. (See also Sex in Games: Is it Time to Grow Up?)

Thanks, MCV.

This article originally appeared on GamePro.com as Study: Women Like Games More than Sex

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Pokemon Black and White

Until this point in Pokemon I’ve struggled to understand what they mean by a new Generation. Sure adding new Pokemon, Moves some new gameplay elements and new areas are surely a change, but it’s not exactly revolutionary. They’re not shameless sequels, but rather additions which don’t stand out too well from previous ones, a new version if you will. But could Black and White finally break that mold?

The story of Black and White is a standard Pokemon story, you’re a trainer who receives a Pokemon along with a rival (in fact 2 rivals this time) and together you defeat the Gym Leaders around the new area of Unova and defeat the Elite Four and become Champion. Like always there is an evil syndicate in your way. This time it’s a team of Pokemon liberators, Team Plasma, lead by the mysterious N. Overall the way the story is told is really good. The rivals mature as they go along the journey and most of the characters develop nicely, the Goals of becoming Champion and defeating Team Plasma weave really well into one really good climax.

But that’s just the way the story is told, the story itself however is horrible, stupid and extremely nonsensical. Team Plasma are quite possibly the biggest hypocrites in existence. They say they want to free all the Pokemon, so people can stop harming them. But then you see them physically beating Pokemon and capturing them against their will. Here’s one of the plans that they do, they beat up a Munna so they can obtain “dream dust” so they can invade people’s dreams and convince them hurting Pokemon is wrong. How the hell does that make sense? A lot of people have told me that Team Plasma are supposed to make you feel like the bad guy, I honestly felt like an audience member of a failing comedy act. They try so hard to act cool, but they just make giant fools of themselves. I would of liked the idea of them liberating Pokemon if they weren’t just such big hypocrites. The worse thing about the story is they actually went with it, someone thought this up, and everyone thought it was a good idea. The idiot who wrote the story should be incinerated.

What I like about Black and White is how they try to be something new. There’s no Pokemon from previous Generations until you beat the final boss. So you have to stick with the new ones. Before the game was released on the forum I have been extremely harsh against the designs of the new Pokemon, calling them “over the top” and “a bunch of Neopets rejections”. Well as over the top they are, they have a lot of charm to them. Most of the roster you’ll love straight away or at least grow to love and some you’ll be turned off from immediately. To this day I’m still trying to figure out what the hell Sigilyph is.

Of course with the new generation comes 3 new starters, this time it’s Snivy (Grass), Tepig (Fire) and Oshawott (Water). I at first chose Oshawott because it has quite possibly one of the best final evolutions in Pokemon so far, plus Oshawott doesn’t disappoint you trying to get through the game. It’s fast, powerful and learns a lot of good moves. Snivy and it’s evolutions do look good as well, unlike Oshawott you can see a more natural evolution pattern. Tepig on the other hand, looks awful. It’s evolutions are extremely lackluster and definitely some of the ugliest Pokemon so far. And honestly, did we really need another Fire/Fighting type starter? It’s been 3 generations in a row now Game Freak, you can do better then that.

When you pit A fiery Monkey against an Ice Cream it's obvious who's going to win, but surely Licking it would be more deadly?

The gameplay in Black and White has updated a lot of things about the older series. Now the battles are fully animated, making the Pokemon seem a tad lifelike. The visual effects of attack moves do look nice to look at. But really, it’s just a visual update. But then, Pokemon battles really can’t get any better then what they are in Black and White. It’s a system which has been perfected and now polished so hard you can see you face into it, or maybe that‘s the reflection on my DS screen, I‘m not sure. It’s going to be hard for what Game Freak will try and do next time, if it’s even necessary.

The visuals for this game are a mixed bag. As I said before, the visuals of attack moves look good and definitely make the battles seem more epic to play in. The visuals for the overworld however, I can not stand at all. Don’t get me wrong, I do think the 3D visuals of the scenery and the structures of Unova look very good. It’s just the characters are all still in sprite form. And it makes the 3D visuals look sloppy and out of place. And at some stages of the game you appear in areas which zoom out and make your character look like you’ve shrunken him/her in MS Paint. It doesn’t look good, it didn’t work well in Diamond and Pearl and it looks ever worse here.

See what I mean?

The soundtrack is truly something which is revolutionary in Pokemon, it’s mostly good for once. Not like previous generations where you might find a good piece of OST but then be disappointed at almost everything else you hear in the game (this is the handhelds I talking about, I would never disrespect any Home Console Pokemon games soundtrack). There’s the one off OST I do despise, but that’s only because it’s addicting like the Frosties Kid adverts. My favourite OST would definitely have to do something with N. His normal battle, final battle and his Castle theme are all wonderful tracks which really do deserve a listen.

CONCLUSION

Ok, I’ll admit it. Despite everything I just said, the horrible plot, some awful Pokemon designs, the terrible overworld visuals. I still had one of the best experiences with Pokemon with this game. I haven’t had this much fun in a Pokemon game since Pokemon Colosseum and that was near perfect. But unlike Colosseum, Black and White flaws are very noticeable and may spoil your experience.