Archive for the ‘games’ Category

The way of the dodo. Apple’s app store and free market greatness

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

There is an interesting article on Gizmodo about the price drop on iPhone apps in comparison to other mobile apps that raised quite a debate.

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There are the ones saying that the market will regulate itself for the better(we heard something similar for years) and others that see the quality of apps diminish as prices for development drop. I love to be on the negative side of things, that’s just my critical nature, but also because there is another big thing coming that will most surely accelerate the issue of more apps being developed, who will disappear amongst the millions of apps. As previously mention here, Flash not only launched full AS3 support for mobiles, they also included the ability to develop Flash apps for the iPhone through the appstore.

That might easily double the number of available mobile apps everywhere. Apple still has it’s restrictions on what it considers an app worthy of…, but let’s just say more iPhones will be hacked and other mobiles will become more attractive because they are open to the porn industry.

After a quick hype in doing mobile apps, developers will be expected to churn out twitter-farting apps by the wagon-load for an ever so diminished salary, because the app’s distribution concept of delivering low-priced apps but financing through assuring large number sales will fall flat on it’s face apart for companies with big marketing budgets to get the app to a high visibility in the shop and make sure enough people buy it. Which even then might not be assured.

So there is a lot to watch over the next few months. The xmas business will finally start when Orange and Vodaphone will come out with the iPhone in the UK, just like in other countries, where the iPhone-provider monopoly will end.

Ah, and congrats again to my friend Stefan from flashcomguru.com, he managed to get himself on the first list of Flash-based iPhone apps.

via gizmodo

Flash for iPhone – all systems go

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Finally a praise from my side to Adobe. They pulled it off and are making Apple’s life both easier and harder. Flash CS5 will now support iPhone App development, sold though the app store. This, along with the fact that Adobe just launched their fully supported player on literally all mobile platforms, pretty much marks a new era for mobile apps. One for all has probably never been more true. The major hurdle for application developers were operating system and hardware differences like screen sizes, etc. Now if Adobe manages to enable all hardware feature access (GPS, etc.) then we are pretty much game…

Here some rather boring examples Adobe came up with so far: click here

project80Days.com – launched

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

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Having launched our first product last week with great success, it is time to look at some updates and the next steps. Being our first attempt on an unusual social media website, it sure turns out to be a beautifully complex platform. We are now looking at optional google-maps or microsoft’s bing map or even our own tile set.

We still have a long list of features to add and improve, but the first travellers are on their way and we are all very curious and excited about what will happen during the first 80 days of the project.

project80Days.com – website

project80Days – project blog

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Microsoft ‘Project Natal’

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

The name makes me think of pregnancy gymnastics and I am kind of half-way right on this. Could it really be that Microsoft manages to deliver some cool new invention? Full body input interface for gaming and the rest of your life-style. The promotional video obviously looks very very slick, so can they deliver? The tech specs of the sensor unit uses a clever combination of cameras and distance sensors, etc. plus some impressive looking software. Who would have thought that so much future technology will be based on one movie (Minority Report that is…). if this really hits off the shelf, evryone will need a huge living room from now on(and Xbox live I bet…) not always a given here in London(and I havent heard much better from Tokyo.

80DAYS, end of tunnel, beware Phileas!

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

After 2 long years (well with a big 1 year break inbetween) I am finally getting my little garage project 80DAYS on the way. Just got round the blue one first time yesterday. More to come and launch very very soon.

Check out my project blog here.

onlive

Monday, April 6th, 2009

www.onlive.com is going beta. Finally a fantastic idea and another sign that the OS is a thing of the past, kind of. Onlive will host the games you want to play on their servers and you will remote control them. The resulting screen action is streamed to whatever machine you are playing on. TV, laptop, console, via video stream. It’s that simple, yet that revolutionary. Streaming software on a remote machine is nothing new, especially for software, but so far people weren’t buying into it. Now with games it has always been the opposite, as upgrading your PC to the latest game-ready machine or buying yourself a pricey PS3 for that one game was a very financial decision to take. Onlive takes that burden(which will make it interesting to see where they are getting the money from, in order to support their upgrades).

Nevertheless, the guys invented a new video compressor especially for this and imagine the money they might get off deals hosting games tournaments…

Below controller and box are to use with the service (the box is TV only).

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The samples the showed running live on the screen are breathtaking.

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