iPhone publisher extraordinaire Chillingo is in attendance at the Develop Conference in Brighton today, and is gearing up to announce something a little different from its usual staple of portable games.
The UK-based publisher is due to launch a social networking gateway for iPhone users, which is being touted as 'the iPhone's answer to Xbox Live'.
Called Crystal, this new SDK will be available to all iPhone developers and publishers and will allow gamers to store achievements, create a profile, add friends and send out challenges in multiple games, along with direct connectivity to networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
"Crystal gives developers and gamers a bigger plus all round." says Chris Byatte, Director and co-founder of Chillingo. "It is set to become the de-facto social gaming standard for iPhone and iPod touch."
More details on Crystal should be with us later on direct from the Develop Conference, but interested parties can register over at the official website.
sonikokaruto said:spam is tasty
will try
free is everything
stuff i want
Diablohead said:While annoying, Plus+ is limited to NgMoco which means only a few games get it, Chillingo take on us bedroom coders if the game is good enough so many more games can access a live style profile, if they do it right that is.
Customer, fear not
Somehow you cannot roll off
Not magic; epic
Is this any good? I'd love an iPhone version of Sid Meier's Pirates! and this one looks kinda sorta close.ElyrionX said:Did anyone pick up Tradewinds 2?
Union Carbine said:Also, any classic Bard's Tale style RPGs out there?
Thanks, I'll check it out.lilljolle said:Not tried it myself but The Quest comes in mind, will probably pick it up once I get an iPhone.
OpenFeint tops 1m players; goes free for indie iPhone developers
The battle to be the Xbox Live for iPhone is on!
Product: OpenFeint
by Stuart Dredge
Aurora Feint has announced that more than one million active iPhone gamers are playing games that use its OpenFeint 2.0 leaderboards, social features and discovery lobbies.
Released to developers at Apple's recent WWDC conference, the platform is being used for more than 100 games including Pocket God, Sentinel 2 and StickWars. Aurora Feint says it's now registered more than 1,000 developers.
How to celebrate this milestone? By making the platform free. The company says it's scrapping its pennies-per-user charge for indie developers.
It's clearly a response to recent announcements from rival platforms like Scoreloop as shown by the mention of "other models, which are based on revenue share or coins that need to be purchased" in the OpenFeint announcement.
"We are proud of this important milestone related to the increasing popularity of OpenFeint", says a statement from Aurora Feint co-founders Jason Citron (pictured) and Danielle Cassley.
"We urge all indie developers to OpenFeint enable their games because there are real benefits to social gaming and social discovery that they can get for no fees, revenue share or hidden costs".
Meanwhile, Pocket God developer Dave Castelnuovo is one of the people happy to endorse the platform: "Now that OpenFeint is free, there is no excuse not to use it," he says.
So if the platform is free, how does Aurora Feint make money from it? Citron confirmed to PocketGamer.biz that there's no tiered pricing system - "OpenFeint is completely free to use for developers no matter how many applications or players they have."
Instead, the company will now make money from affiliate sales of games discovered using OpenFeint.
Every time a player buys something, as a registered affiliate partner for Apple, Aurora Feint gets 5 per cent of the purchase price, with 25 per cent going to Apple and 70 per cent to the developer.
"It really is a clean model that comes at no cost to the developer," he says.
OpenFeint is doing well partly because the platform is tried and tested, but also because it's emphasising the app discovery features as well as social aspects players of one OpenFeint-enabled game can browse and tap through to buy other titles.
The pace of innovation with this kind of social gaming platform for iPhone is rapid right now, thanks to the intense competition between OpenFeint, Scoreloop and other rivals including those like ngmoco's Plus+ that have been developed by publishers.
The unknown unknown about this area, however, concerns Apple's long-term strategy. For now, it's content to let the different platforms fight it out - a policy that's spurring the speed at which they evolve and add new features.
But at some point, we can't help wondering whether Apple will pick out a winner, possibly acquire it, and turn it into the official Xbox Live-style connected platform for iPhone gaming.
That's pure speculation for now, though. In the meantime, developers get to choose between several platforms competing for their titles, and the impact for iPhone gamers is many more games with social features.
I'm no fan of the first one, it's nice but going just by Rolando 1 trial I decided not to buy either of them right now. But that is my personal opinionChinner said:so is rolando 2 worth £5.99? everyone agrees that its a good platformer, but how long does it last roughly?
Chinner said:acccording to rez (i think?) the second one is way way better than the first one
Chinner said:so is rolando 2 worth £5.99? everyone agrees that its a good platformer, but how long does it last roughly?
Chinner said:acccording to rez (i think?) the second one is way way better than the first one
Keyser Soze said:I don't know if anyone here is interested, but I am going to ask Chris Byatte, Director and co-founder of Chillingo, a few questions tomorrow, and I was wondering does anyone here have anything they'd like to ask?
I already have a few questions in mind, such as game pricing problems, and how challenging it can be launch a successful game on the App Store.
If you have any Q's PM me, or just post them here if you like.
lawblob said:They updated the "New / What's Hot" tabs in the App store. Enviro-Bear 2010 is in "What's Hot." :lol
Im' thinking about picking up Mevo and Must.Eat.Birds, for some reason they are both more tempting now that they're in the "New" category. hmm...
Chinner said:so is rolando 2 worth £5.99? everyone agrees that its a good platformer, but how long does it last roughly?
jonnybryce has already said it, but please do ask them why they have totally ignored ngmoco's Plus+ system, instead of attempting to work together? Fragmenting the userbase will do no good for anyone, and it will just turn users off the whole experience. If both publishers are making their code available to anyone, then both publishers should work together to create a single platform. And if those two publishers are ngmoco and Chillingo, then I think it would be a VERY good start towards getting a single platform.Keyser Soze said:I don't know if anyone here is interested, but I am going to ask Chris Byatte, Director and co-founder of Chillingo, a few questions tomorrow, and I was wondering does anyone here have anything they'd like to ask?
I already have a few questions in mind, such as game pricing problems, and how challenging it can be launch a successful game on the App Store.
If you have any Q's PM me, or just post them here if you like.
Ask them if they can elaborate on their "Rolando Killer", what the game will be like.Keyser Soze said:I don't know if anyone here is interested, but I am going to ask Chris Byatte, Director and co-founder of Chillingo, a few questions tomorrow, and I was wondering does anyone here have anything they'd like to ask?
I already have a few questions in mind, such as game pricing problems, and how challenging it can be launch a successful game on the App Store.
If you have any Q's PM me, or just post them here if you like.
- New weapon - Freezing Bolt.
- OpenFeint upgraded to 2.0
- Lowered difficulty for Easy
- Added cheat option for those who have troubles passing specific levels.
- Made more obvious when certain upgrades are disabled.
- Added hints
- Game made more "responsive" - it's now easier to flick bad guys.
- Fixed "disappearing" campaign ("yellow dots" issue).
- Performance optimization
Remy said:Just to make the Chillingo/Crystal situation murkier, my Knights Onrush just got updated to 1.2.
So they're using OpenFeint for this, but writing Crystal for other games? Huh?
Mar_ said:I had to buy this after I read the review. I think the reviewer really summed up how I felt when I saw the initial screenshots and game description:
Fusebox said:Baseball Slugger 3D is 99c for 24 hours, not sure if this was posted already.
The_Reckoning said:I understand there will be complications and head butting between the devs for a bit, but once a universal system hit. Game over, set my direct deposit to itunes cards. I don't care which system pulls ahead, please, please just unify.
The Advance Wars of the iPhone, Mecho Wars, has just received a significant update to version 1.01 that aims to address some of the criticisms levelled at the turn-based strategy game.
Most prominent among the new features is a valuable information system to reveal statistics on your units. A 'tile' can be accessed to display info on a unit's movements, attack range, strengths and weaknesses in comparison to other classes.
But it's not all statistics and numbers. The update also delivers two new maps in the direct one-on-one challenge mode, along with a whole new single player campaign, played from the perspective of the Landians.
It's a free update, so don't waste time reading this news item if you've already bought Mecho Wars. And for all the social gamers out there, we're told that version 1.2 will deliver online multiplayer, so now's the ideal time to get some practice in.
lawblob said:Jungle Bloxx - Digital Chocolate - on sale @ $1
woohoo! Another game I have been wanting to pick up. Nice.
lawblob said:They updated the "New / What's Hot" tabs in the App store. Enviro-Bear 2010 is in "What's Hot." :lol
Im' thinking about picking up Mevo and Must.Eat.Birds, for some reason they are both more tempting now that they're in the "New" category. hmm...