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Posts tagged with "games"

Angry Birds Reaches 200 Million Downloads→

Angry Birds Reaches 200 Million Downloads

At the paidContent Mobile conference today in New York City, Rovio “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka announced Angry Birds has reached a total of 200 million downloads on all platforms. This figure includes the Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio games available on the iPhone (free and $0.99 version), iPad (free and $4.99 version) and Android handsets (free, ad-supported). BusinessInsider also reports other announcements from Vesterbacka, which will possibly extend the popularity of Rovio’s brand even more:

On top of the app’s success, Vesterbacka says an Angry Birds book will launch this summer with distribution through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Google. Plus, the company is working with animators for its own Angry Birds movie.

And then there’s the merchandise. Rovio has deals with manufacturers in China for Angry Birds gear such as lunchboxes and toys.

The number is impressive and I’m pretty sure it makes Angry Birds the most downloaded mobile game of all time, or at least the most download App Store title ever. In the past months, Rovio reported other notable figures such as 10 million downloads for Rio in 10 days, or the 200 million minutes people spend playing Angry Birds every day.

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Castlerama Takes On Epic Citadel with Unreal Engine for iOS

If you were one of those who followed or watched Apple’s September 1, 2010 media event – where, among other things, iOS 4.1 and Game Center were officially unveiled – then you most definitely remember Epic Games’ Mike Capps and Steve Jobs talking about a revolutionary game that would set new technical standards on iOS devices. The game was based on the popular Unreal Engine ported to iOS, and on stage it was presented as a work-in-progress demo called Epic Citadel, also released for free on the App Store. The demo was impressive: there was nothing to do besides wandering around a medieval village, but the graphics, the lightning and the details were impressive. Tech-wise, everything about Epic Citadel was amazing. And as you may know, the game evolved and eventually became a real adventure with a plot and sword fights: Infinity Blade, based off the Unreal Engine and Epic Citadel’s first-person setting, was a huge success on iPhones and iPads.

As the story goes, however, other developers have tried to implement the Unreal Engine powerful set of tools in their games. The latest entry in the Unreal Engine-based game market is Castlerama by the Codenrama development studio, a first-person game with a striking resemblance to Epic Citadel and its environment. Castlerama seems to offer different landscapes though, as well as its own control scheme based on two virtual analog sticks displayed on screen.

The developers also explain their decision to accept “compromises” in order to make the game run on new devices like the iPad 2 and older units like the iPhone 3GS:

While developing Castlerama, we had to face the fact that newer devices such as iPhone4s and iPad2s are very different from their predecessors, iPhone3GSs and iPads, in that the former have twice as much memory. In order to have the app run on all devices, we had to compromise quite a bit, pushing the old devices to their limits (risking crash if other applications are left running) while keeping the new devices well behind their capabilities. In the future we believe we will have to develop two versions for each application.

Castlerama is available for free in the App Store as a universal download. With more games supporting the Unreal Engine coming out in the near future, it’ll be interesting to see how Castlerama will manage to provide a unique experience for iPhone and iPad owners. In the meantime, check out the app’s demo video and a walk down the Epic Citadel memory lane below. [9to5mac via TouchArcade]
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Halo Creators Likely Working On New Game for Mobile Devices

Take this with a grain of salt, but the creators of popular first-person shooter Halo may be working on a new online game for iOS and Android devices. As noted by TouchArcade and GameInformer today, a new filing at the USPTO confirms Bungie Aerospace has trademarked “Crimson”, a “computer game software for use on mobile and cellular phones.” Sounds intriguing, but what’s Bungie Aerospace? The company is likely a subsidiary of the “real thing” Bungie, and that’s already been incorporated in Delaware and Washington. Mounting speculation suggests that this new company is the official mobile division of Bungie, something that the Halo developers hinted several times in the past. Bungie has been busy hiring and opening positions for mobile developers in the past months, so it seems pretty clear at this point that something in mobile is going on. And mobile these days means two things: iOS and Android. If Bungie is really working on a new mobile game, than we can assume it’s most definitely coming to the iPhone or iPad.

What the game really is, however, it’s unclear. TouchArcade speculates it might be heavily online based, as also suggested by a Bungie staff writer in 2010 when he said it’s be great to have a world that’s “always there for you, with lots of stories to tell.”

What this project actually is, however, is still shrouded in a cloud of secrecy and, presumably, really hardcore non-disclosure agreements.

My gut says Bungie Aerospace and “Crimson” are connected to the studio’s next project, an original IP set to be published by Activision. Word on the street is that this game is a shooter MMO — an MMO that might just offer increased connectivity via mobile apps.

As a big Halo and Bungie fan, I’m looking forward to what’s next for the company in the mobile space. A new iOS game would sure make for a big announcement at a certain Apple event in September.

Angry Birds’ Theme Song Recreated with Real Instruments [Video]

Sure, you can play Angry Birds on multiple devices, install all the possible versions and spin-offs from the App Store – heck, I’ll even go on to say it’s fine if you bought some of those shady guides to get the most out of the game. But can you play the official theme song like those indie Pomplamoose folks did? As noted by TUAW, the duo seems to enjoy the world of Angry Birds quite a lot, and even if there’s some Samsung advertising weirdness going on in the video, the overall result for your viewing pleasure is undoubtedly nice.

Video is embedded below. As for anyone else willing to recreate his own version of the Birds’ song, I’m pretty sure GarageBand for iPad has a share button somewhere. [via YouTube]
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Apple Stops Serving iAds In Apps Targeted To Kids

Since its introduction last year, Apple’s iAd advertising network has been off to a somehow rough start: touted as the best way for advertisers to build interactive campaigns to deliver effortlessly to iOS users, the service was repeatedly criticized by advertisers and ad agencies due to Apple’s strict design requirements and control, expensive minimum buy and low fill rates compared to Google’s AdMob network. In the past months, Apple tried to address several issues reported by iAd’s initial partners: they released a desktop tool to design iAds visually on a Mac, they cut the minimum buy in half from $1 million to $500,000, and rolled out fullscreen ads with even more interactivity on the iPad. They updated the official iAd website to display more information and details, and released an iPhone app entirely focused on showcasing experiences built for the iAd network.

A change in the way Apple chooses the apps that can display iAds, however, might cause a little bit of confusion among developers that, until now, have relied on iAds as the sole source of income for their free apps. Mike Zornek, developer of the free Dex app for iPhone and iPod touch (a Pokèmon browser application), relays an email from the iAd Network Support team in which an Apple employee explains how iAds may not be displayed anymore in apps targeted to “young children” because of the advertisers’ preference to not show ads to this particular audience. Read more

Mobile Devices Claim Largest Share Of Digital Game Downloads

Digital game downloads have been on the rise in recent years and according to the latest NPD report, a large portion of that increase can be attributed to mobile devices which count for nearly half of all video game downloads. The report, which focused solely on full game downloads (not micro-transactions, add-ons or previously purchased games), notes that even those who owned a console would generally download more games to their mobile devices.

Following mobile devices were personal computers as the second most common platform for downloading games, no doubt driven primarily by Steam, then consoles and finally portable gaming devices (Nintendo DS, Sony PSP). Obviously it should be pointed out that, typically, a full game download for a mobile device is priced far lower than a game for consoles and even computers. Nonetheless, Anita Frazier notes in the report “Mobile gaming represents one of the fastest growing segments of the digital games market, and potential for future growth remains strong.”

Interestingly, of those that have purchased a mobile game in the past three months, a surprising 60% said they still spend the same amount on console or portable gaming device games. The report also revealed that if a game was available in physical and digital form at the same time, at the same price, 75% would buy a physical copy because they liked to own a “real” copy – the remaining 25% mainly cited convenience as their reason.

[Via TUAW]

Zynga Hires Key Contributors Behind cocos2d for iPhone

After the acquisition of Wonderland Software late in April, gaming giant Zynga (you might remember these folks for Farmville, among other things) announced they hired key contributors of the cocos2d for iPhone framework Ricardo Quesada and Rolando Abarca. The two developers will join Zynga’s team while still maintaining cocos2d for iPhone community and official website – which the company did not acquire. Cocos2d for iPhone, a framework for creating “2D games, demos, and other graphical/interactive applications” used by hundreds of developers including Atari, ngmoco and Zynga itself, is an open-source project that currently supports the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac. Quesada and Abarca will continue supporting and contributing to cocos2d for iPhone; the “talent acquisition” from Zynga is clearly aimed at enhancing the company’s portfolio in the development field, which ranges from 2D and 3D games to advanced HTML and social experiences. Zynga has a pretty rich catalog of mobile games, too.

Zynga has long been an advocate of the open source community and we are excited to have Ricardo and Rolando continue to support and contribute to cocos2d for iPhone while in their new roles at Zynga. Games and applications will continue to operate on cocos2d for iPhone as they always have. Zynga did not acquire the community site, cocos2d-iphone.org, which will continue to be managed separately by Ricardo along with the other cocos2d for iPhone administrators. We look forward to advancing the cocos2d for iPhone open source project alongside the cocos2d for iPhone developer community.

At this point, we can’t tell how Zynga will use the talent of cocos2d for iPhone’s contributors to enrich their gaming experiences with complex physics engines and integration with other third-party graphic libraries. What’s for sure is that Zynga doesn’t have a problem in opening its wallet to purchase assets and other smaller companies, considering today’s talent and partial asset acquisition is the 13th one in the last 12 months.

Duke Nukem Forever Also Coming To iOS?

As noted by TouchArcade, popular yet never released console and PC game Duke Nukem Forever might be coming to iOS devices, too. Duke Nukem Forever is particularly interesting as a title as it’s become synonym of vaporware online: development started in 1997, but the game never actually came out (in spite of promotional material and screenshots being handed out to the press and fans) due to multiple delays from the original developers, 3D Realms. If you’ve been following Duke Nukem Forever’s history throughout the years, you know that the brand’s userbase came to the point where many lost any kind of hope in seeing the game officially out: that was until 2010, when game studio Gearbox revealed they had picked DNF off 3D Realms’ hands and were busy working on a full adaption and rewrite for current-gen consoles. They announced a release date for May 2010, but the game was delayed again. It should be finally coming out after 14 years on June 9, 2011, and it’s already available for pre-purchase on Steam.

Digging into the game’s manual, a TouchArcade reader found out the developers included “Apple App Store Additional License Terms” – a bunch of legalese that most gamers usually skip, but it’s intended to inform users about licensing terms, agreements, and so forth. This could mean a mobile version of Duke Nukem Forever is also in the works, which wouldn’t be surprise considering the App Store userbase nowadays and the fact that the Unreal Engine runs on iPhones and iPads. Gearbox hasn’t confirmed they’ll use the Unreal Engine in the game, but that’s a possibility if DNF is really being ported to iOS devices. As TouchArcade notes, the license terms might also refer to the Mac App Store, although Gearbox specifically stated there weren’t any announcements related to the Mac or Linux platforms – and the terms clearly mention the iPhone and iPod touch in regards to the software license.

After all these years, it’d be nice to see the Duke on the iPad.

Firemint to be Acquired by EA

All of your favorite titles such as Real Racing and Flight Control are about to be snatched up by EA as independent mobile studio Firemint will be acquired by the game giant within the next four weeks. EA announced this morning that they’ll likely close the deal soon, but aren’t yet releasing any financial details on the acquisition.

“The Firemint team is remarkable for its critical and commercial success,” said Barry Cottle, Executive Vice President and General Manger of EA Interactive. “Having them as part of EAi will accelerate our position as worldwide leader in game development for mobile devices and online gaming platforms.”

The agreement follows EA’s recent acquisition of Mobile Post Production Inc. (MPP), the worldwide leader in high quality cross-platform development and porting of games for smartphones.

Firement recently released Real Racing 2 HD for iPad, delivering a 1080p racing experience straight to your television set via the Digital AV Adapter. Whether the trend of great mobile apps from the Firemint team at EA or elsewhere is unknown, but we sure hope the same great group of game developers can continue to deliver top notch experiences to the iPad outside of EA’s usual slew of cookie-cutter titles.

[via EA]