iPhone Games Bulletin : 28 July 2009 (sample)

TOP STORY

iPhone developer reports 96% piracy rate

Bram Stolk of Slant Six Games has written a blog post about the sales of his The Little Tank That Could iPhone game. In its first five days on the App Store, it sold 45 copies. However, 1,114 unique players accessed its leaderboards. Eh? "The game got cracked, and distributed via torrents," writes Stolk. "Those crackers are a weird bunch, even taking pride in their work. Proudly tagging my game with 'cracked by Hexhammer'. Well screw you Hexhammer. If you had any talents yourself, you would make your own game. Cracking one is petty." Too right. But it does shine a light on an issue - iPhone game piracy - that few larger developers and publishers are willing to talk about publicly.

Source: Bram In Canada Blog - http://bit.ly/2NXNRH

NEWS

Sega asks gamers for iPhone roadmap suggestions

Sega is asking iPhone gamers what titles they'd like to see it bring to the App Store. Not new games, but which old Sega classics should be given the iPhone treatment. Feedback is being requested via Twitter, Facebook, and the publisher's own forums and blog. A neat idea, and presumably one that will lend weight to the iPhone team internally when going back to HQ with the most popular suggestions. With that in mind: Space Channel 5 and Crazy Taxi, please! And hire Firemint to do a 40-car Daytona USA for iPhone 3GS...

Source: Sega Blog - http://bit.ly/8QRAp

Word Warp making $10k a month in ad revenues

There's no shortage of Doubting Thomases when it comes to ad-supported mobile gaming - mainly because figures on how much money developers are making can be hard to come by. So Greystripe must be pleased - MobilityWare says that its Word Warp game is making $10,000 in ad revenues a month using Greystripe's platform, with 1.5 million downloads fuelling an eCPM rate of $1.91. "I find it humorous that people say the ad-support model is flawed," says marketing director Dave Yonamine.

Source: TheAppleBlog - http://bit.ly/wb4NP

Waterslide Extreme passes 3m downloads

Just before the weekend, Fishlabs announced that its Waterslide Extreme advergame had been downloaded more than two million times from the App Store. Then yesterday, the publisher said it's now passed three million. That's not bad going! Although I wonder how the deals are structured in projects like this - does Barclaycard pay Fishlabs more money as the game racks up more downloads, or is it a flat-fee work-for-hire thing?

Source: Slide To Play - http://bit.ly/UIvKA

Promo codes for 17-rated apps are back, Back, BACK!

If you're making games likely to receive a 17+ age rating on the App Store, you don't have to worry about a lack of publicity any more. It seems Apple IS now giving out promo codes to developers of these apps, having backtracked on its previous policy of not allowing these apps to be given away.

Source: AppleInsider - http://bit.ly/SitH7

Pocket God and Harbor Master linking up

Hurrah for mash-ups! Bolt Creative and Imangi Studios are getting together for an intriguing collaboration that will see the former's Pocket God make some kind of an appearance in the latter's Harbor Master next time it's updated. The news might not be as seismic as Sonic and Mario going Olympic together on console, but it does show what's possible with episodic gaming and an openness to collaboration. Meanwhile, Imangi has just revealed that over one million games have been played in Harbor Master - and that's only from the third of players who register online.

Source: Pocket Gamer - http://bit.ly/XViKi

Source: Imangi Twitter - http://twitter.com/imangi/status/2874745012

Zynga under fire for 'gambling'

TechCrunch has an article about a "legal document" (I prefer 'dossier') investigating whether Zynga is breaking state and federal anti-gambling laws in its Texas Hold'em social game. The issue is whether the game's virtual chips count as "something of value" - if so, it could be seen as online gambling. It's a complex and sensitive issue, but suffice to say one that developers looking to include virtual items and in-app payments in their iPhone games will need to be aware of. Zynga isn't actually under official investigation, mind. Meanwhile, the fact that this dossier was supplied to TechCrunch by a competitor leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Source: TechCrunch - http://bit.ly/Chbzf

GAME OF THE DAY

Booyah Society (Booyah)

I got very excited about this last night - it's a social networking game... thing, released on iPhone by a group of former Blizzard Entertainment staff. Players get achievements for posting about their daily activities, and interacting with friends. There are 3D avatars, and apparently plans for in-app payments too. In the cold light of today, I'm still getting my head around whether it's as fun as it seems. However, it's well worth a download.

Source: PocketGamer.biz - http://bit.ly/11qf7p

Other games news

Cataica is like Asteroids, but through a comic-strip filter (http://bit.ly/lGY9f). My Brute's price has been slashed to $0.99, with an update on the way using OpenFeint for more connectivity (http://bit.ly/19YQO5). CopterKid is the latest iPhone game to offer cash prizes to the best players (http://bit.ly/lwcPE)

TECH / APPLE

Report claims China Unicom has three-year iPhone deal

This has been the subject of speculation for a while, but there are more reports today that China Unicom has bagged the iPhone for China, on a three-year exclusive. The handset could go on sale as early as late September, although it remains to be seen whether all the iPhone's features - Wi-Fi and GPS particularly - make it into the final product there.

Source: AppleInsider - http://bit.ly/lTJfx

Mixamo raises $4m funding for animation tech

This might not be iPhone-relevant, but then it might be. Mixamo has raised $4 million in a first round of funding for its "self-serve video game animation service that lets developers drag and drop features into their games, complete with customisable skins". MocoNews mentions casual, mobile and social games as the target market in its write-up, so it may be worth a look.

Link - http://www.mixamo.com/

Source: MocoNews - http://bit.ly/rntx0

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Some thoughts on digital distribution and gaming

Plug alert - I wrote this. It's a long two-part article for PocketGamer.biz trying to make sense of what's going on with iPhone, and relating it to other digital distribution gaming platforms from Facebook to PSPgo to Xbox Live Arcade. I don't think I've nailed the subject - it's way too early, really - but if you've never commented on a PGbiz story before but might want to, this could be a good one to start ;o)

Source: PocketGamer biz - http://bit.ly/197a6r

Apple under fire for Google Voice rejection

There's lots of anger on the tech blogs today, following Google's decision to reveal that Apple had rejected its Google Voice application from the App Store. What's more, third-party apps using the Google Voice API have been removed from the store too. Amid conspiracy theories that AT&T is behind the decision, it's a sign that concern over iPhone approval policies now goes beyond games.

Source: TechCrunch - http://bit.ly/31Ju1z

Gamerz 4 life!

New research from the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) claims that once a gamer, always a gamer. Or, in their words: "Older gamers continue to be engaged by video games, rather than dropping out and being replaced by a new generation". Cue much talk of grey gamers waving Wiimotes in media coverage of the findings.

Source: IndustryGamers - http://bit.ly/rIdGL

OTHER PLATFORMS

Microsoft kicks off WinMo developer contest

Microsoft has started accepting submissions of apps and games for its Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store, and to celebrate, has announced a competition for developers. There'll be four categories - most downloads of a free app; most valuable app (downloads x price); most useful; and most playful. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been stressing the transparency of its approvals process, by implication contrasting it with Apple's.

Source: Windows Team Blog - http://bit.ly/1IOZ6q

WHAT I'M LIKING TODAY...

- Pendulum have a 'Live At Brixton Academy' album out. Wish I had some glowsticks.

- Ceiling-mounted TV for gaming - http://bit.ly/iy0V4 - about to try the 'it saves space' argument on my other half

- I've actually got a pre-release version of Spotify on my iPhone now (through official channels, not pirated!). It really is rather special.

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