THE 4 THINGS GAMERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT APPLE’S ROCK ‘N’ ROLL KEYNOTE
Though today’s Apple ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ themed keynote was meant to address a number of improvements on its musical fronts — from DVD-menu-like interactive album art now available in iTunes, to the new models of video/camera-added traditional iPods — the company still had a number of games-related announcements up the sleeves of the newly returned Steve Jobs (event images borrowed from GDGT’s excellent live coverage):
1.) Apple is finally making improvements to the iPhone/App Store experience with ‘top grossing’ lists, PC-based App arranging
The new version 9 iTunes and iPhone OS 3.1, now available — alongside the updated iTunes store experience — bring with them a number of new ways to sort and catalog your iPhone Apps, chief amongst them (for me, anyway, finally a way to organize your iPhone without arranging them via fiddly on-device drag and drop (the bane of my multi-multi-full-page existence).
But while the current version of iTunes 9 seems to be missing sub-categories for apps (there’s no way to access the action/puzzle/etc. sections on your PC — presumably this will be fixed soon), you can see a new top 25+ assortment of the top paid apps by gross, rather than by unit sales.
That sounds like a fine distinction, but what it means is better visibility for games and apps that don’t succumb to the 99-cent siren song, which traditionally have been drowned out by higher unit sales for low-priced apps — the hope being that as time goes on this will allow better, premium apps to fight against the tide (especially when Apple allows us to view this list in some form other than App Store-wide).
2.) Apple has begun to use Genius recommendations for apps
Apple’s turned on ‘Genius’ recommendations for apps, as they’ve experimented with for a year-ish now on the music side of iTunes, available as a new list in the on-device App Store. Quick tests show that its algorithms will need some finessing over the coming months — app preferences not being quite as tightly linked to genre/artist similarity as naturally as music preferences.
While recommendations based on Lucky Frame’s beautifully illustrated sequencer Mujik turned up a decent amount of similar music apps, apps like Booyah Society or Skyvoyager — free apps, or apps that saw hundreds of thousands of downloads over free weekends — lead to essentially non-sequiter applications simply because they, too, have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times for free. Game recommendations don’t so much lead to similar games, as much as games that might float in similar impulse-buy price ranges.
3.) Apple’s not joking around about its approach to the iPhone/iPod Touch as a true handheld games contender
See, for instance, this honestly entirely mis-leading bar chart comparing available games on all platforms, which, over the next year, may not seem quite as misleading as the PSP Minis and similar indie DSiWare initiatives start to blossom for Sony and Nintendo. Comparisons that neither the DS nor the PSP had an “App Store” or an “iPod” were obviously similarly off the mark, trademark names withstanding.
But Apple’s ensuring that all models across the range are up to the competitive task, adding OpenGL ES 2.0 compatibility to speed up 3D games for its iPod Touch line (bringing it up to par with the iPhone 3GS), and dropping the entry-level price for its 8-gig Touch by $50 to $199, where it hopes to sit better alongside the $169 DSi and the $249 PSP Go.
And all this leads to:
4.) Major publishers continue to see the App Store as a viable platform
The games represented at today’s keynote by and large weren’t the scrappy-indies-that-could: apart from Tap Tap Revolution devs Tapulous, who showed off their latest music game Riddim Ribbon (above, which sees you racing/balancing along that titular ribbon in order to keep your music playing), the invited stage guests were all big-business.
Mobile giant Gameloft showed off their new single/multiplayer first person shooter N.O.V.A., above, while Ubisoft and EA were on hand to show off Assassin’s Creed and Madden ’10 (the latter of which is currently live).
See Lisa’s summary over at Boing Boing Gadgets for more less-games-related tech-talk on what Apple had in store.
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LISTEN: ANAMANAGUCHI, MINUSBABY, GOTO80 APPEARING ON BEATLES CHIPTUNE COVER COMPILATION
Yet another 09/09/09 surprise, this time the Beatles-half of the blowout day that surprisingly has nothing to do with monophonic reissues or Rock Band: 8-Bit Operators, the same group that brought you the eponymous 2007 Kraftwerk chiptune cover album have just announced WANNA HLD YR HANDHELD, a new 20-track compilation covering the best of the Beatles.
The Operators say the full release will include tracks from 8-Bit Weapon w/ ComputeHer, Bacalao, Anamanaguchi, Bud Melvin, Burnkit 2600, Depreciation Guild, Glomag, Herbert Weixelbaum, Neotericz w/ Naku, Bubblyfish, Poke-1,170, Shrimps w Robert J Smith, gwEm & Counter Reset, goto80, Receptors, Psilodump, Cheap Dinosaurs, Saskrotch, Minusbaby, Rabato and Aonami.
For 09/09/09, a preview release of nine streaming tracks has arrived at the new HLD YR HANDHELD MySpace page, with a full Minusbaby-designed site to follow at the Operators’ page on 10/09/09, in celebration of John Lennon’s birthday.
It’s Bacalao and 8-Bit Weapon/ComputeHer that dominate the streamable tracks so far: pay special attention to the former’s deep-thumping/square-wave tweeting Blackbird and the latter’s Eleanor Rigby — you’ve never heard a speech-synthesizer sound quite so plaintive.
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I GET YOUR FEZ: POLYTRON SHOW 2 YEARS OF FEZ-RELATED FAILS
And sticking around Montreal for just a second: inspired by the anonymously-run bug/comment/build error blog I Get Your Fail, Polytron have just published this showcase of 26 images highlighting some of the worst fails in Fez history.
Well, they’re not all bad: the worst of the bunch are interspersed with some legitimately wicked new looks at the inside of Gomez’s trixellated world, and even some of the worst end up being some of the best, see like for instance my new electroclash-error desktop wallpaper here.
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THE SOUL STILL BURNS: SENILE/RED SPOT ANNOUNCE DREAMCAST RACER RUSH RUSH RALLY RACING
And the other dejected-Dreamcast-lover’s 09/09/09 news: developer Senile Team and publisher Red Spot Games have announced the latest unofficial new game for the console with Rush Rush Rally Racing, an “old school 2D racing game” to be released in October via eBay, Amazon, and direct from Red Spot (though the page is apparently under siege by would-be pre-orders at the moment).
Senile says the game will feature a single player grand prix mode, three multi-player modes with 19 different tracks, the requisite (and how long has it been since you’ve typed these words) VMU, rumble pack and VGA support, as well as an online high score table for those that can still manage to get their consoles connected.
See Senile’s official site for more information, and visit Red Spot’s page for pre-orders.
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PROJECT NEEDLEMOUSE: SEGA TEASE NEW HD, 2D SONIC FOR 2010
The biggest 09/09/09 10th anniversary news for still-dejected Sega/Dreamcast fans: Sega has told GameSpot that they’re preparing a “brand new [hi-def] 2D adventure coming out in 2010” for the franchise’s 20th anniversary, currently teased as Project Needlemouse, which they see as a “critical first step that brings Sonic back to his 2D roots,” after years spent going — as the superfans would see — far, far afield.
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GAMMA-GO: KOKOROMI BRINGING INDIE GAME SHOWCASE/PARTY TO GDC 2010
Montreal art/game collective Kokoromi have just announced that they’ll be bringing the latest installment of their yearly Gamma showcase (traditionally reserved for the Montreal Game Summit) to GDC in March of 2010.
The theme for this year’s indie game showcase has yet to be chosen (you’ll recall that last year’s was the 3D theme that spawned both the original version of Infinite Ammo’s Paper Moon and Kokoromi’s own early-Offworld-exclusive super HYPERCUBE, and that 2007 was the year where Jason Rohrer first made news with the debut of Passage), but the group says submissions will open in November, and will give prospective indie game devs 6-8 weeks to build their games.
The chosen games will be “featured on large screen projections, and accompanied by the music of local and international DJs” at Gamma’s San Francisco opening party, and then be “playable in a special GDC-donated booth on the Game Developers Conference Expo floor from March 11th to 13th.”
Watch Kokoromi’s site for more information throughout November.
[pictured above: Bubblyfish spinning her chiptunes at 2007’s Gamma256]
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RAGDOLL METAPHYSICS: CONCEPT RECOGNITION, OR WHEN ARTISTS FIGHT BACK
When Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford explained the new art style of Borderlands to the press, he described it as a “mutiny”. His art team had apparently gone back to their concept art assets and realised that, ultimately, their drawings and paintings had more character and appeal than the art-style that had ended up in the version of the game they had at that time.
Going against the prescribed direction of the project, the team had begun to prototype the concept art in the game, ultimately delivering a build that knocked the socks off their boss, and blew away the drab vision of Borderlands that they had been working on previously. Brave stuff. And I couldn’t help thinking: Well, about time! Isn’t most concept art actually better than what we get in the final game? Isn’t it, perhaps, about time to let the concept artists take the lead?
The results from Borderlands are quite startling. Observe:
Before:
After:
Dodgy quality of the first section aside, there’s no contest in the visual impact. With its reference to the concept art style, the game is more visually arresting, and, perhaps more importantly, it stands out from a host of gloomy shooters that all share the same visual effects, the same shiny bump-maps, the same metallic sheen. Hell, if Borderlands hadn’t been reinvented, I wonder whether you’d have been able to tell it apart from Id’s Rage… (more…)
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ONE SHOT: SILENT HILL ARTIST TAKAYOSHI SATO DOES SALOME
The Path and The Graveyard developers Tale of Tales reveal that Silent Hill lead artist Takayoshi Sato has designed, modeled and textured the lead in the studio’s previously mentioned, Wilde-inspired game Fatale, which retells the seductive ‘dance of seven veils’ Salome performed for her step-father so he would agree to behead John the Baptist. Follow Tale of Tales’ progress via their official Fatale site.
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AS YOU’VE NO DOUBT SEEN: BORDERLANDS PULLS A BALE
The second meme-lifting promo video in under a week sees Gearbox’s post-apoc sandbox shooter Borderlands getting the full Christian-Bale-flip-out treatment as helper bot Claptrap just tries to tell you that the game’s wasteland creatures are every bit as procedurally generated and diverse as its ’87 bazillion’-ish weapons.
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GET SETTLED: FIRST IPHONE CATAN SCREENSHOT, BETA APPLICATIONS OPEN
The official Catan site has updated with news that beta applications are now open to test out the forthcoming iPhone port of the board game (which, going off rote number of re-tweets of the original announcement, appears to be one of Offworld readers’ most anticipated upcoming games), which also includes the first screenshot of the game, at right.
Developer Exozet expects testers to undergo the usual loop of feedback to and questions from the studio, but if you’re willing and able, you can apply to get early access to the game via this site, where you’ll need your phone’s UDID (which you can get in iTunes by selecting your iPhone and finding the ‘serial number’ under the ‘summary’ tab, or by using free apps like Ad Hoc Helper [iTunes link] to email the 40 character string to yourself).
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