iPwnGames has become one of the most visited iPhone gamesites in the world, but unfortunately it doesn’t get enough fresh content. To give our visitors the cool iPhone gaming news and updates they deserve, I have come up with a nice plan that will also give iPhone game developers the opportunity to give their games the exposure they deserve.
We’re giving iPhone game developers of all sizes the opportunity to do a developers diary blog on iPwnGames every now and then. We know that most iPhone game developers have their own personal and corporate blogs, but by posting something about their iPhone developers experiences on our site they could reach some new gamers and lead traffic to their own personal blogs as well. It would also help us to give our site the content it deserves and to get some hardcore iPhone gamers to the site that might be interested in writing for us!
I’ve sent out emails to a large part of the iPhone game developers community, but I’m sure I missed a whole lot of good iPhone game developers so shoot me an email at info [at] ipwngames [d.ot] com if you’re an iPhone developer who’s interested in doing some sort of developers diary at iPwnGames!
The most recent iPhone SDK’s allow developers to output apps via Video Out to a screen. Freeverse has modified its iPhone and iPod Touch game Moto Chaser so that it can be played on a TV screen. Normally the game runs at 26 FPS, but the TV-version of the game runs at only 20 FPS. Let’s hope that Apple will allow developers to use this cool feature in all of their games.
The non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for iPhone developers is no more! Apple used this NDA to protect its products and innovations, but now they removed it because ‘the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers’. Authors of iPhone developer books will now finally be able to publish their litterature, and the removal of the NDA on the iPhone software will allow us as an iPhone gamesite to ask more open questions to developers regarding their new games.
Touch Arcade got their hands on some artworks of the Belkin JoyPod for the iPhone. It’s still a prototype, but rumors are floating around saying that Apple will be providing support for this add-on in the system’s SDK. Most gamers were concerned that iPhone gaming could never break through because of the lack of buttons on the device, but with this JoyPod those problems would be gone.
A Spanish advertisement for this JoyPod add-on shows that it has eight buttons, audio output and a dock connector for power and syncing so that you don’t have to get your iPhone out of the accessory to sync or charge it. It’s not clear whether this JoyPod will also support the iPod Touch or not.
IGN reports that Exit Games is bringing its cross platform toolset for online multiplayer gaming called Neutron to Apple’s iPhone. Neutron has a few very interesting features that will allow iPhone gamedevelopers to add social and online gaming features in their games:
In-game microtransactions and billing
Profiles, buddy lists, leaderboards and so on
Real-time and turn-based tournament multiplayer options
A few days ago John Carmack said that Apple’s iPhone is “a graphical tour de force” and that it’s far better than the Nintendo DS and PSP combined. Tood Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, released some more information about their future plans for the iPhone. He says they certainly don’t want to be carried away and that John Carmack was very disappointed they didn’t have an iPhone game ready when the App Store launched:
“John is pretty disappointed we didn’t have the manpower and resources to have a game for the launch of the” app store, id CEO Todd Hollenshead said.
The in-house developers team for mobile games is just too small and had not enough time to get a game ready for the launch of the App Store. At this moment they can only develop one game at a time and they will probably have to gather up with a publisher:
“It appears that at this point that given the size of our team, we can only work on one mobile game at a time. We are probably partner up and the first (iPhone game) will be one where we work with a publishing partner.”
They would like to see both Wolfenstein RPG and and Doom 2 RPG on the iPhone, but they don’t know when those games could be heading to the iPhone. To finish up Hollenshead compared the Nokia N-Gage with the iPhone:
“The iPhone is cool, and the n-Gage was a nerd device,” Hollenshead said. “The iphone is a pretty damn awesome phone, it’s a great business device, it’s one of the best portable mp3 player you can buy, it can play videos. There’s a lot of reasons to have that device and it has the power to play games as well. It’s a cool device that you can play games on and they can be awesome games.”
