We already mentioned in our Apple Game Center post that Mark Cubbs from Epic Games took the stage during Steve Jobs’ press conference to show of a demo of Project Sword. The reason this game looks so impressive is that it’s running on the Unreal Engine 3. The good news is; the other tech demo that was shown is now available in the App Store for free, just search for Epic Citadel and rake it in!
Epic Citadel is a nice demo that lets you explore a medieval city and lets you travel through a mysterious cathedral. Don’t expect too much from it, just give your eyes a little feast and spend a lot of attention to the gorgeous graphics of this “game”. As Towelie said it: “Don’t forget to bring your towel”, because you’re going to want to clean that drool of your iPhone/iPod screen after seeing the graphics in this amazing tech demo!
Halfbrick has released a new update for its iPhone game Monster Dash, available in the App Store for 99 cents. The update gives Barry the chance of collecting a new power-up; a badass motorcycle will make you invincible for all kinds of things that you come across. It will also allow you to view new stats tracking and collect new achievements. They also fixed a few nasty bugs and made the pickung up of a heart easier. Update your Monster Dash game now or get the latest version of the game if you didn’t already because it rocks!
MacRumors is reporting that Apple is giving the opportunity to developers to give out up to 50 promotional compies of their iPhone and iPod Touch apps. With these codes, recipients can download a full copy of the application for free. This feature is currently only available for the US iTunes Store. This will allow developers to distribute review copies of their new games to sites like iPwnGames more efficiently.
A lot of developers were complaining about the review policy of the App Store, and today Apple has finally made a big improvement. Since today you can only review an App when you’ve actually purchased it. It’s no longer possible to go to an App and just review it even though you haven’t used it. Developers were seeing negative reviews of people who hadn’t even played an App. TUAW has more info on the new review policy:
The frequent result is as you might expect: 100 reviews kvetching about price by people who never even purchased the application. That isn’t fair to developers, and it isn’t fair to potential buyers.
The Wall Street Journal recently had an interview with Apple’s Steve Jobs. He told WSJ that users have downloaded more than 60 million applications from the App Store in the first month. Most of these apps were free, but the total of sales so far was $30 million in the first month, so that makes an average of $1 million a day. Games account for more than 25% of all sales with 300,000 sales of SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball in the first 20 days. 300,000 times Super Monkey Ball priced at $9.99 gives SEGA a nice $3 million in sales so far.
“That’s a substantial business,” says Simon Jeffery, president of Sega’s U.S. division. “It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform.”
SEGA seems to be very happy with the sales of their popular Super Monkey Ball game for the iPhone so they will certainly develop more games for the iPhone in the future.
And yet again Apple has released a new update for the iPhone 3G. Since its release the iPhone 3G has had several updates and long syncs. Firmware v2.0.1 of the iPhone firmware speeds up syncing. The new update is 249.2MB and is available via iTunes.
For the creative minds among us there’s iCanSketchIt for the iPhone. Others could try it out as well, but if you we’re a complete loser at painting when you were young, this won’t be any different for you. In this game from Andrew Borland you have to copy a picture as accurately as possible to get a nice score. You get a nice palette of colors and different brushes, but there’s a time limit that will kill you! There are timed and precision game modes and there’s an option to compare your scores online with the scores of other players. iCanSketchIt is now available in the App Store for only $1.99.
Blackjack 21 from mobileage brings the extremely popular blackjack cardgame to your iPhone and iPod with nice play gestures, high resolution graphics and natural animations. You simply tap the chips to place a bet, swipe up to split your hand and swipe down to hit. The gameplay in Blackjack 21 looks very fluid, perfect for some pick up and play action. Available now in the App Store for only $4.99.
European gamers who can’t wait for Scrabble to come out for the iPhone should check out Wordtouch from Spindrift. It feels like a Scrabble game mixed with a puzzle-game. You get a few rows of letters each worth points and you have to make words from the top row only. Use a tile and the game replaces it by the one below it. Clear an entire column and you score extra, clear the whole board and you get even more points. It’s out in the App Store for £2.99.
We already mentioned in our Apple Game Center post that Mark Cubbs from Epic Games took the stage during Steve Jobs’ press conference to show of a demo of Project Sword. The reason this game looks so impressive is that it’s running on the Unreal Engine 3. The good news is; the other tech demo that was shown is now available in the App Store for free, just search for Epic Citadel and rake it in!
