PSVita’s Position in Mobile Gaming
There’s an interesting article on Edge Online about the PSVita and how it is being positioned as a gaming platform…
When you first switch on Vita, the influence of such trends is evident. Games are collected in bubbles (moveable, circular app icons), and you can hop in and out of titles with ease. Tired of biting the dust in Wipeout? Hop out and jump into something else instead. The dashboard also bears a striking similarity to the frontend of an iOS device. Has SCE decided to follow Apple’s lead, opening the gates to impulse-buy, super-low price apps, too? “I think there are lots of places for consumers to enjoy that sort of content; Vita is positioned at a slightly different market – the high-end gaming experience,” Ryan says. “Vita has been publicly positioned as the ultimate portable gaming experience. There are obviously going to be games on Vita which are going to reflect that quality level. Equally, at the other end of the spectrum, we’ve had success with PlayStation Minis across a variety of platforms – so [Vita will deliver] a little bit of everything.”
The whole ‘bubbles’ thing strikes me as much as being a Little Big Planet influence, as it is an iOS thing.
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, Dev Diary on Design!
We’ve got part one of the three part developer diary over on Gamezebo! This part is about the game’s design. part two looks at the art and part three looks at technology. Check it out…
Hello fellow Gamezebo readers. I’m Tomas Rawlings, the designer of the new upcoming Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land. Some readers may remember me from the series on how to start your own game studio I wrote for Gamezebo a few months ago, but today I’m here to chat about a game we’ve been working really hard on now for almost a year, and we’re approaching completion. Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is a role-playing/strategy game set in the midst of the First World War. It is based on the classic and multi-award winning paper role playing game of the same name, which coincidently this year, celebrated its 30thanniversary.
The full article is here…
Gamezebo Developer Diary: Part 1 Design, Part 2 Art, Part 3 Technology.
Kindle Gets Fire
Kindle, the ebook platform, has been bulking up to go after Apple for the tablet market:
On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, the company’s charismatic founder, unveiled the Kindle Fire, its first venture into the tablet market.
At this point, non-technical readers, clutching their beloved Kindles, may object that Amazon has been in the tablet market ever since the Kindle launched in 2007. But the Kindle is not really a tablet computer in any meaningful sense – it’s an information appliance that fulfils one function well: fetching and displaying ebooks.
The Fire is different. It has a colour touch screen and can play video, for example. More significantly, it can run apps, has a proper operating system (a customised version of Google’s Android) and does wireless networking. And it comes with its own, custom-designed web browser, called Silk (of which more in a moment). Oh, and at $199 it’s less than half the price of a basic iPad2, which may, in the end, turn out to be the most important thing about it.
A few things struck me about this venture. I agree with the above writer, that Amazon want to lock people in to their system; it’s not enough to make the platform, you also want to make the distribution system. Imagine if all Windows software had to come via Microsoft (and they took a cut)? That’s what Apple and Amazon are trying to do (though arguably would Windows have been as big had they locked it down like this? It is a point of debate…)
But I was also struck by the fact that Kindle Fire will run a modified version of Android and that the web-browser on it caches links in their servers to speed the page load times from 100 milliseconds to 5 milliseconds. This is, overall, much more of a cloud-based device than the iPhone or iPad currently is and it shows in the design of the system and software, with all the benefits and issues that brings.
Here’s the polished ad for Kindle Fire:
And if you’re concerned about being locked in, see here.
Game of Phones II: If Only We’d Known…
In keeping with the bad pun, a bit more on the smart phone wars that we are in the midst of. Sony Ericsson has admitted that hindsight is a wonderful thing and said they really should have taken Apple a bit more seriously. C’mon – did you not see what they’d just done to the music world with iPod and iTunes?
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sony Ericsson President and CEO Bert Nordberg made a number of interesting statements about the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Motorola. Defending the decision to pick Android as the choice operating system for its mobile handsets, Nordberg posits that it was ‘the best choice they could have made’ considering its rapid growth, but also acknowledges that the company “should have taken the iPhone more seriously when it arrived in 2007″.
Still, they are not out of the game yet Android is doing well and they’re making phones for that. They do need to sort out the Sony/Ericsson identity thing. Sony are an amazing gaming company and games are a huge driver for smart phones. Google meanwhile is getting into the hardware game…
Since its launch in November 2007, Android has not only dramatically increased consumer choice but also improved the entire mobile experience for users. Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries. Given Android’s phenomenal success, we are always looking for new ways to supercharge the Android ecosystem. That is why I am so excited today to announce that we have agreed to acquire Motorola.
Cthulhu Thursday: House of Yig and Other Stories
Into my inbox recently popped an email from a fellow Mythos blogger and author offering a free story for us Lovecraft fans, The House of Yig…
The nights grew colder and the moon’s face, which had been hidden from us, began to grow anew. Time passed, and over the days and nights of our capture, Tall Pine grew weak. He had got a fever some days after our arrival, brought on by too much night air I thought. I leaned for a moment on my shovel, pretending to study a stone that was in the way of my work, and he spoke these words to me, in a voice I did not think his at all:
It is true, what the slaves have said: we go to Yig. I see His eyes. I feel His breath. We will serve in His house underground all the days of the earth.
Its a good read – well worth it! If you like this there is a collection available as an eBook – see here for more information.
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also for more Cthulhu news, sign up to the cthulhuHQ twitter feed. Enjoy!)
Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist is Announced
Wellcome has announced the five books for the shortlist of the Wellcome Book Prize 2011. They are:
- Phlip Roth’s Nemesis
- Anne Patchett’s State of Wonder
- Louisa Young’s My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
- Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind
- Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies
- Sarah Manguso’s The Two Kinds of Decay
There is more about each title on the Wellcome Book Prize site (and also a write-up on the Guardian website). There is a real breadth to this shortlist – from fiction to non-fiction, from poetry to narrative…
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (from Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist)
Strange Seeds: The Ethics of Artificial Sperm and Eggs
I’m going to be facilitating this event:
What will happen if scientists succeed in their attempts to create artificial sperm and eggs? Could anyone become a parent, regardless of age, gender or sexuality? Would this make reproduction truly ‘democratic’? This raises interesting ethical questions. What if the safety of artificial sperm and eggs could only be established by trials in humans? Access to IVF is currently limited, but is society ready to allow ‘IVF for all’?
In Vitro is a 20-minute film that explores these questions through the story of Rachel. She’s a high-flying scientist who fertilises her own egg with artificial sperm created from her bone marrow. Compelling and provocative, the film shows a world where using artificial sperm and eggs to conceive is as routine as IVF.
Stay on after the screening as scientist Robert Lovell-Badge and ethicist Anna Smajdor take on the issues raised by the film and discuss whether artificial eggs and sperm are likely to play a part in our future.
If you’re interested in attending, the event is at the Dana Centre in London on 13th October at 7pm.
Infinity Blade 2 Pushes Graphics on iPhone
Here’s the video of the new Infinity Blade game…
Looks good and from what the hype about the game is saying, it is really pushing the iPhone’s graphical boundary to the max:
Apple’s new iPhone, the 4S, will boast twice the processing speed of its predecessor and several times the GPU power. Epic GAmes will look to take advantage of this with its latest mobile games project.
And to cap it all, Unreal (the engine powering the video above) is now going to work with Flash. I like the direction Epic are going in.
50% of App Store Games Make Less Than $3000
So if you’ve got an amazing game idea, don’t quit the day job just yet. The figures break down something like:
- 25% Make less than $300
- 25% Make Between $300 and $3000
- 25% Make Over $10,000
App income break-down
A Serious Game About the Poo in Your Loo…
Above is an image of two critters in the most recent Wessex Water magazine that dropped though my letterbox. They are the stars of a new iPhone/iPod game that I’ve designed along with the nice people of ToolBox Design. This cute little bundle of digitally-smelly fun is a game that as well as being enjoyable, also teaches the player about what waste you should and shouldn’t put in the drain or flush down your loo. The serious message behind the game is that putting the wrong stuff into the sewer system not only risks creating a blocked drain for you (eew!) but can also have knock-ons that waste lots of water and could cause environmental damage. See here for more information.
I’ll write more about the game as it nears completion…
A Great Becoming... 