Tag Archives | Apple iOS

EA's iOS Game Sale Comes With Ulterior Motive

Posted by Jared Newman on December 17, 2010 at 10:17 am

Christmas is closing in, so Electronic Arts’s $1 iOS game sale is a big deal. But as GigaOM’s Darrell Etherington argues, it’s also a clever tactic to crowd out iPhone and iPad app charts during the busiest sales period of the year.

The move rubs right up against a glut of new game launches from publishers big and small. NOVA 2, The 7th Guest, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and a bunch of other games were all released on Thursday. Infinity Blade, published by Epic Games, launched last week. Etherington calls the EA sale a bully tactic that robs other publishers of top billing.

He’s right about sales volume, at least. Looking at the app charts on my iPad, every game in the top 10 paid app chart is published by EA. But the list of top grossing apps proves that EA’s strategy doesn’t spell doom for other publishers.

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Is Infinity Blade the Ultimate iOS Gamer’s Game? Not Quite

Posted by Jared Newman on December 10, 2010 at 10:47 am

The general consensus on Infinity Blade is that it’s the iPhone and iPad game serious gamers have been waiting for. That would include me, so I forfeited $6 to the App Store last night and gave Infinity Blade a shot.

It’s a great game. I stayed up an hour later than I should have, dueling against knights twice my avatar’s size and obsessing over weapons and armor. I only pulled myself away when game’s final boss wiped me out. (In a unique plot device, after each death you play as the next generation in your character’s bloodline, avenging the death of his father at the hands of a mighty dictator.)

But let’s not kid ourselves. Essentially, Infinity Blade is Fruit Ninja in hardcore clothing. It’s not the ultimate iPad game for gamers.

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5 Ways to Fix iOS Game Center

Posted by Jared Newman on November 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm

Game Center, Apple’s gaming hub for iOS, was a disappointment when it launched for iPhone and iPod Touch in September, but I always assumed it would get better with age

Today’s release of iOS 4.2 for iPad seems like a good excuse to revisit Game Center. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much as lifeless as it was a couple months ago, and it looks even worse next to Xbox Live for Windows Phone 7, which despite its faults, has a pretty good social layer as a base. Because I know Apple loves hearing unsolicited advice — har har — I’ve brainstormed several ways to make Game Center better.

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iPhones and iPads Get a DOS Emulator [Update: Gone]

Posted by Jared Newman on October 26, 2010 at 11:35 am

(Update: Word got around, I guess. iDOS is now gone from the App Store. Original post continues below.)

Either I’m dreaming, someone in Cupertino messed up, or Apple has seriously relaxed the rules of what flies in the iOS App Store. For $1, you can now download iDOS, a DOS emulator for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Touch Arcade broke the news earlier today, and I initially figured it was a fluke, like the accidental approval of a Nintendo emulator last year. But for now, the app is still available, and I just downloaded it directly on my iPhone and from within iTunes. iDos includes two games, Ms. Pac-Man and Dig Dug, plus its own virtual keyboard and keypad instead of the stock iOS inputs. I tried Dig Dug on an iPhone 3GS, and it’s a little slow, but I’m hoping for better results when I try it on the iPad later today.

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PlayOn Goes Native With iPhone App

Posted by Jared Newman on September 30, 2010 at 9:29 am

With Apple’s approval, PlayOn finally has a native iOS app for skipping Hulu Plus and streaming heaps of web TV shows to the iPhone.

PlayOn uses PC software to pull in web video from Hulu, Comedy Central, ESPN3 and elsewhere, and then makes the content available to other networked devices, like game consoles, certain set-top boxes and now the iPhone. The iPhone app is free, but you’ll also need the PlayOn PC software, which costs $40 per year or $80 for life. You can try it free for 14 days.

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Most Android Users Still Don't Have Froyo

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 17, 2010 at 1:11 pm

For owners of iPhones and iPod Touches, the latest major upgrade to the OS is version 4. For Android users, it’s 2.2 “Froyo.” Every iOS user with a compatible device can upgrade to 4.x at will, but Android types must wait until the wireless carrier they bought their phone from releases the Froyo update. And while every new iPhone and iPod Touch ships with iOS 4, there are still new Android devices arriving–such as Dell’s Streak–that run old versions of the software.

So how does that translate into percentages of users who get to enjoy the benefits of a current mobile operating system versus. those who are stuck on something at least slightly stale? Online advertising network Chitika, which publishes stats based on aggregate data about visitors to sites on its network, shared some relevant numbers with me.

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Apple vs. Sony and Nintendo: The Smack-Talk Continues

Posted by Jared Newman on September 1, 2010 at 4:09 pm

It was all fun and games when Apple slung mud at Sony and Nintendo during last year’s iPod press event, but this year’s smear was just nasty, and not entirely accurate.

Before Steve Jobs introduced the new iPod Touch, he immediately started bragging about the device’s gaming dominance. He claimed that the iPod Touch accounts for half of the portable gaming market, with more sales than and outsells Sony and Nintendo’s handhelds combined.

A claim like that needs a bunch of asterisks. As I pointed out a year ago, fighting a console war means manipulating statistics to your favor, and Apple is guilty once again.

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Smartphone Sales: New Stats, and a Recap

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 4, 2010 at 10:43 am

Yet another research report shows booming sales of Android smartphones: NPD, which covers the retail market, says that 33 percent of smartphones sold in the US in the second quarter ran Google’s operating system. RIM’s BlackBerries fell to second place, at 28 percent, and Apple’s iPhones had 22 percent of the market.

NPD’s analysis covers only phones, so there are millions of Apple iOS devices–iPod Touches and iPads–that aren’t part of the tally. Except for a few niche products such as Archos’s tablets and the Nook, Android is still a phone OS, not a general-purpose one; that will change in the months to come as Android tablets (and products such as Google TV) arrive.

Each company that does this sort of number-crunching uses its own methodology, and sales patterns for the rest of the world differ wildly from those for the US. So it’s not surprising that different companies are releasing varying rankings. After the jump, a quick visual recap of some recent stats.

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