“Joz has left California on a rare visit to London to evangelise about the rapidly expanding number of games for the iPhone and its hardware-sharing partner the iPod Touch (in effect an iPhone with the camera and telephone bits left out). He’s demonstrating some of the Christmas releases that will join the more than 20,000 games already available to download,” Bingham reports. ‘Games represent one in five of the programs that have made it into the Apple app store in the 16 months since its launch. “We never predicted these numbers,’ he says. ‘It blows me away.'”
Bingham reports, “It is no coincidence that three of the four games Joz is showing involve several people playing at the same time over wireless networks… iPhone multiplayer gaming is taking off. Most impressive of the new titles is one released last week, Harry Potter: Spells, which includes the option for a pair of players to duel. It utilises two technologies not found in the PSP or DS: Bluetooth, the short-range wireless connectivity that is far easier to set up than wi-fi, and the motion sensors built into every iPhone and Touch, which are used here to turn them into wands.”
Bingham reports, “It is a huge problem for Sony and Nintendo, whose handheld players cost the same as a Touch — a device that also includes class-leading music and browser software, not to mention games that cost a fraction of the price, are available to download on a whim in seconds and come with free updates too.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
Bloodbath? He! he! heeee!!!!
Number of iPod Touch units sold this holiday will be huge.
I want some hot games for the 27″ iMac I’l buy for my birthday in March!
Come on Diablo III!!
Mac gaming is way over rated on the Mac fanboy sites. I had to reinstall my boot camp partition so I could play some titles other than WOW. It will be two or three years before anyone should junk their PS3, PC and PSP’s to game in a Mac only universe. I am sure all future Blizzard release will be muli-platform. Then again Blizzard has been promising big and delivering late for years.
just my $0.02
Blizzard ships a game when it is finished.
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Starcraft II in 2010.
Diablo III in 2011.
Ray,
The article is talking about mobile gaming, but your point about a general lack of big game titles on the Mac platform is well taken.
Blizzard has always delivered multiplatform games on the same CD/DVD! But yes, they wait till they’re done.
In the meantime, I’m still playing Diabalo II on my Intel Mac.
They are not talking Mac gaming, they are talking iPhone/iPod touch gaming. Right here, right now.
But then again, with convergence this might bring the focus back to the Mac too, which deflated when M$ snuck in and stole away Halo.
(the bastards)
this is just the start of the bleeding… wait until games with plug in peripherals or blue tooth peripherals come out… like laser tag with target and gun sensors and augmented reality maps and visuals worked into the gameplay. This is technically possible as of iPhone OS 3.0 but I expect there is not enough lead time for such a release in 2009.
Augmented reality multi-player games with peripherals are not currently possible on any other platform due to hardware limitations. The software APIs are years away, too. These types of applications are the VISUAL PROOF of the enormous headstart apple has on the competition.