Awesome and innovative games are coming
The iPhone is now not just your phone, iPod and web pad – it’s your PSP as well. The game demos at the SDK launch looked fantastic, and I think great things are in the offing for games on this platform. Time to dial up the hyperbole, but not quite to the level seen with Roughly Drafted’s take on iPhone gaming. Am I being blindly optimistic or is there something to back this up?
Well, for starters, consider the line-up of companies who’ve already said they’ll be developing games for the iPhone: Sega and EA both demo’d games at the SDK launch, and since then others have announced upcoming games, including Artificial Life, Aspyr, Feral Interactive, Freeverse, Gameloft, iD, Pangea, PopCap, THQ, and Namco Bandai. Plus I know one additional large games company that is likely to enter to the market, and whose entry would be huge.
But aside from great games houses developing quality games, I think iPhone gaming will be massive for a few simple reasons.
Smartphones Show 55
Sorry for the hiatus. The Smartphones Show 55 is out, available at http://www.smartphones-show.com, featuring me blathering on about the SDK release and what I think it means. Thanks to Steve for cutting it down from my rambling rant 
I’ll be posting expanded thoughts about gaming on the iPhone later today.
The importance of a good background
For all the plaudits that Apple rightly got for the things they did well with their announcement of the iPhone SDK and their supremely well thought out AppStore ecosystem, there’s (at least) one major brickbat which needs aiming in Cupertino’s direction.
It seems that third party iPhone applications will be forced to exit when you press that ‘Home’ button to bring up the launcher – a big mistake that will limit (again) the iPhone’s potential as a true smartphone. As a longstanding smartphone user on other platforms (S60, Windows Mobile, etc.) (more…)
Anyone out there still think this isn’t a smartphone?
Wow, what a day for the iPhone. In keeping with my no re-blogging policy, there are full reports on what’s been announced here, here, here and here.
Looking over my last post, I see that my thinking was constrained to just considering what mobile applications could be released. Now the SDK is out, I see that the potential is much wider. This really is Apple’s trojan horse platform. As John Doerr pointed out at the SDK launch, the iPhone is:
…in your pocket, broadband and connected, it’s personal – it knows who and where you are…
Absolutely. But there are plenty of compact devices vying for this crown: Nokia’s N-Series, SonyEricsson’s P1i, plus Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices, even GPS traffic products that are adding features. So what’s new here?
The SDK’s out tomorrow – what’s on your wishlist?
March 5th March 6th sees an Apple media event to roll out the Software Development Kit. It’s likely that MS Exchange and Lotus Notes support and/or native apps will figure in the mix. But further questions abound:
- is it really ready for primetime?
- will developers will get access to Wifi and mobile connectivity?
- will the dock connector be addressable (leading to innovative hardware)?
Regardless of those questions – we, the users, will be getting installable applications in the near future. Hooray!
Which begs the question – what’s on your wishlist?