6,200 Reasons To Buy iPhone/Touch Games

The iTunes App Store is jam packed with video games! There are 6,200 games in the App Store to take advantage of, with 23% of those games for our puzzle gaming friends with arcade following a distance second place with 13% App Store market share. In that bulk of games, 1,485 are free download games but we’re not sure how many are “lite” versions of pay-for-games in the store, with limited game play. If you too are looking for ways to optimize your phone, see here the plans available at Circles.Life mobile.

chart-app-store

Apple could cut down on that clutter if they let developers publish one game with a demo/shareware release and a full release, perhaps than we would be able to wade through a realistic amount of game titles. Of course, Apple isn’t exactly the most friendly of companies when it comes down to allowing us to share our thoughts and opinions of their closed box products.

Unfortunately for the new game developers, they’ve got a few games to compete against in the App Store space. While great games should rise to the top like cream in your coffee, it’s obvious that 6,200 items can clutter up an otherwise friendly space. iTunes tends to have a very unintuitive interface and isn’t really built for great online game shopping experiences, we’re sure they can exploit many of the great games in this archive of titles if they had a bit of a re-design.

You’ll find plenty of educational games in the 6,200 titles, matching if not exceeding that of the strategy genre.
(Thanks, kotaku)

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Bethesda’s Hines: Don’t Shoehorn MultiplayerBethesda’s Hines: Don’t Shoehorn Multiplayer

Bethesda Softworks vice president of marketing Pete Hines is critzing publishers and developers who shoehorn multiplayer into their games that doing such a thing is “a waste of time” and advises, “Just drop it, don’t bother…it’ll make for a worse game.”

In an interview with Next Gen BIZ, Hines states that using online multiplayer as a tool to prevent used game trade-ins and rental simply doesn’t work, and robs developers of valuable man-hours.

Hines stated:

“(People ask us) for a game like Skyrim or Prey 2, why doesn’t it have multiplayer? Well, our question is always the opposite when we talk to a developer. If you’re doing multiplayer, why are you doing multiplayer? What are you trying to accomplish?

“If you’re doing it just to check a box or because every other publisher says you’ve got to have multiplayer, then just drop it, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, a giant distraction and it’ll make for a worse overall game.

“We want the best game possible. If that’s a singleplayer game that’s 15 to 20 hours, then make that! Don’t waste your time on features that don’t make the game better.”

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2 are two Bethesda properties that will lack multiplayer, but one of the tools to encourage games to keep both games will be downlodable content and, even more important, good communications with the game communities and nurturing the fandom for both games.

Retro FlashBack: DragonFire (Atari 2600)Retro FlashBack: DragonFire (Atari 2600)

Now here is another interesting video game for the Atari 2600, the game Dragon Fire consisted of two game screens, one which you ran across a bridge while fireballs were shot at you, you had to duck or jump over the fireball. This screen was a side-scroller style screen (although it doesn’t actually scroll), at the other end of the bridge was a castle door which you’d enter to get to the next screen.

The second screen was more classic “overhead but not really” screen where you ran around this black screen picking up treasures while a dragon at the bottom shot fire at you from below.

As the game increased in level jumping fireballs became more challenging (on the first screen) as you ran because they would come quicker, more often. The second screen would get very difficult very quickly as the dragon would increase in speed and fireball spitting. You could tell how hard the dragon would be as it would change colors from lighter to darker black as you progress stages.

When you finished collecting all the treasure an exit would pop up in the corner and you had to run to it without being burned by the fireballs, that dragon would turn from left to right nearly instantly too! Then, you’d jump into the exit and be back on the bridge again, but this time it was harder. You could die up to 7 times before the game was over (just to show you how hard it is, they gave you a bunch of lives).

The game was tough, frustrating, hard to replay because you were just so nervous and jittery from the last attempt. Graphics were “okay,” nothing to rave at but it was, after all, the 2600.

You can hear all we had to say about DragonFire for the Atari 2600 on Episode 79 of the TD Gaming Podcast!

Tecmo Declines Square Enix PropositionTecmo Declines Square Enix Proposition

Square Enix, like many developers today, look to combine their efforts with like-minded individuals making video games for our industry. Recently they put out a bid to pickup Tecmo and expand their development archive to new heights by jumping into a few more genre’s without starting at the ground floor.

Tecmo, has decided to opt-out of the friendly bid for the company and has decided to persue a merger with KOEI instead. Square Enix could opt for a hostile take-over bid, much like we’ve seen occur to others in the industry but their smarter than that, Square Enix President Yoichi Wada went on record saying:

“If they truly dislike Square Enix, there is no point. All creators would leave the firm the moment the deal was done. It would be the equivalent of buying a building.” (reuters)

Although Tecmo hasn’t spit upon Square Enix and said they “hate” them, declining the take-over bid explains a lot about the direction Tecmo plans to go, and those plans don’t include Square Enix.

It would have been interesting to see what direction Square Enix would take with Tecmo. Perhaps Square Enix will look to another development company to bid on.