• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

The Official iPhone/iPod Touch Gaming Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
Wanna thank all the super-supportive people on here (and out there) who have been picking up our game, talking about it, spreading the word.
Today's actually been a very big day day for us as we've cleaned up with tons of downloads of 180 (I dunno the exact number yet, but it's up there!) We;re ranking @60 in Free Games and 140 in All Free. Keep pushin'!
 
wondermega said:
Wanna thank all the super-supportive people on here (and out there) who have been picking up our game, talking about it, spreading the word.
Today's actually been a very big day day for us as we've cleaned up with tons of downloads of 180 (I dunno the exact number yet, but it's up there!) We;re ranking @60 in Free Games and 140 in All Free. Keep pushin'!

I told my friend to download it since she loves puzzle games alot. Hopefully she'll have tons of fun with it. Good luck!
 
Any major differences between an iPhone 3GS and an Ipod Touch 3G??? Friend willing to let go of his(iPhone, will use as IPOD touch!!) for dirt cheap and I am looking for a cheap itouch, mainly for web browsing/music/gaming.
 
Cruzader said:
Any major differences between an iPhone 3GS and an Ipod Touch 3G??? Friend willing to let go of his(iPhone, will use as IPOD touch!!) for dirt cheap and I am looking for a cheap itouch, mainly for web browsing/music/gaming.
No GPS, no cam on the touch. Cheaper. That's about it.

Edit: And no 3G network. You have to use WLAN.
 
Damnit, I think I've just sold myself on a 4G iPhone, despite getting my 3GS on launch. I have the luxury of not *needing* to get a 4G on launch (I'll keep telling myself that) so I can wait until plan prices drop and reviews/comparisons start coming in... but damn. Those bastards.

Fuck you, Apple.
 
wmat said:
No GPS, no cam on the touch. Cheaper. That's about it.

Edit: And no 3G network. You have to use WLAN.
Oh I meant I will be using his iPhone mainly as an Ipod Touch. Basically I wont use it a phone, only to play games, listen to music and browse the web via wifi + camera. He is selling his really cheap since he has a boner for iPhone4.
 
Shaneus said:
Damnit, I think I've just sold myself on a 4G iPhone, despite getting my 3GS on launch. I have the luxury of not *needing* to get a 4G on launch (I'll keep telling myself that) so I can wait until plan prices drop and reviews/comparisons start coming in... but damn. Those bastards.

Fuck you, Apple.
Here's a comparison:
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06...-much-better-does-the-iphone-4s-display-look/
Now decide which color you want and prepare to pre order when the time comes.
 
Decided I'm gonna wait until the plans become reasonable. Here in AU pretty much all phone carriers will have it so there'll be a bunfight for the best data/call plan. It's basically the comparisons of what will be out at the time (ie. Android phones) and the 4G so there's still a few months for that to develop.

It's gonna be hard, though :(

Thanks for that link, too... was looking for something comparing the two and couldn't find any anywhere!
 
Numbers for 180 came in. They were pretty good! It is #39 in Free Games right now. We are gonna keep it free for one more day. If you haven't already, please grab it and pass on the word if you can. I wanna stick it to the man.

I really hate the man.
 
Man, I can't wait for Super QuickHook. I bought Hook Champ last week, and I LOVE it. It's my #2 game, right behind EspGaluda.

Also, I think I'll be getting Carcassonne just because of GAF.
 
Oyashiro said:
Man, I can't wait for Super QuickHook. I bought Hook Champ last week, and I LOVE it. It's my #2 game, right behind EspGaluda.

Also, I think I'll be getting Carcassonne just because of GAF.
You shant be disappointed. Between Carcassonne and Phoenix Wright my iPhone battery is taking a beating lately.
 
Dammit. EspGaluda II is so addicting. Best portable game this year for me so far.
 
Anyone know how you add friends in Carc? Would love to play some gaffers. Played a random person last night and it worked well.
 
AstroLad said:
Anyone know how you add friends in Carc? Would love to play some gaffers. Played a random person last night and it worked well.

From their blog - "Initially you invite (and “friend”) them via email, after that you can add them to games within the game."
 
AstroLad said:
Anyone know how you add friends in Carc? Would love to play some gaffers. Played a random person last night and it worked well.
Looks like you have to add 'em by email. I'll PM you if you want to try a friend game. It'll have to be PBEM style - busy at work at the moment.
 
Cool I can only play at night b/c I'm on an iTouch but maybe we can hit it up some time. I'll send you the friend invite when I get home.
 
The old Amiga classic Pinball Dreams is free for iPhone today and tomorrow.

iphone_dreams_beatbox.png


http://www.cowboyrodeo.net/pinballd...dreams-free-in-appstore-for-24h-10-11th-june/
 
Does EA's Battleship have an online mode similar to Words with Friends? I don't want to worry about being locked into a game. I'd love to just play a move whenever I have time.
 
Oyashiro said:
Man, I can't wait for Super QuickHook. I bought Hook Champ last week, and I LOVE it. It's my #2 game, right behind EspGaluda.

Also, I think I'll be getting Carcassonne just because of GAF.

SQH got rejected by Apple, but the developers fixed it up and submitted it right back. Should be on the App Store soon.
 
Numbers for 180 came in. They were pretty good! It is #39 in Free Games right now. We are gonna keep it free for one more day. If you haven't already, please grab it and pass on the word if you can. I wanna stick it to the man.
---

Have you thought of going free forever (or for a while)with in apppurchases?

Like mega jump did. If 180 climbs to the top, you may want to consider it.
 
DoctorWho said:
Does EA's Battleship have an online mode similar to Words with Friends? I don't want to worry about being locked into a game. I'd love to just play a move whenever I have time.
I don't think so, but I'm not 100% sure.

Speaking of Words With Friends, how does that game exist? Why haven't the publishers of Scrabble sued them into submission?
 
AstroLad said:
Anyone know how you add friends in Carc? Would love to play some gaffers. Played a random person last night and it worked well.
Not sure how to add friends either. Was trying to figure this out myself. I've only done quick internet games, which seems to be limited to 1v1. Maybe once you get a friend list you can play with more than that simultaneously.

I really liked the xbl version, but I gotta say this one is so much better. x2 zoom on an iPad already looks fantastic. The higher res iPad version will be icing on top. I really like the small attentions to detail like, how you can quickly check to see how many of each tile type is left during a game, and how it will mark an x on the map where no more tiles can fit. Solitare mode is nice too. Definitely my favorite iPad gaming app.

BTW, I was doing really well last night against an online opponent when I accidentally let my turn clock run out. This automatically made me forfeit. ;_; I'm confused though, cause the next game, the clock ran out on my opponent's turn, yet 15 seconds later, the game proceeds as normal. Beware.
 
Stantron said:
BTW, I was doing really well last night against an online opponent when I accidentally let my turn clock run out. This automatically made me forfeit. ;_; I'm confused though, cause the next game, the clock ran out on my opponent's turn, yet 15 seconds later, the game proceeds as normal. Beware.
Apparently you can do so by email invite, but you have to have email configured (not a problem for iPhoners obviously). Going to set up gmail tonight on there and send Slacker an invite.

They have separate ELOs for quick play, cpu, and friends I noticed. Currently at 1550 to take the lead on the Count for cpu. If you go to the leaderboard you can click on yourself and see what % of your points come from where and who your nemesis and dominating characters are. Pretty awesome just saw this. Countess getting dominated by me.

Literally the only wack thing seems to be the friends thing, wish you could just add by username.
 
Slacker said:
I don't think so, but I'm not 100% sure.

Speaking of Words With Friends, how does that game exist? Why haven't the publishers of Scrabble sued them into submission?

I think it's laid out differently than a Scrabble board. Don't know the exact details though.
 
Diglet said:
Have you thought of going free forever (or for a while)with in apppurchases?

Like mega jump did. If 180 climbs to the top, you may want to consider it.

I think about a lot of stuff. Going free for a couple of days has been huge for us - but I really need to put myself in the position where I can get some money possibly now (I'll be honest - doing this stuff has completely bankrupted me!), especially since my programmer resources for this project are minimal at best. Already the fallout from the past couple of days is looking up nicely (we got featured on the front page of Destructoid today, among other things).

It's very tempting to just let it sit free for awhile and let it go where it may.. but honestly, it's a bad precedent to set this early. If we put it back at a buck or two and it crashes completely, then of course we'll have to reconsider, but I think that we are (hopefully) beyond the point of that possibility.

It's just hard to say, the whole App Store scene is really such a super-crazy place :S That's why it is awesome and why it also sucks :)
 
I just grabbed a ton of free games.

- 180
- ::Shift::
- Traffic Rush
- Parachute
- Action Hero
- Pinball Dreams

If any of these are at all good, today will be a success.

P.S. Super Quick Hook new ETA = June 18th
 
Added you guys on Carc. Guess it just sends out an email, kinda weird but eh. Also on the disconn issue, it might just be latency that makes the clock look like it's at 0 for you but really the person has already made their move. This happened in Peggle XBLA all the time. I make my moves really fast though so notmyproblem.gif.
 
wondermega said:
I think about a lot of stuff. Going free for a couple of days has been huge for us - but I really need to put myself in the position where I can get some money possibly now (I'll be honest - doing this stuff has completely bankrupted me!), especially since my programmer resources for this project are minimal at best. Already the fallout from the past couple of days is looking up nicely (we got featured on the front page of Destructoid today, among other things).

It's very tempting to just let it sit free for awhile and let it go where it may.. but honestly, it's a bad precedent to set this early. If we put it back at a buck or two and it crashes completely, then of course we'll have to reconsider, but I think that we are (hopefully) beyond the point of that possibility.

It's just hard to say, the whole App Store scene is really such a super-crazy place :S That's why it is awesome and why it also sucks :)

Yeah the app store is insane :lol
The developer of the app Ow My Balls made aBlog Post about his experiences with making his app free.
Im playing 180 now, and if you lock drop attack and make it a in app purchase (im not sure if this is even possible) and even if you get 100k downloads (ow my balls was downloaded 200k times as #1 in a day) for the app and 1% decide to buy the purchase thats $1000. Well 666 minus apples cut.

Those numbers were all pretty random but what im trying to say is that without ads or inapp purches, you wont be making any money off the tons of people that download your game for free, and I dont think that a dev that works this hard on an app should not make money from it.

Just my 2 cents:lol
 
Agreed. I will write a nice postmortem about the whole thing someday soon (I know, SHOCKING) explaining the rhyme and reason of what was done. But to simplify - basically my programmer support is absolutely dried up. I'd rather put a game out there and chance that some word of mouth generated by a temp. free release will get me *something* - money, respect, reputation, leverage, any of those are good for starters - than working to tweak stuff indefinitely and ultimately releasing something that potentially so few people will care about.

I'd rather put it out now and get any of the stuff I mentioned above, than wait wait potentially another several (?) months and still be trying to put out "another matching puzzle game on the App Store" under any circumstances. If that makes sense..

This is how a lot of things go in big development too, hilariously enough. Sometimes you gotta cut off your ear to spite your face, or however the old saying goes.. right now I am just enjoying seeing the numbers shoot up for my little game, and getting feedback that people are happy and they "get it."

If I get in a situation where the next thing I make can benefit from this experience in a big way, then that's all cool with me (meaning, the next project actualy makes some cash because I went through this one and all the stuff learned from it). To be honest - if we don't get a lick of a cent from 180 at all, at this point, I will be kinda surprised (almost). Stay tuned..
 
wondermega said:
I think about a lot of stuff. Going free for a couple of days has been huge for us - but I really need to put myself in the position where I can get some money possibly now (I'll be honest - doing this stuff has completely bankrupted me!), especially since my programmer resources for this project are minimal at best. Already the fallout from the past couple of days is looking up nicely (we got featured on the front page of Destructoid today, among other things).

It's very tempting to just let it sit free for awhile and let it go where it may.. but honestly, it's a bad precedent to set this early. If we put it back at a buck or two and it crashes completely, then of course we'll have to reconsider, but I think that we are (hopefully) beyond the point of that possibility.

It's just hard to say, the whole App Store scene is really such a super-crazy place :S That's why it is awesome and why it also sucks :)

I can definitely sympathise with the uncertainty and nervousness around leaving your app free. It helps to view such an exercise as advertising spend rather than lost revenue - you aren't monetizing those people doownloading it directly, but you are building a user base to leverage.

Certainly there should be tangible benefits when you switch it back to paid, but you should expect a massive dropoff. For a while though at least, you should be earning more than you were on it previously, so hopefully that isn't too discouraging. At the very least, you'll be able to direct a bunch of people to a new game if you release one.

In our own efforts, I'm not sure we have capitalised on "paid to free" promotions enough either, and it is difficult to change the model once you have paid customers. We have had positive results which was great, but perhaps expected more and certainly recognise that strategy as incredibly unpredictable (the only tangible outcome is you are guaranteed to reduce your average review score rating). We are already looking at "free to play" as a base model, monetising via ads or paid content, for our more ambitious upcoming iPhone title.


I think the general caution I'd have for developers moving into the space is the ability to create a hit or even a sustainable business off a single title is becoming harder and harder. It happens, but increasingly rarely. For anybody looking at it I'd suggest making sure you have the ability to finance, develop and release at least 3 small but high quality games which will give you the opportunity to build up a brand and "swing the bat" multiple times. Having a portfolio of games and being persistant is becoming increasingly important.
 
What company are you Mario? Interested to see what you've worked on..

yeah I will be honest, as usual - we put out our game about a month ago and got a couple hundred downloads $1.99. Burst at the beginning, then tapered pretty quickly, settled to @ 5-6 a day or so, and we felt "lucky"with that. Tested the HELL out of the game and realized it was something that did benefit from word of mouth, and so we made a free version (demo) thinking that would upsell nicely. That was essentially a waste of time, it gave us a nice little burst when we put it out a few weeks later but both dropped quickly once more. Still, things weren't "crashed," even if not really making money.

The free thing happened, kind of as a lark "try anything at this point, why not" and I was completely flabbergasted to see it chart. Seeing THOUSANDS of players on the scoreboard now just blows my mind. And seeing people's reactions to it - especially after testing - make me realize we'll at least be able to (expect to) sell substantially better numbers than the 5 or 6 a day. And if not, then what did we lose really?

The app store model is a big, ungodly mess, but there's a lot to mine in there and it's quite an interesting battlefield (it feels more like devs vs customers and websites, than devs vs other devs!) Actually, it's awesome the sense of community it fosters between people. And I have sucha nice strong fanbase of players now who "get my game" and want to help me push it, which I didn't have before this free stunt.

Sorry for rambling, my head is still spinning about this all as I'm in the middle of it.. and E3 in a few days.. and haven't slept.. etc.. but I am in a good mood for a change, at least :)
 
wondermega said:
What company are you Mario? Interested to see what you've worked on..

I run console studio Sidhe which has a seperate iPhone division PikPok.

I don't really do any of the product/marketing decision making for PikPok, as we are trying to run it as a seperate empowered business unit. Though myself and our division heads do throw our opinions into the ring regularly and will veto something if I think we are going off track. Given I hang out on GAF the most, I do get to be the one to shill our iPhone games here though ;)

We have an advantage over smaller iPhone developers in that we have the resources of a larger studio to bring to bear where required including a full QA team, Localisation Manager, usability department, marketing/PR, financing, and other resources such as shared concept art, graphic design, and animation teams for example.

That also puts us in a good position to publish titles for other developers which we are starting to explore in both the iPhone and console download spaces.


yeah I will be honest, as usual - we put out our game about a month ago and got a couple hundred downloads $1.99. Burst at the beginning, then tapered pretty quickly, settled to @ 5-6 a day or so, and we felt "lucky"with that.

...

The free thing happened, kind of as a lark "try anything at this point, why not" and I was completely flabbergasted to see it chart. Seeing THOUSANDS of players on the scoreboard now just blows my mind. And seeing people's reactions to it - especially after testing - make me realize we'll at least be able to (expect to) sell substantially better numbers than the 5 or 6 a day. And if not, then what did we lose really?

You have to be prepared to experiment and you have to be prepared to lose, so you have the right attitude there. 98% of games/apps will never sell more than a couple of thousand copies.

As you note, you have learned a lot and that will be super valuable for the next game, even if 180 sales don't end up where you want them to.


Sorry for rambling, my head is still spinning about this all as I'm in the middle of it.. and E3 in a few days.. and haven't slept.. etc.. but I am in a good mood for a change, at least :)

Yeah, I'm flying up to E3 myself on Sunday. Lots to do before then...
 
Holy shit! This game just blew me away... I regularly look around to find a game that really showcases the 3GS's graphical capabilities and I love playing polished 3D games like Ozone but this one truly feels like a PS2 game on my iPhone: Speed Forge 3D Extreme.

mzl.iczwasaf.320x480-75.jpg

mzl.uiqxumbz.320x480-75.jpg


But screenshots really don't do it justice, video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYaUBxKmsBY

For ideal framerate on the 3GS I personally disable the 'motion blur' (even though it looks damn cool).

How the hell was there not more hype around this game?
 
The problem with Speed Forge for me is that it plays rather rubbish, still better then a lot of hover racers out there but I did not like the trial outside of the pretty graphics, only thing missing is blur if you play it on an older iphone/touch.

Anyone remember Lightbike? looks really dated now but it was so fun last year, the sequel is out tonight and is free since it's showcasing their new networking stuff (yet ANOTHER network feature being used in games, how many is that now?)

Looks damn fun though, now you can jump a little bit while still leaving a trail behind you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck0YyplnaXY

*edit* seems to be out now, I can download it in the UK

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/lightbike2/id373778227?mt=8
 
For ideal framerate on the 3GS I personally disable the 'motion blur' (even though it looks damn cool).
Looks a lot worse without it, though.

Honestly, I tried the demo and was unimpressed. Motion blur was impressive, but the game itself did not play particularly well and the track design was too basic.

I keep hoping for SOMETHING on the iPhone that can come even remotely close to matching Wipeout Pure or Ridge Racers on PSP, but I'm starting to doubt this will happen for quite a while.
 
bjscott05 said:
FIFA World Cup by EA is only .99 this weekend

Giving it a DL now...so cheap

Thanks, downloading.

dark10x said:
Looks a lot worse without it, though.

Honestly, I tried the demo and was unimpressed. Motion blur was impressive, but the game itself did not play particularly well and the track design was too basic.

I keep hoping for SOMETHING on the iPhone that can come even remotely close to matching Wipeout Pure or Ridge Racers on PSP, but I'm starting to doubt this will happen for quite a while.

Sounds like the same issues I have with Low Grav Racer.
 
bjscott05 said:
FIFA World Cup by EA is only .99 this weekend

Giving it a DL now...so cheap
In the UK and it's showing as £3.99, guess it would be silly to lower the price of what might be the best selling app this month in europe...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom