Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14320
Mobile Gaming n n n n eras, and wide-area networking. Competing against Nintendo is Sony’s PlayStation Por- table, or PSP. Tis handheld console—which has undergone several updates since its 2004 introduction—is Web capable, and includes even a Web browser. Mobile gaming, however, is not just restrict- ed to dedicated consoles (which seem to be in danger of becoming old technology). Probably the biggest area of growth for this genre has been in the mobile phone and mobile device market. Today’s smartphones are essentially pocket-sized personal computers with so- phisticated graphics and networking. Tese powerful little devices are extremely capable of doing multiple functions, from making phone calls to surfing the Web and, of course, gam- ing. When it comes to mobility, having one device that does everything significantly cuts down on clutter and pocket space, which makes these devices highly desirable. cess stories whereby a single developer created a hit game that made that company rich. As the App Store has grown to well over 150,000 titles—a third of which are games—it’s be- come much harder for the little guy to get noticed. Adding to this hurdle is a number of new restrictions that Apple has imposed on developers. More and more applications and games are being rejected from the App Store since Apple changed its standards for App Store acceptance. Following the iPhone is Apple’s latest object of desire, the iPad, which is essentially an iPod Touch with a much larger screen. Tis new de- vice sold 300,000 units on the first day, and 600,000 within the first month, illustrating the public’s desire for this new offering. And that desire is not waning: Te iPad is projected to sell as many as 10 million units in the first year. Tese numbers alone make it a major player, but the new format also adds room for richer and more complex gaming. Te larger screen is actually quite a big deal, as the extra real estate offers a more immersive gaming experience. Te larger screen also changes the way interac- tivity happens on the device. An iPhone only has enough screen space for one or two fingers, while the iPad has space for all 10, allowing for more complex multitouch interfaces. While everything looks delicious for Apple CastleCraft by Freeverse is a multiplayer city- building game for the iPad. Apple’s Ripe Offerings Without a doubt, the de-facto standard in mobile gaming is Apple’s iPhone and its sis- ter device, the iPod Touch. Te iPhone was the first phone that offered the ideal com- bination of interface, speed, graphics, and connectivity. Te iPhone’s fast hardware also makes it a natural when it comes to gam- ing. Te OS supports OpenGL with accel- eration as well as other standards that make game development easy. Equally as important as the hardware was the creation of Apple’s App Store, which made distribution quite easy for developers big and small. Early on, there were a number of suc- and its cutting-edge devices, the company is not without controversy. Te biggest sour note in the Apple community is over the company’s recent decision to require all ap- plications to be written using its development tools, which are based on C++. Tis action has been widely viewed as directed at Adobe’s Flash development tools, which promised fast development for multiple platforms. Other third-party development tools may also be affected. Apple claims that developing in its own tools will ensure speed and compatibility. Some developers, however, have bristled at hav- ing to use C++ as the development language, especially since other development platforms, such as Flash, allow for much faster produc- tion and prototyping. Google’s Solution Hot on Apple’s heels is Google’s Android op- erating system. Unlike Apple, which offers a bundled hardware/software solution, Google’s Android is simply an operating system, and not tied to specific hardware. Te competi- tion between Apple and Google in the mobile arena is heating up rapidly and has some of the same hallmarks as the Apple/Microsoft battles of the 1980s, with Apple once again sticking to its own hardware and Google playing Micro- Android phones, like the HTC EVO 4G, offer very fast performance that serves the gaming community well. soft’s role by distributing software while letting the hardware become a commodity. Tough it had a later start, Android is catch- ing up quickly to the iPhone and has actually surpassed it in hardware sales (though the ven- erable Blackberry still leads the smartphone market). Android-based tablets designed to compete with the iPad also have been spot- ted at conferences and trade shows, though no products have shipped as of press time. Gaming for the Android is not quite as ma- ture as it is for the iPhone. Te Android market only has about a third as many titles as Apple’s App Store, but the numbers are catching up quickly. Android is definitely poising itself to be more open, both in terms of the develop- ment environment and in the way it handles distribution. Tis openness, however, comes with a catch: Because hardware is less standard- ized than the iPhone, developers are forced to write to a lower common denominator. Te Android OS is Linux-based and, there- fore, open source, and has a number of advan- tages over the iPhone, including full support for multitasking (some of which Apple is ad- dressing with iPhone OS 4.0, announced last month). Unlike the iPhone, Android develop- ment mostly happens in Java, with the option to delve into C++. Tis can be appealing for new developers because Java is widely accepted as a much easier language to get started in than C++. One big assist to game developers came July 2010 55