Sega America president Simon Jeffery has packed up and left the company to pursue an opportunity at mobile development house Ngmoco as head of publishing.
Helmed by former Electronic Arts exec Neil Young, Ngmoco is launching a publishing network dubbed Plus+, led by Jeffery. As a prominent iPhone developer, Ngmoco will offer to publish and market iPhone titles under its Plus+ brand in exchange for a revenue split based on varying promotion tiers. more »
Oh Kojima, how you tease us so. Turns out, that cryptic teaser was indeed for a new Metal Gear title, but not on the platform many were thinking of. Konami announced today that the series will make its debut on the iPod Touch and iPhone next year in the aptly titled Metal Gear Solid Touch. more »
Is Sony already hard at work on a successor to the PSP? According to a recent report from tech site EETimes, Sony has inked a deal with electronics Imagination Technologies to use PowerVR tech in the tentatively named PSP2. The second-generation handheld will reportedly use Imagination’s yet to be officially announced SGX55x graphics processing core.
Note that a recent announcement Imagination made only mentioned that it signed a deal with a “major international consumer electronics company,” without specifically naming Sony. So, we’re carefully filing this under rumor for now, but it could very well turn out to be true, seeing as Imagination’s PowerVR technology is also used in the iPhone.
Either way, don’t expect to see the PSP2 anytime soon. We reckon it’s still a couple years off at the least.
Has Imagination added Sony to Apple consumer design win? [EETimes]
If you are doubtful of the iPhone’s viability as a gaming platform, think again pal. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, SEGA boss Simon Jeffery revealed that sales of its debut iPhone title Super Monkey Ball have totaled 300,000 in a span of twenty days.
That’s a substantial business. It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform.
Indeed it does. If sales continue at the current pace, Apple CEO Steve Jobs expects to gross $360 million a year in new revenue from the App Store alone. Not so surprising when you consider the sheer size of the cellphone market though.
At its Worldwide Developers Conference today, Apple announced that the first full-fledged games for iPhone will be released alongside the launch of iPhone App Store this July.
SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball will be one of the initial launch titles, featuring a whopping 110 stages spanning five worlds. Pricing is set at $9.99. Other titles shown at the conference include Enigmo, Cro-Mag Rally, and a God of War-like 3D action game.
Games less than 10 MB in size can be downloaded directly via the iPhone. If larger, you’ll have to use WiFi connection or iTunes on the PC. Pricing for future games will be ultimately up to the developers themselves, with Apple taking a 30 percent royalty cut.
Steve Jobs keynote live from WWDC 2008 [Engadget]
Following the launch of Apple’s iPhone SDK, high-profile game developer and co-founder of id Software John Carmack wrote in a forum post on Slashdot that his company is very interested in developing for the iPhone platform and has already applied to the developer program.
We (Id) have put in our application like everyone else, so I don’t have any inside information at this point. I think Steve is still pissed at me over some negative comments I made about iPod development tools a while ago. Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good — a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds, and a 70% royalty deal for apps over iTunes is quite good.
The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer / customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly.
Quake Live on the iPhone? It could happen.
During a meeting held at Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, Steve Jobs announced availability of the long-awaited iPhone SDK beta. The SDK itself is free and includes the Xcode IDE, Instruments, iPhone simulator, frameworks and samples, compilers, Shark analysis tool, and more.
Developers who wish to test their code on the iPhone and distribute commercial applications will need to apply to the iPhone developer program, which costs $99 a year. Additionally, an enterprise program is available for developers who are creating proprietary, in-house applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.
SEGA showcased Super Monkey Ball running on an iPhone at the event, while EA demoed Spore. All in all, this is excellent news for developers and consumers alike — to create and be able to sell your own commercial offerings on a widely used platform for only $99 a year. Wow.
Apple Reveals iPhone SDK [Gizmodo]
From the same developer who brought Game Boy Advance emulation to the iPhone, above is a video clip showing off ZodTTD’s SNES4iPhone. As the name impiles, this is a fully-functional SNES emulator for the iPhone. Currently in its beta stages, ZodTTD promises that performance of the emulator will increase in the future. A release should be ready for public consumption within a week or less.
Homebrew developer ZodTTD has unveiled his next project: a port of PSOne emulator PSX4ALL to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.
Provided that beta testing goes well, the author says we can look forward to memory card support in the initial release, along with full sound emulation. A dynarec is also in the works, to get emulation up to a playable speed on the iPhone/iPod Touch’s 620MHz CPU. Roughly speaking, the developer expects that about 75 percent of the PSOne’s game library will be compatible.
PlayStation has arrived on the iPhone and iPod Touch! [ZodTTD]
