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iPhone Opens Up New Gaming Opportunities for Developers
Written by John Gaudiosi on Thursday, July 10, 2008
We take an in-depth look at what iPhone games really mean for mobile. Everyone is excited (and for good reason), but it isn't all smiles...
When it comes to the new iPhone 3G device that launched July 11, Apple has opened its new gaming platform to the world. It's new App Store will sell games from publishers large and small, as well as titles that are free to play or cost anywhere between $8 and $10 to purchase. New development studios are already catering to the platform, including Neil Young's Ngmoco, and established game makers from id Software to Gameloft, the world's largest mobile game company, are ramping up production for the millions of new potential gamers. Analysts are already predicting that Apple could have 40 to 45 million new iPods around the globe by the end of 2009.
"The direct relationship a developer or publisher can have with the consumer through the App Store we're at the point where we can radically change the mobile gaming business," said Young. "Content for this platform is more akin to developing for the Nintendo DS. The timeline is similar. What's interesting is that the very best games on this platform are the games that are going to take advantage of what the iPhone can natively do."
In the past, the mobile gaming business was dictated by the limitations of the carriers and the handset makers' technology, which resulted in games far below the quality level of a Nintendo DS. Aside from Nokia's N-Gage phones, which were a huge flop, handsets are not made for gaming. Playing anything more complex than Wheel of Fortune or Pac-Man on a mobile phone was a chore. The moment a fire button was introduced into gameplay, frustration was often the result. That's not the case any more, thanks to iPhone.
"This first generation of iPhone games is just the beginning of what gamers will be able to experience -- and it's already exciting for us," said Philippe Laurens, senior producer, Gameloft. "To begin with, making games for iPhone is just terrific. We've done so many games on mobile phones with constraints like small screens, poor keyboard controls and 600kb size restrictions, with iPhone we have a strong CPU, touch screen, and motion sensor. We don't have the 40MB size restriction that we do on the Wii. We can put as much content into these games as we want. The screen is gorgeous with high resolution and the games look great."
When it comes to creating games for iPhone, development is closer to PSP, Nintendo DS and consoles like Wii and PlayStation 2. Laurens said Gameloft has enlisted larger teams and invested more time and more money on its upcoming iPhone games. While Gameloft only had 12 weeks to complete its first six games, all of which are casual offerings, the next round of games will start to show off more of the iPhone's unique functionality.
"We have bigger ambitions with our iPhone games and we're not doing any porting for this device," said Laurens. "Having just one device to focus on, rather than hundreds of different handsets that traditional mobile games have, really frees up the creative process.
It allows us to do bigger games with more content. The bar is quite high in terms of sound and music and gameplay. The core mechanic is the same making a game on mobile or console, it's about doing it again and again, testing it, focus testing it, and getting it right for the appropriate consumer so that the end result is enjoyable and easy for the player to engage with."
Gameloft's iPhone teams, which are spread throughout the world in its various studios, consist of teams of 20 to 50 people, depending on the game. These teams can be as big or even bigger than a traditional Nintendo DS game. And the quality of the games that will start trickling into the market late summer will land somewhere between Nintendo DS and PSP in terms of 3D gaming. There is a cost associated with this quality. While a typical mobile game can cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to make, iPhone games can exceed the $250,000 it costs to make an average Nintendo DS title. John Taylor, videogame analyst for Arcade Research, estimates that iPhone games can cost upwards of $400,000 to create.
"Things have been moving very smoothly with Apple, maybe it's because we have already worked with them on iPod for two years," said Laurens. "We get an update of the Apple SDK about every two weeks. Billions of developers wanted to make games for the iPhone, but they can't have that many. Competition is going to be good for the platform. We've been lucky that Apple chose us to be part of the iPhone Development Program. We've had great support and care from them."
While all of its first wave games support the touch functionality of the iPhone, and some support the motion-sensor accelerometer feature, moving forward, gamers will experience new twists in iPhone games.
"We have projects that will support Wi-Fi gameplay," said Laurens. "We'll start with 2, 4 and 6 players and then we'll make that bigger and bigger over time. We'll need a big community to make that work. There aren't many games on mobile that allow for connectivity and I think the iPhone will be the first mobile device that really opens that up."
Another potential online gaming community could sprout through Nokia's new N-Gage phone, which will support an online community from its N-Gage Arena service. Considering the fact that Nokia will have over 150 million N-Gage-equipped phones in the market by the end of next year, online mobile gaming could become the norm, just as Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony's PlayStation Network and Nintendo's Wii Connect24 have established on the console side of the business.
"The cool thing is that Apple gave us a lot of cool tools that enables us to use things like the camera and the GPS within gameplay," added Laurens. "On Java, it was much more limited and it seemed to be more about what you couldn't do on that platform. We feel much more welcome making games for the iPhone. The camera allows you to do simple things like take your picture and put it in the game. That's something that you don't see very much with PS3 or Xbox 360, outside of Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas. It could be cool to do stuff like that in an iPhone game, or ask the player to take a picture of something red or blue or green. There's a difference between using the technology just because it's cool and using technology because it adds to the gameplay and it's easy to understand and enjoyable for the player."
Much like Nintendo's motion-sensor controllers opened up console gaming to the masses, Laurens believes iPhone's touch screen functionality, which is so intuitive to use, could be just what the mobile game industry needs to truly explode. Consumers are as familiar with touching a screen to control action as they are with buying music from iTunes.
Although it's still very early in what is expected to be a long life cycle for the iPhone -unlike mobile handset makers, Apple won't rush new hardware out every six months - Laurens said the team is already learning how to best utilize the touch screen controls.
"On the DS, you can only manage one input, on iPhone you can use two fingers, so we can do all sorts of things with that in terms of gameplay," said Laurens. "Sometimes players get confused on DS because they think both screens are touch and only one is. iPhone doesn't have that problem. Plus, the touch screen is better on iPhone than on DS."
One issue the team discovered early on with the iPhone is that pressing a finger against the touch screen obscures more screen space than a stylus. As a result, it's important to keep players touching to the bottom and sides of the screen. They've done exactly that with Block Breaker Deluxe, as well as the upcoming August release, Asphalt Racing 4: Elite Racing.
With Brain Challenge, Gameloft was able to tap into the processing power of the iPhone by creating artificial intelligence that adjusts based on how the player is performing in the mind exercise game.
"The game needs to see how the player plays and adjust to that," said Laurens, who noted that future games will also be able to adapt to player input. "We'll have some impressive 3D games with multiplayer down the road. It takes time to get experience on a platform. With each batch of games we'll get better at developing them."
"The iPhone is most exciting to us, because we consider it a blank canvas for game development," said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios for EA Mobile. "We are just getting started here and we expect the frenzy for all things iPhone will only increase once games can be played on it."
That's good news for mobile gamers, who finally have an all-in-one device for calls, Internet, entertainment and advanced gaming.
