I've got good news and better news. The good news is that the iPhone is getting multitouch games that use the accelerometer and every bell and whistle of the iPhone for controls. The better news? Developers such as EA and Sega are on board. EA is bringing the insanely anticipated game Spore to it. All 18 levels. Yes, this is real, and it'll be released in September. Also, Sega is bringing Super Monkey Ball, and the App Store looks like it'll have a bunch of casual games available as well. Does this bring the iPhone up to DS and PSP levels? We'll have to see just how these games look and play, but it's pretty exciting stuff. UPDATE: iPhone Spore coming in September, says Kotaku.
iPhone Getting Multitouch Games, Including Spore, Super Monkey Ball
1:44 PM on Thu Mar 6 2008
By Adam Frucci
92,385 views
46 comments













Comments
i wanna go
and dont forget accelerometer steering!
In three weeks there will already be more games for the iPhone than for Mac. :-/
This is what was holding spore up?
Is this confirmed... the other post said it wasn't 100%.
Spore, huh? Maybe we'll get Duke Nukem Forever, as well.
Awsome
@ceilingFANBOY: now with 100% more fanboy: I don't think you'd want to have to tilt your macbook to play this stuff :P
I always knew that Apple would get into computer gaming at some point. Too bad their desktops don't run these apps.
@phoomp: Only in your dreams, man.
@qbrad: Actually EA and Apple have always had a decent relationship thats grown better since the switch to intel chips. Its the OTHER developers who need to clime onboard.
@Falconfire: Hopefully this will bring in chipmakers to produce beefier EFI-compliant graphics cards for the Mac Pro and iMac. I'm not sure how well the MBP would handle bigger graphics in that form factor though.
I bet that you will see a lot of innovation from independent developers!
Damnit...I may have to get an iPhone.
@qbrad:
Exactly. I've seen demos for Spore on almost every platform, now including the iPhone. However, given how long they've been promising Spore, I've come to believe that it has as much chance of seeing the light of day as Duke Nukem Forever.
@Kaiser-Machead: But the Air is light enough to do it.
Can you transport you games back and forth though. I mean Spore of course. I wanna play it at work, but when I get home I wanna play it on my big monitor.
I wonder how these will compare to other cell phone games... or Zune games?
When will these be available?
I want games with GUNS!
@Sam_Zebian:
These games are way out of cell phone/zune games - the iphone/touch are pretty powerful little computers, more accurate to compare it to a DS than anything.
WOw I wonder if this will work on the itouch. who cares about the iphone *sniff *sniff* darn Cect p168. i knew i shoulda waited
@qbrad: iphone gaming make more sense. they are trying to move 10 million units in the first year itself. I dont think that desktop numbers will reach that level.
This is huge! There is going to be a 3-way battle for your portable gaming allegiance between Nintendo, Sony and Apple.
If I got a phone call while going around a tight downhill turn in Monkey Ball, I am 98% certain I would freak out and drop my phone.
@Kaiser-Machead: @Kaiser-Machead:
How about using your Touch or iPhone like the Wii Mote to play those games on your laptop of desktop Mac?!?!
Apple will have one of the best mobile gaming platforms on the plantet!
I have never used a Fax machine before,and I have NO idea how to set it up. I just bought EPSON model cx9400Fax. It' not simple if you've never done it before.C. David Lovelady
Thank you.
Just wait until the Meizu SDK hits the internets...iPhone killer!
Not.
I demand videos.
Just how sensitive is the accelerometer? I initially thought it could only discern betwixt landscape and portrait...but is it in fact more like those found in their notebooks?
Spore? Is that ever getting released? :')
@Yifkong: Its actually pretty sensitive. I played that labyrinth game when my phone was jailbroke and it was pretty intense.
@yifkong there already is alot of homebrew games using the accelerometer as the primary control, it can certainly do much more than know the difference between landscape and portrait, but of course it is still not dead precise..
The iphone accelerometer is 3 axis, meaning it "feels" movements in 3 dimensions.
PSP gotta watch out now, I'd be really really sad and depressed if the SONY PSP got F-ed in the A by iPhone games...
AAAH! How on earth will I be able to decide which gaming device to use now? Spore on the Wii, my DS Lite, my iMac, the XP machine, *and* my iPhone? Will there be a multi-platform bulk discount?
I miss the good ol' days only having two real choices for gaming- the arcade or the Atari. I'm going to have to quit my job so all the gaming devices in the house get equally loved.
fuck...i've been waiting for spore for like 2+ years now and here they're going to put it on the Iphone (something i swore i'd never get!) please god would another company come out with a competative product by september!
This might be a DS killer, since they're both touchscreens and the DS isn't very powerful to begin with, but PSP? I think that's a bit of a stretch.
DS is in trouble though. It only has a 67 MHz ARM9 and a 33 MHz ARM7, while the iPhone has a 620mhz processor. It could very easily simulate DS-type graphics.
The PSP has a 333mhz main processor and a 166 MHz graphics chip with 2 MiB embedded memory. Now I know 166mhz doesn't sound like a lot but remember it wasn't long ago when PC GPUs were only 166mhz, and a dedicated graphics chip helps *alot*. That little 166mhz chip does hardware polygon and NURBS rendering, hardware directional lighting, clipping, environment projection and texture mapping, texture compression and tessellation, fogging, alpha blending, depth and stencil tests, vertex blending for morphing effects, and dithering, all in 16 or 24 bit color. *whew!*
[en.wikipedia.org]
The iPhone, on the other hand, has only one processor:
[www.engadget.com]
and although it has a "vector floating point coprocessor ("for embedded 3D-graphics")", so does the SNES:
[en.wikipedia.org]
and we all remember how wonderful 3D graphics looked on the SNES.
So before we all start shouting "iPhone = PSP killer?" I think we should wait and see.
I highly doubt this will be a DS killer. In addition to things like user-base and developer support, this lacks the accuracy of the DS with stylus. Also not sure if they have a network gameplay setup in mind that would be as widely used as the Nintendo WiFi. Also, while it is a nice step for mobile phone games, it looks like it's much more similar to the stripped down version that all mobile phones are getting than the actual Spore game. You get to play as the cell-phase but never go into the creature or world phases.
Ah, sure...this is a "DS Killer"? A "PSP Killer"? At that price point? And with exactly one hardware button? Think again, son.
I'm sure that there will be some good mobile/PDA games coming down the pike for the iPhone, but if you're thinking of throwing away your portable console for this, why not sell it to me for, say, £20 instead?
@strangepork:
Yeah too god damn expensive right now and it's still locked with AT&T. Maybe on the ipod touch it will be a better competitor. Even with multitouch, doesn't seem like it will be that good of a competitor in terms of games. So far games still basically suck on phones.
But does it play Doo.. Oh never mind.
@diehippiedie: You can't be serious. This is not a DS/PSP killer. Not even close. I personally do not like my handheld gaming systems to look like you spent an hour jacking it off with K-Y (like most iPhones look). Plus, I am not sure how Super Monkey Balls would compete with Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core.
@iamjames: you are an idiot ... seriously ...
Big question: if you own both the PC or Mac version and the iPhone version of Spore, can you play the same game on either platform? It would be awesome to play a while on my computer and then play the same saved game on-the-go on my iPhone.
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