If there is one thing that the iOS platform doesn’t lack for it is air combat simulators.  I don’t know whether it is the gyroscopic tilt controls of the device or the touchscreen interface, but developers have been clambering to get their games live on the platform since day one.  The problem was none of these games were able to take advantage of the new microtransaction based ecosystem that now flourishes in portable games.

Set to answer this call of the free releases is Apple’s newly crowned “Game of the Week,” MetalStorm: Online.  Hitting the App Store for the low, low, price of nothing, the game features a wide variety of amazing content, including:

• Real time multiplayer – compete against other players online on 3G and Wi-Fi
• Multiplayer, Leaderboards and Achievements powered by Game Center
• Next-gen 3D graphics with Retina Display support
• Dozens of unique aircraft to choose from
• Customize your aircraft with missiles and machine guns
• Survival Mode: obliterate waves of enemies with a friend in Co-Op multiplayer or singleplayer
• Perform advanced maneuvers by swiping in different directions
• Earn XP and level up to unlock more powerful items
• Talk with other players via the optional in-game Voice Chat system
• Full 360-degree flight in 3D space
• Gyroscope enables extra precise controls for iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4th generation devices

One notable absence from this list is a traditional single player campaign.  To some this may be a disappointment, but this is more in an effort to help harness the power of social gaming and leaderboard attacking that GameCenter allows to flourish.

Even after a few test flights I have to say that I am fairly impressed with what I have played.  Unfortunately, I have no intentions of spending any actual cash to “pimp my plane.”  We’re not saying that this is a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but be careful.  In-app purchase, as innocent as they may seem, can add up very quickly.

FREE!

MetalStorm: Online

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-05-11 :: Category: Games

The event of the day started out with Steve Jobs introducing his “partner in crime,” Steve Wozniak, who was in the audience. After a quick welcome, Steve Jobs started with a recap of new Apple Store retail locations including Paris, China, and London. The London store marked the 300th Apple Store and they are now in 10 countries. The foot traffic volume is amazing. Apple now sees on some days over a million total visitors combined coming through their stores. Another interesting stat — over 50% of Macs sold in Apple Stores are still to new Mac users, aka Switchers. A stat that has amazingly held for years.

120 million potential Angry Birds players.
Next up for the day is a recap on how iOS is doing. Steve took pride in noting that there are over 230,000 new iOS activations per day. This does not include upgrades. This goes well over and above the Google quoted 160,000 Android devices activated every day. That brings us up to a total of over 120,000,000 active iOS devices. That’s a staggering number for a new platform that is not even 4 years old.

How about some stats on apps? There have been over 6.5 billion apps downloaded so far. That’s over 200 downloaded each and every second. Also quoted was that the App Store recently surpassed 250,000 applications available, which is a number we’ve been tracking over at 148Apps.biz App Store Metrics page.

Continue reading for the rest of the info on the days events — and way too many pictures.

Continue reading The Big Recap — What Apple Announced, and What They Hinted At »

Being an app reviewer, I think that I play more games than the average person. I personally don’t have much of a genre preference, although I do enjoy games that let me upgrade my character(s) or towers, and I have no sort of fan-affiliation with any specific game companies. Deep down in my heart, I also really don’t understand what the big deal is with these “social game centers.”

A friend made a comment to me about an article that I wrote about OpenFeint going multiplatform, and it rung a bell in my head. He said, “Why are people making such a big fuss about GameCenter?” and then looked at me like I should have some sort of profound answer. The answer was a garbled message about the unification of gaming and blah blah blah (I’m letting out my inner Steve Ballmer). Truth be told, I really don’t care about GameCenter that much at all. In fact, I think the whole social gaming platform is pretty ridiculous because developers really aren’t grasping what social gaming is all about.

The only company, in my opinion, that has really gotten it right is Com2Us with Homerun Battle 3D. If you read my articles and reviews, I talk about this game like it’s the next coming of Wonderbread, and it really is that good (and nutritious). I’m not the only one who thinks so either. According to Mobile Entertainment, “players have notched up more than 60 million online match-ups, totalling 480 million minutes spent battering baseballs out of the game’s virtual stadium,” all without the help of a giant social gaming platform backing. With that game, I genuinely care about the competition and get disappointed when my bitter rivals aren’t online. The joy of the system though is that you don’t have to go into another bland page to get some simple high score information, it’s all integrated into the game.

On a customer level, I really don’t think that there is any advantage to using a service like OpenFeint. I don’t mean to knock the service, because it does provide an easy to use area to display global high scores, but it doesn’t, in my opinion, add anything to the game experience. I’ve never invited anyone to a game or used the included IM service, and I really don’t think that the overall score I have makes me want to play OpenFeint games any more. To me, there’s just a bunch of fluff surrounding a game that doesn’t really nurture any sort of competitive spirit. It’s just a nice place for my high score to be displayed.

The only real advantage that I see, for an average gamer, to a unified GameCenter is that my user name will be the same on all the high score lists, and this really only matters if I get into the top 25 of a specific game. I’m not going to go search through a bunch of lists to find my friends in the top 5,000, I just want to see how high of a score I need to get to enter the top 25.

The key to social gaming success doesn’t lie in unifying the platform or stamping your logo on a bunch of games, it’s partnering with developers to make the online experience unique. Nothing about GameCenter will stop me from playing ngmoco games that are on the Plus+ Network because my game purchases are all about the games.

If GameCenter really aspires to be anything near what X-Box Live is, it needs to be so much more that it seems to be shaping up into. I need to able to use my phone as an X-Box headset to talk trash to the people I’m playing against. I need to, within the games, see which of my friends are playing ANY game network wide, not just that specific game. Not only that, but I need to be able to send someone a challenge to another for one game, and while they are playing another game, get my challenge request in some kind of instant notification. I’m not going to check my e-mail for game invites, I want to be able to do it all on the fly. I need all the games need to be connected, all the time.

Until then, “social gaming” on the iPhone just seems like blah, blah, blah, blah (my inner Ballmer has me sweating with rage).

GameCenter is Apple’s answer to the absurd fragmentation of the iPhone gaming world. It is trying to become the X-Box Live of the App Store, the go-to place for high scores, achievement badges, and game invites. Unfortunately for many of the other services out there, such as Plus+ and Crystal, if GameCenter takes off, their existence could be coming to a screeching halt.

OpenFeint, one of the pioneers in social gaming in the App Store, has another idea. Instead of waiting for extinction, they are tapping into a market that Apple can’t touch: Android. With many of their supported games being released cross platform, OpenFeint has decided to let iPhone users and Android users coexist in game matchmaking harmony.

The new system works primarily by SMS and e-mail, allowing for a user to invite their friends to an OpenFeint supported game. With the insane expansion of the Android market, having the ability to play against someone over there seems rather tempting.

“One glaring problem with today’s mobile gaming community is how fractured it is across platforms, OpenFeint is bridging the gap between gamers,” says Peter Relan, Executive Chairman of Aurora Feint. “As we expand cross platform this summer, we’re going to roll out services that will help friends that use different device platforms play against each other.”

In my eyes, what system I am playing on doesn’t matter in the least. While I generally prefer the ease of use of OpenFeint as opposed to the other systems, I don’t choose my games based on that. Apple’s game center is appealing to me just because I expect the interface to be nice and pretty, but if I can have my high scores stacked up against a bunch of Droid lackeys, I’ll be much happier.

It’ll be interesting to see which service game developers end up going with, and if Apple’s plans for iPhone unification work out. It sure seems to me that OpenFeint is making a pretty strong push with its cross platform integration.

I’m also putting a $50 bet down that Apple will somehow ban the use of rival game platforms, citing that it will become extremely confusing for customers. Watch out!