Tag: In-app purchases »

Market Research company Newzoo has just released some pretty interesting facts when it comes to mobile gaming revenue, namely that Apple is dominating the market with 84% of the revenue coming from iOS devices, rather than Android.

The evidence comes from a survey of 17,000 individuals and taking data from the top 200 grossing games in the iOS and Android marketplaces.

It also found that in the USA, mobile gaming grew from 75 million to 101 million players across all platforms, with 69% of players using a smartphone and 21% on tablets.

In that time, paying players have grown 35% to 37 million, with individuals paying 5 times more money in iOS games than with Android.

Much of the in-app purchasing success of iOS titles has been attributed to the "seamless purchase" experience as Newzoo's CEO Peter Warman explains. Ease of use, after all, makes everything seem so much more appealing and tempting.

All signs point to these figures only increasing in the next year, with the success of the iOS platform far from peaking just yet. It remains fascinating to see how the uptake of smartphones and tablets is changing the games industry.

[Via: CultofMac]

iOS devices have fast become an essential tool for regular travellers who need to be able to work while on the move. Such devices also come in handy when in need of a way to organize future trips. One newly updated app to help people along the way is WorldMate.

WorldMate does pretty much everything anyone could need when it comes to planning a trip. There's an itinerary manager which covers flights, hotels, hire cars and meetings. It's possible to search flight schedules, book hotels (on the iPhone version), search via Yelp, view maps and directions for all itinerary items and check out the local forecast. It's also possible to check out whether LinkedIn contacts are located nearby, ideal for conferences.

The app is free but regular users can opt to upgrade to WorldMate Gold which offers pushed flight alerts, real-time flight statuses integrated into the itinerary and the ability to sync the calendar.

To celebrate the new update, WorldMate Gold is available for $2.99 for a limited time and normally priced at $9.99.

Sky Gnomes is a game about a world where gnomes have taken to the sky. For entertainment? They race each other by free-falling from the sky. The player controls a gnome of their own, with the goal being to get the end of the level as quickly as possible. Players pick up speed by flying through snowflakes, collect coins for upgrades, powerups to help get a leg up on opponents, and try to avoid storm clouds and lightning. These gnomes are falling from the sky, after all.

The name of the game is asynchronous multiplayer competition, in particular against random online opponents. Players will have two ghost gnomes to race against, based off of the performance of actual opponents. Five different cups are available, each taking place in a different environment.

Having actual opponents to race against, even if they're just ghosts, adds a compelling aspect to the game. The drive to succeed is just that much greater when there's an actual name to chase on the leaderboard, rather than some random opponent. Sky Gnomes is both universal, and supports cloud saving. It doesn't appear to use iCloud, instead using Game Center authentication to pull data from the servers between platforms. Good enough!

Sky Gnomes just winds up feeling kinda samey – falling through the sky, avoiding clouds, trying to hit snowflakes; no matter the level, there just doesn't feel like there's a lot of variety. Better integration with friends that play the game would be great, especially since there's already the ability to race ghost opponents. A battle mode is coming in a future update.

As well, the game winds up feeling like it's pushing in-app purchases. Yes, this is the world we live in, but stat upgrades require a lot of grinding, and those rarer parts might be given out at the end of the game, or perhaps not. So that $0.99 parts pack sits there, tempting the player. After all, maybe some increased speed and acceleration would help get things going along. It's a potentially slippery slope, of course. While the highest pack only costs $14.99, and certainly seems like it has more items than a person could reasonably use, the whole thing still just feels like it's necessary. At a certain point if I want to do something more than just grind and actually compete, I feel like I'll need to spend money.

Sky Gnomes is an interesting short-term play experience, but those that try it out should be warned: the temptation to spend money on IAP will hit. Progress just feels too slow otherwise.

FaceTime is great for casual video conferencing use but for more professional purposes, a dedicated solution is a better idea. That's precisely where Fuze Meeting HD enters the equation.

Initially free, Fuze Meeting HD offers online meetings and audio conferencing between two participants. In-app purchases priced at $29.99 or $69.99 then unlocks the ability to communicate with more participants at once.

With the iPad 2, live video can be sent during a video conference with everything viewable in HD. PowerPoint and Keynote presentations can be added, along with Word documents, PDFs and images all possible to add to the Fuze Meeting content library. Meetings can all be simply arranged via the iPad address book for further useful functionality.

When in a call, it's easy to zoom and pan in, and it's especially handy to be able to close the app and open other apps without ending the meeting.

It's a simple yet effective solution for business people in need of regular collaboration while on the move. Fuze Meeting HD is out now.

Graphic novels appear to be going through a bit of a renaissance period in recent times with increasing numbers of people intrigued by the very notion. So it's pretty cool to see a cumulative effort between a BAFTA (the equivalent of the Emmys in the UK) nominated screenwriter, a BAFTA winning executive producer and an award-winning graphic artist come together in the form of a new iPhone based graphic novel.

The novel entitled Exodus169 is all about an epic journey through space to the Planet Lumina, where humans hope to establish their first colony beyond Earth. Obviously things are bound to not quite go according to plan and it all makes for a gripping novel.

The novel is accompanied by stunning artwork and an original and fully-voiced soundtrack which all add a touch of class to proceedings. Depth is provided through a number of extras such as videos, character profiles, character blogs and even an on-board newspaper with new content uploaded weekly.

It's interesting stuff and at a decent price too. The app along with Episode 1 and the regularly updated extras are free while Episode 2 and future instalments are only $0.99. Well worth a look for any graphic novel fan.