Apple Keynote roundup
Today’s “music event” keynote from Apple brought a lot to the table to drool over, from new hardware, software and goodies. But aside from music offerings (the main focus of todays event), there was a lot of gaming. More then most Apple keynotes, particularly since the companies’ past has been murky when it comes to gaming.
A key stat from Jesus Steve Jobs was that their iOS-powered devices now outsell anything Sony or Nintendo have on the market – combined. That’s a staggering number of handheld gaming devices out on the market. They sell 200 apps per second, which is another remarkable number considering such a huge number of those are games (just look at the top 10 games).
So, what have we to announce?
Game Centre
Apple are launching a veritable Xbox Live clone for iOS, which will run as its own app to feature achievements and multiplayer content. It’ll allow you to get in touch with friends, compare games, challenge each other and do everything you do on XBL, but while on the move. The huge advantage here over XBL on Windows Mobile is that Apple has a huge install base already there, and if they move this idea into Mac in future, they could conceivably kill XBL on the desktop.
A4-powered iPod
The iPod touch is now smaller, but more powerful. It’s powered by the same powerhouse ARM-architecture A4 chip Apple themselves designed. This chip is unreal for a mobile device chip, and is delivering content on a par that is generally on-par with the PSP, and far above the DS graphically. Bringing it to iPod Touch means gaming is now available without needing a contract (on iPhone 4) and at a cheaper rate.
Unreal
At QuakeCon we caught a glimpse of idTech5 running on iOS. It ran smooth, beautiful and marvellously at 60fps. Not to be out-done, Epic games came on stage to show off a sword-slashing game due later in the year which runs on Unreal, which will be available for developers to make their own game creations. This is two huge studios getting behind iOS, years after Sony and Nintendo entered the mobile market. Neither of those companies have paid much attention to the aforementioned companies’ portable offers. That’s how huge this is. Not only that, Unreal Engine on iOS looks gorgeous. Arguably moreso then what Carmack showed us.
Carmack, interestingly, made a comment on twitter to say Apple asked him to go on stage, but he declined because the caveat was that he wouldn’t be allowed to demo his content at QuakeCon.
This is the first bastion of Apple’s entry into gaming. With Steam doing excellent business on Mac and Blizzard reporting high sales of Starcraft II on the platform, with iOS, Apple is just getting started with gaming. It’ll be fascinating to see where they go. Remember, you saw it start… who knows how big they’ll make it in future?
What do we think of the event? Let us know in the comments!
Don’t think they’ll be as big in gaming as you think. It’s all casual stuff at the moment. Mac could grow, but they’ll never release a console…
Just played the Epic Citadel app there, handles amazingly well on the iPhone 4, areas look gorgeous. Not hugely impressed with the game play demo at the event last night. But looking forward to devs coming up with some other games on the unreal engine.