tequila bomb

I am really excited to announce that the Canabalt source is now open and available, including the game code, Flixel for iOS, graphics, sound effects, and music:

First I wanted to explain why we would do such a thing.  First and foremost, the holiday charity fundraising effort in which we are participating, the Indie iPhone Holiday Sale, raised over $25,000 so far for Child’s Play, a wonderful organization that helps bring games and toys to children in hospitals around the world.

Canabalt is running on our first major attempt at porting Adam’s Flixel framework to iOS.  We had a lot of reasons for doing this, and the results have been… variable.  But if you are a Flixel (or even native Flash) developer, and you have a basic grasp of ObjectiveC, this source code might still be useful to you!  Hopefully we’ll be announcing a slightly less insane and more flexible version of Flixel in the near future (we always say that don’t we).

By their own admission the code is not the most polished in the world. I have not taken a look yet, but it should certainly be of interest to developers out there who would like to look inside a complete iOS project.

So overall not a bad little package of code for those interested in the Flixel framework, and how to put an App Store app together. Apparently this version is not even live on the App Store yet, and includes performance enhancements, and accordingly Retina Display support.

The Twitter stuff for Canabalt is missing deliberately, because of fears it may pose a risk of user data being exposed in the game itself. But they did previously share their iOS xAuth Twitter implementation.

[There's] Google’s Android Market where a leaner 100,000-plus Android apps reside. That’s up from 60,000 in May, with an average 5,000-plus added weekly. Approximately 15 percent are games (although the company would not give a more specific breakout).

Or the Ovi Store where the daily number of app downloads for Nokia smartphones just topped 3 million.

And then there’s the platform-agnostic GetJar which provides more than 60,000 mobile apps across all the major handset platforms and where the daily download rate is similar to the Ovi Store’s.

All three stores are eagerly welcoming game submissions as evidenced by recent interviews with corporate spokespeople.

Worth a read.

Join the free music service that gives you easy access to your music collection across the web and on smartphones. Upload your music to the mspot cloud and start listening anywhere.

Your first 2GB of music storage, that you can access from anywhere on Android, iOS or Windows via its dedicated app, is free.

All Things Digital, in an interview with CEO Daren Tsui, note that mSpot does not have a “licensing agreement” with the music companies for this service. Here is the exchange…

This is roughly the same idea that both Apple and Google have discussed with the music industry for much of 2010, but neither of those two heavyweights has the licenses it needs to launch. How can mSpot pull it off?

Good question. The answer is that mSpot CEO Daren Tsui argues that he doesn’t need a license, for a variety of reasons.

I’ll spare you the technical details, but common sense supports his position–why shouldn’t you be able to move your music from one machine to another? And the law, via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, may be on his side as well.

I presume nonetheless that the record labels are getting (or intend to receive) a cut of the $3.99 / 40GB packages.

We work closely with all four of the major music labels (Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal), as well as major studios (Universal Studios Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios, Image Entertainment, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures and Screen Media Ventures) and broadcast companies (including ABC, CBS, ClearChannel, Fox Sports, NPR).

Overall it’s a neat idea. With similar package pricing to the backup service Mozy.

But I have to wonder how long the studios are going to be happy with promise of the kick back they may eventually get from the “premium” package. And how mSpot will support that as well as increasing bandwidth usage, and lawyers fees?

And how this will all play out with any iTunes Cloud service coming from Apple in the future…

Epic Games, the creator of the widely-used Unreal 3 game engine, is gearing up to release its Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for iOS, which will give iOS game developers unrestricted access to powerful 3D game development tools.

The UDK is Epic’s free version of the Unreal Engine, a powerful game engine that has been used to power such graphically intensive titles as Gears of War and Epic Citadel (pictured)—the latter of which has already been released for iOS as a demonstration of the Unreal Engine 3′s performance on the platform.

When it ships, the UDK iOS will include the same editors and code used to create a number of blockbuster games, and will be available to anyone wishing to publish games via the App Store. Toolsets of this quality generally cost developers anywhere from $500 to tens of thousands of dollars, so by releasing the UDK for free, Epic is drastically lowering the barrier of entry for iOS developers wishing to create graphically impressive games.

From MacWorld.

Should really turn things on its head in 2011.

Microsoft’s Brandon Watson reached out to the ChevronWP7 team, which recently released a Windows Phone 7 unlocking tool, and opened a line of discussion about homebrew app development. As a sign of good faith during the conversations, which could ultimately lead to some kind of homebrew support from Microsoft, ChevronWP7 has agreed to pull its unlocker tool.

Rest assured that the gloves will come off if the talks don’t pan out.

It seems odd that Microsoft would consider helping developers build apps with capabilities not allowed under Microsoft’s developer terms.

Not really odd. I touched on this some time ago.

Microsoft is a software company. They need their App Store to succeed. And they are well aware that right now they don’t have any where near the consumer numbers or the lock in juju that Apple has with the App Store.

Nor do they have the raw handset profits that Apple does; which in many ways mean that Apple could forgo having an App Store and still make money.

If Microsoft are smart they will try to embrace the Windows Phone 7 homebrew community on any terms. Unfortunately “Smart” and “Microsoft” are not often words that occupy the same sentence.

Let’s not forget that in other news Microsoft is apparently quite happy to put a 360 hacker in jail for a few years if necessary, over similar hacking activities. If the ruling on iPhone jailbreaking (and it’s legality in the US) had gone another way ChevronWP7 might have found themselves in court, rather than sitting across a table from Microsoft – albeit probably very briefly.

This is going to shift in huge numbers.

In many ways I wish id had priced it higher than $1.99 though. It’s worth far more.

And people would be willing to pay a higher price, which would have set a good price point that everyone could expect quality apps to float at.

From a consumers point of view this price is great, at least in the near term.

But for developers struggling to establish themselves, competing at this price point with this quality of game is going to be very very hard.

The race to the bottom is over. id have done everything possible to ensure that. Short of pricing the app at 99 cents, or free with in-app purchases, I can’t see how else they could have put the final nail in the coffin any more deftly.

iOS has nearly three times more games than the previous twenty-five years of gaming combined.

From TUAW.

Just how many of those 40 – 50,000 games are straight ports, rip-offs or dodgy emulations of earlier games? Or even rip-offs of other rip-offs? A lot in my opinion, and also my personal experience. One thing we can be sure of from these figures is that innovation, whilst definitely a factor in the App Store, is not the driving force.

NOTE : [iOS] has a total of 51,856 games listed (note that the 42,007 figure I have used is only active games, whereas TouchArcade has an all-time count that includes titles that are no longer available for download) and they report that 12,876 have the word “lite” in the title, with a further 6,542 having the word “free”. If we assume these are demo versions of games that are also available for purchase, and therefore eliminate them, we arrive at a total of 32,438 games on the App Store — still well in excess of the total across the games consoles.

[H]ackers have already gained root access Windows Phone 7′s registry and file system — their methods simply aren’t yet bundled up in a nice little user-friendly package.

This is hardly news. It was inevitable.

What interests me though, is the effect this will have on Microsoft’s online store. Locking people into a curated store experience, like Apple’s App Store in iTunes, is something that I believe your Microsoft traditionalists (who are going to be the core people buying and evangelising these devices – at least initially) are not going to be so easy to convince to agree to.

Plus, with Windows Phone 7 being wide open so early into the market, it seems to me that Windows Phone 7 Cydia clones may well gain traction more quickly than Microsoft’s App Store is able to.

I think we may see Microsoft have to become a lot more draconian than Apple has ever been about App Store lock-ins. Perhaps they plan to leverage a similar system to their XBox Live subscription gaming network for their mobile phone eco-system? And perhaps they hope that will lock people in. But we already know that the gamers tastes on mobile devices are very very different to those on console networks. So I am not sure how much leverage a tie in to XBox Live is really going to gain Microsoft.

Will Microsoft dare drop the “ban-hammer” on jail-broken Windows Phones? I doubt it. But it’s fun to think about!

Fancy a job reviewing your peers apps? In sunny Santa Clara Valley?

The Mothership is calling…

Apple Worldwide Developer Relations is seeking a software application specialist; someone who is meticulous, analytical, able to exercise objective analysis, and able to thrive in a fast-paced environment and has strong customer service skills.

Candidate needs to be able to organize and prioritize a heavy workload. The candidate must be hardworking, detail-oriented, and able to work quickly & efficiently. We˙re looking for a self-starter, a quick learner with excellent communication skills, who is able to work independently and as part of a team.

jobs.apple.com

Thanks to the_drew for the heads up.

A look at the top-grossing iPhone apps today finds 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features.  Remco van den Elzen, CEO co-founder of analytics firm Distimo, said he believes in-app purchases now represent about 30 percent of all iPhone App Store revenue. “We’re seeing more developers implement more in app-purchases especially with games,” he said. “Freemium Apps are also picking up significantly. A lot of developers realize it’s a successful model.”

This is both surprising, and depressing to me. But it was inevitable, I guess, when you consider the success of the Facebook gaming ecosystem.

I hate that the mobile games industry is more like the advertising industry than the movies. But then what did I expect?

I remember wanting to craft unique experiences for people. Not obsess about monetizing hand-cartoons that are sweet and addictive like candy, and ultimately just as unfulfilling.

Unfortunately an obsession with shipping volumes of free or 99 cents apps, and strategies to pull in a core obsessive compulsive user base, who will pump the in-app purchase money machine, is all I see people talking about on Twitter feeds, and industry blogs obsessing over all day long.