March 17th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: iOS | No Comments »
Apple has revealed iPhone OS v3.0 to the US press today. We checked numerous sources and compiled the items that are important to the mobile game development community.
First off, the new OS will give developers much more room to the core of the iPhone. In total, you will receive 1000 more API's to work with. Amongst these, is the API that let's consumers use their own music library in the games.
Apple also did another interesting move. It is allowing developers of third party hardware to create apps to control those. External hardware can be connected via the dock connector or Bluetooth. This means that the well known Zeemote might finally get the chance to enter the iPhone market.
Apple also clearly looked at critics from the MMO development community. As so, Apple has opened up the possibility to add in-game payments. That way, it's much more interesting for MMO's to launch on the device. Sadly enough, in-game payments are no option for free mobile games. So marketing an MMO by giving it away will be no option for now. Local multiplayer will also be more attractive as developers can now use a mobile oriented version of Apple's Bonjour platform.
Another interesting feature is the possibilities of push notifications. Through this, MMO's and other social apps are able to extend their reach further into the life of consumers and so, keep them gaming. Also, gamers will be able to voice chat when playing their games.
By the way, Apple also notified the press that it had sold 17 million iPhones and 13 million iPod Touch devices. That's 30 million iPhone OS devices that are open to your mobile games. By the way, from the 800k downloaders of the SDK, 60% never developed for an Apple platform before.
Other impressive data showed that Gameloft is very successful on the iPhone. That mobile game developer / publisher has managed to trigger 2 million downloads to date. Fear not, in total the iTunes store has triggered 800 million downloads!
The firmware will be made available to developers along the night, but consumers will have to hold on until the summer where iPod Touch users will have a little surprise as the update will cost them $ 9,95.
This story is sourced from PocketGamer, MocoNews, IGN Wireless, Dutch Cowboys, Fierce Wireless, Fingergaming, Tweakers.net, Slide2Play, Mobile Entertainment, Twitter and lots more…
