Comments on: GameBone Pro – The First iPhone 3.0 Gaming Accessory?

By: Kenny

Kenny — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:35:14 +0000

wow. cmon. i dont think any1 reasonable would walk around with an ipod docked into that thing. if you got an ipod just to play games you suck!

By: GreyDawn

GreyDawn — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:14:44 +0000

I really don't get the point in having a controller when the screen is so small. The touch/iphone simply isn't a real/advanced gaming console and it shouldn't try to be/should stay in its niche.

By: megapuppy

megapuppy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:52:36 +0000

It's a really terrible looking concept at this stage. I guess a digital D-pad is fine if you just want to play 8 & 16bit type 2D games, but for anything 3D it's useless. I much prefer the design concept put forward by these guys:
http://www.iphoneopengaming.com/iOGA_hardware.html

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:00:29 +0000

I disagree, some games like the fighting platform require a D-pad and the likes. The screen as it is, is simple to small to effectively play fighting games like Street Fighter without covering the whole screen or being annoying.

By: Josh Rosen

Josh Rosen — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:19:18 +0000

This is true to an extent.
I'm developing SciFly 2, so I'll speak about that. There are a lot of features I would love to add to SciFly 2 that I am not because of limited control input. For example, I'd like to have the player be able to switch between weapons. I decided there wasn't enough screen space to have a button for this, so the feature was removed.
If I was designing with a standard controller as my target device, I could have added this feature. However, having a fraction of my audience have the accessory does not mean I can enable the feature for them and not for others. Enabling the feature means restructuring the game to allow for multiple weapons.

So, I'm not saying I couldn't make SciFly 2 work with the controller, but it might not be as cool as you would think. Games will still have to be designed to the common denominator.

By: Jovy1

Jovy1 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:18:12 +0000

The GameBone Pro? Make Sure you dont play with this thing is front of a mean dog. Its not just any remote, you could also play fetch with it with your dog and have even more fun.

By: AIM-R8

AIM-R8 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:57:06 +0000

It may entice more of the bigger game studios to first port existing versions of their games to the iphone as a way to test the market, before coming out with iPhone exclusive titles. I wouldn't mind Street Fighter 4 or Tekken 6 on the iPhone myself, both which would be impossible with touchscreen.

By: JVK

JVK — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:40:55 +0000

well, how much do they expect us to pay for this?
psp will run me $189…

By: drunknbass

drunknbass — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:23:25 +0000

look up.. i am working on ps1 and ps2 controller. ps3 over BT will not work unless we make a seperate bt dongle for the dock or a dongle to plug into the controller (not sure if that would even work)

ps1 and ps2 controllers are suuuuuuuper cheap and easy to find, and you can use wireless ones also.
hopefully this adapter can be made and resold for ~10 – 15$

By: spiffyone

spiffyone — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:29:19 +0000

But there's a time/effort thing that comes into play. Building the controls around the touch and tilt paradigms are hard enough work, but building around those and a "traditional" controller add on is more time/effort. Negligible? Maybe…but I'm of the mind that every minute and red cent counts. If I were a developer I'd rather invest the time that another would put into including an option for this control interface to something better like, oh, i dunno…getting the multitouch and accelerometer controls that the majority will use as close to perfect as possible. Or fixing bugs (we consumers do appreciate iTouch/Phone releases that are polished to the point of having few, or no, bugs upon release). Or creating additional content down the road, etc.

While including the add on control option doesn't necessarily negate any of the other more important things from being done, it does take away some time, however minute, from those more important things.