The cliché that nothing good in life is free can be especially true when it comes to to iOS games. Sure, every once in a while you stumble across a truly great free title, but there almost always is a catch. In the case of Ponos' Ballistik Wars [Free], the catch is simple: it's ad-supported. For 99¢ you can get rid of the ads, and you'll want to, because they take up an annoyingly large amount of screen real estate.

So for all intents and purposes, consider your initial download of Ballistik Wars a trial period. If you like it, you can get rid of the ads for an affordable price. It's as simple as that.

As far as the actual game is concerned, Ballistik Wars is a stylized, cartoony castle defense game. As you play through you'll unlock new unit types and you can upgrade your castle and units as you go along. It's not just defense though, it's also attack -- so when you break through the enemy defense you still have their castle to think of.

The bulk of the game is going to be recognizable to anyone who has played a castle defense game, but the upgrade path means it's easy to get stuck unable to beat a level. Unlike most castle defense games, Ballistik Wars doesn't coordinate your energy consumption and unit type unlock together. This means that if you don't upgrade the proper components at the right times, you will be stuck unable to spawn a good counter-strategy. If you could grind, it wouldn't be a big deal, but losing means game over where you can only restart the level or start again from the beginning.

That said, once you get the hang of how everything works, Ballistik Wars is a surprisingly deep game with simple mechanics. Strategy is almost more important than most castle defense games because it's not just about surviving against an enemy onslaught, it's also about attacking their defenses. You need to strategize with multiple stages of attack and defense in mind.

The interface, unit selection and upgrade paths means you'll have a lot of information to store in your brain to get the most out of Ballistik Wars. Thankfully, the visuals are clean and the cartoon graphics keep things simple even in the chaos of battle. Most importantly, the unit types are diverse, so what you're selecting or what you're up against won't confuse you.

As you'd expect with a castle defense game, the units are each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There are also certain units that work better together than others, meaning you'll want to save up and launch two unit types at once to take advantage of the synergy. As you're attacking, you'll get bonus points for completing small meta-goals and the higher your score, the more points you'll get to distribute to upgrade your units.

Ballistik Wars is a good castle defense game with an interesting attack layer to it. If it wasn't so easy to get permanently stuck by upgrading the wrong units, it'd be an easy recommendation, but as long as you're willing to pay special attention to what you're doing, you'll get a lot out of the game. It might look like a casual title, but there is a lot more strategy to it than a glance can reveal.

It’s a shame that we received this announcement of Puzzle Family after our podcast was recorded for the week. Instead of the Bungie Aerospace news, this game and it’s insane trailer would have been the leading story of the bunch. Before I delve into the specifics, take a gander at the trailer. It's better to go into this blind. Trust me.

That's hot stuff, right? Puzzle Family has one of the weirdest trailers we’ve seen in a long, long time. Vivid, flashing, and possibly seizure-inducing lights? Check. Horrible animation, but adorable art? Check. Promise of insane antics in convoluted games? Check.

If the trailer didn't clue you in, Puzzle Family is a mini-game collection that puts you in the shoes of Akoo or one of his 20 fascinatingly eccentric family members through three initial mini-game experiences: block matching, Guitar Hero-style rhythm tapping, and a puzzle memory exercise. There are a total of eight mini-games in all, five of which can be unlocked through an in-game currency (of sorts).

Puzzle Family will launch as a ad-based "free" download this July 7, but you'll be able to support the title and get a leg-up on unlocking the extra five modes and other in-game items by purchasing the premium ad-free version, Puzzle Family Starpack for $1.99.

I know it's all the rage these days to get down on Zynga for their timesink-centric free to play Facebook games, but they are responsible for some ridiculous numbers. CityVille in specific is responsible for nearly 2.4m "Likes" on Facebook, and according to Wikipedia was Zynga's biggest game launch and has set the record for most monthly active users for an application ever on Facebook. Considering just how massive Facebook is, an accomplishment like that is absolutely incredible.

FarmVille [Free] hit the App Store quite a while ago now, and set expectations for what to expect out of Zynga's efforts on the iPhone. Initially the client was a little limited, but you were able to connect directly to your own existing farm and manage your crops on the go. If you were a FarmVille fanatic, this was amazing news.

Unfortunately, the iOS CityVille isn't a CityVille client at all. CityVille Hometown [Free] has the basic frameworks of CityVille, and looks a lot like CityVille, but you'll be starting a brand new city entirely dependent of your (potentially) already existing city on Facebook. Maybe it's just me, but this makes CityVille Hometown go from vaguely interesting to downright confusing. The App Store already has entirely too many time sink-laden building games, and not having the same Facebook link as FarmVille did easily makes it blend into the pack.

So I guess if you just can't get enough of CityVille, and want to completely start over on your phone, CityVille Hometown is for you. This really makes me wonder what Zynga's ongoing strategy is going to be for mobile devices. It always seemed to me that leveraging and connecting to these massive already thriving communities would be too huge to pass up. Regardless, it will be fun to watch Hometown on the charts to see how it does.

Hope you like sales reports on this fine afternoon. Have another: Secret Exit, the dudes behind the original Zen Bound and its awesome follow-up Zen Bound 2, have cut the cost of Zen Bound and Zen Bound 2 EVERYWHERE in celebration of “summer.” Both are just 99 cents until July 11 on the App Store, while Zen Bound 2's digital releases on Steam and the Mac App Store are priced at a dollar or less.

In case you’ve been living under a rock but, for whatever reason, have access to a smart device or a computer and the Internet, and don’t know what Zen Bound is, here’s a quick run-down. Like their namesakes state, these are meditative titles that on a singular simple task: wrapping rope around 3D sculptures. Seems like silly offerings on the surface, but I think you’ll find their calming effects... well, effective.

• Zen Bound - $.99
• Zen Bound 2 - $2.99 → $.99

Also, their visuals are still some of the best on the market. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. Just go check out our respective write-ups where, in addition to getting some hot screen action, you’ll also learn more about the games.

For a while now the label “Bungie Aerospace” has had our brows in a permanent state of arousal. Eli has been complaining for weeks about wrinkles and pain, to give you a slight indication of how we’re injuring ourselves over the mysterious trademark. And while most has been revealed around the subject, we’ll have to continue fretting over what it is and what it means to mobile gaming. You see, Bungie Aerospace is the start of a program that might be huge for independent developers and their games.

To clue you in from the get-go, Bungie Aerospace is a new initiative from within Bungie to help smaller developers launch mobile and social games. Aerospace will help studios fund their titles, give them evangelists in the form of the company’s rich community, and even leverage their game in the new Bungie mobile application. As if that wasn’t enough, apparently it’ll also help with testing.

In a conversation with Kotaku, Bungie COO Pete Parsons shed some light on the new initiative, which apparently already has several developers lined up.

"We're excited to have this small, focused effort to work with some great game development talent," he said. "All of them are very, very talented, very, very passionate and excited to bring their games to life. We're going to help them do that along the way."

But what’s the connection with "Crimson" if there is one? The good news, especially for my credibility, is that there is a connection between Aerospace and the trademark for the game Crimson.

Crimson is actually a codename for the first project to come out of the initiative. No one is willing to deliver any meaningful details about the title at this point, but we do know that the developer is Harebrained Schemes and it’s due out at some point this summer.

The speculation is that this could be some sort of flight game. Jordan Weisman, who had a hand in Crimson Skies, leads Harebrained, so that seems as educated of a guess as any we’ve been hearing ... but, obviously, the guy can branch out.

It’ll be interesting to see how this initiative pans out and who profits more -- Bungie or the small studios it’s aiding. Furthermore, Kotaku reports that games developed on this platform will also get access to Bungie.NET’s glorious stat tracking stuff, so prepare to see a lot of stat menus in the future.

If you'd like to read more about what's going on here, check out the official Bungie FAQ thingy on the subject.

[Via Kotaku]

Adult Swim Games isn’t above creating games that revolve around mechanical unicorns, horrible electronic music, and air dashing through concrete stars. It also isn’t above July 4 sales, as if that was an actual surprise as opposed to a writer’s early morning contrivance.

So, what games are on sale? A lot. In fact, most of the studio’s vast App Store library has been cut to mere pennies in celebration of Independence Day. Let’s take a look:

• Amateur Surgeon -$2.99 → $.99
• Amateur Surgeon for the iPad - $2.99 → $.99
• Amateur Surgeon 2 - $2.99 → $.99
• Floater Pro - $.99
• Meowcenaries - $2.99 → $.99
• My Li’l Bastard - $1.99 → $.99
• Robot Unicorn Attack - $1.99 → $.99
• Robot Unicorn Attack HD - $1.99 → $.99
• Robot Unicorn Attack: Heavy Metal Edition - $1.99 → $.99
• Spell My Finger - $.99

At this point, I’m not sure if there’s a man alive that has gone without Robot Unicorn Attack but if you, somehow, missed this title buy it immediately. No excuses, bud. It’s one of the funniest and oddly compelling titles on the App Store. Amateur Surgeon is pretty good, too, if you’re into Atlus’ Trauma Center franchise.

It’s the season for savings as the US’ July 4 Independence Day celebration nears. Not to be left out of the chart-breaking action is Gameloft. As of this morning, the homage-specialists are offering a stable of some of its sharpest titles like NOVA 2 and Asphalt 6 at a mere 99 cents instead of their usual three-dollars-and-up price points. Good savings all around, though less titles that we expected.

To be frank, we’re not sure when these sales will end. Logic suggests, of course, around July 5, but it’d be wise to jump on these ASAP if any of the follow tickles you:

• Asphalt 6: Adrenaline - $4.99 → $.99
• Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD - $6.99 → $.99
• Dungeon Hunter 2 - $6.99 → $.99
• Dungeon Hunter 2 HD - $6.99 → $.99
• NOVA 2 - $6.99 → $.99
• NOVA 2 HD - $6.99 →> $.99
• Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden - $6.99 → $.99
• Shrek Kart - $4.99 → $.99
• Shrek Kart HD - $4.99 → $.99
• Starfront: Collision - $2.99 → $.99
• Starfront: Collision HD - $6.99 → $.99

Out of all of these, I'd choose NOVA 2. As much as it pains me to enjoy a product that so shamelessly apes Bungie's Halo, NOVA 2 is a solid FPS title with a good sense of scale and pacing. It even controls pretty well for a genre game, which is more than what you can say about a lot of the FPS fodder on the App Store.

I was really excited when Capcom announced at E3 this year that their wildly successful Street Fighter IV [$4.99] for iPhone would be getting a follow up title called Street Fighter IV Volt [99¢]. I’ve been a huge Street Fighter fan for the majority of my life, and the original iPhone version is easily my favorite fighter in the App Store. It was a pretty big deal when it first released back in March of last year, not only because it was such a huge IP but also because it proved that a traditional fighting game could be done well with virtual controls. Capcom fed a steady stream of updates to Street Fighter IV over the past year which have added new characters and features to the game, keeping it on top of the iOS fighting heap.

Now with Street Fighter IV Volt, Capcom has extended the long standing Street Fighter tradition of releasing an incremental update as a new game. What you’re getting with Volt is essentially everything that was already in the first Street Fighter IV, right down to mostly identical graphics and sounds, plus a few additional features and 3 new characters – Cody, Balrog and Vega. These minor enhancements are nice, but the big selling point of Volt is the inclusion of online competitive multiplayer over WiFi, which was easily the most requested feature of the first game.

By default you are set up to accept any online challenges that might be out there. This means that if you’re running through the arcade mode you might suddenly get interrupted with a challenge from a random player online who’s searching for a match. This ensures that there should always be a pretty large pool of players to match up with when you feel like throwing down online, and it also gives it that old-school arcade feeling of having a complete stranger walk up to your arcade cabinet unexpectedly and issue a challenge. Of course, it would be hard to even make it through arcade mode with constantly being interrupted with matches, so thankfully you can easily switch the auto-acceptance on and off at will.

As for the actual experience of competing online in Street Fighter IV Volt, so far it leaves a lot to be desired. Random matches are easy enough to find even in this early stage of the game’s release, but they are usually plagued with lag and are prone to randomly disconnecting. Sometimes the online works near flawlessly, and when it does it’s absolutely brilliant. But more often than not you’ll be subjected to jittery animations and momentary freezes that can really disrupt the flow of a game.

Even with the lag matches can still end up being a ton of fun, but it’s hard realistically gauge either players’ actual skill level when playing under those conditions. I’m hoping things will smooth out as more players pick up the game and jump online, but currently it’s hard to consider it anything more than just a novelty rather than a serious competitive online experience.

One pretty interesting new aspect to Street Fighter IV Volt is something called Wandering Warrior. This mode has you creating an avatar for your multiplayer profile which can be leveled up and upgraded in an almost RPG-like fashion. Then, while you’re facing an opponent in an online or local multiplayer match, your avatar will square up against your opponent’s avatar and they’ll duke it out as well. Special points are earned during multiplayer matches which can be put towards upgrading your avatar and unlocking new icons and badges which grant new abilities and enhancements. It’s a pretty cool little meta game that’s a fun side distraction to throwing down against people in multiplayer.

Despite its spotty online performance and content that is heavily recycled from the first game, Street Fighter IV Volt improves on what was already a successful formula and is the definitive version to own on the App Store. If you aren’t very interested in its online multiplayer or the 3 new characters, then you may be fine just skipping Volt and sticking with the original for getting your quick Street Fighter fixes on the go.

The one wrinkle to this advice is the fact that Capcom is currently running an introductory sale for Street Fighter IV Volt. It launched for just 99¢, and the price will increase by a dollar each day for the next several days before hitting its regular price of $6.99. Even if you already own the first game and the new features don’t totally interest you, I’d still suggest picking up Volt if you can snag for just a dollar or two. It may be a bit harder to justify the upgrade when it hits full price, however.

Street Fighter IV Volt is mostly just more of the same, but that’s not such a bad thing since the original release was so good. The highly anticipated online multiplayer isn’t quite up to par technically, but it can still provide some pretty entertaining moments. Hopefully the online performance can be improved over time, as there is plenty of potential for one of the best multiplayer experiences on the App Store.

Glu Mobile’s Gun Bros [Free] now has even more features, including a real-time co-op element that’s sure to tickle fans of the F2P dual-stick shooter.

Available this morning, the update adds “BRO-OP,” the long-awaited co-op compliment to the game that, before, had to lean on imported AI copies of friends. The mode supports play over 3G and Wi-Fi, by the way, so all your bases should be covered.

In a cool twist, Glu has also added in voice chat to mix, which should go a long way in the coordination efforts between you and your partner.

Combat has received some attention with this update as well. At the top end, the game can now boast about having a better, more fluid auto-aim system. More importantly, it can also scream that it supports even more guns and armor. The new stuff looks just as crazy as everything else in the game. As a side-note, I'm totally stoked for that “Diabolical” set -- check out those bat wings! Killer!

For the jaded among the Gun Bros crowd, Glu Mobile has also laced this update with an important new feature, Daily BRO-OP challenges. Upon completion, you’ll be rewarded with extra in-game cash, which should stave off the desire to actually buy stuff with real money to some extent.

Looking good, right? I’ll have to jump into Gun Bros again. Oh! And check out our message board thread on this update if connecting with someone is enticing to you.

Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story [$1.99 / Lite] is now cheaper than what it was. For a limited time, and in celebration of the release of Pocket Academy [$3.99 / Lite], the quirky simulation game that puts you in the shoes of producer, administrator, and game developer is $1.99. That’s a 50 percent savings from the regular price of $3.99.

If you listen to our podcast, you know that I’m a ridiculously huge fan of GDS. If I could, I’d erect a statue in its name in front of my apartment complex and praise it each morning before I start work or make some coffee. It’s good in all the right ways and has a level of depth and cunning that few simulation games, especially on this platform, tend to have.

Our review, of course, is glowing if you’re interested in a... critical dissection of the title instead of my lunatic ramblings in a news article.

In other news, but not-so-recent news, GDS has received a few updates since it’s initial release. For example, it now supports Game Center and its leaderboards functionality. You can also now switch the language back and forth between it's native language Japanese and the English translation, which might actually prove to be helpful considering that some of the translation work is shaky at best.

Pocket Academy, by the way, is another excellent Kairosoft simulation, combining the same quirk from GDS, except applied to a school.

Push-Cars [$0.99 / HD] is a puzzle game with a conscience. Like a pint-sized version of Pixar's Cars, you've got a bunch of anthropomorphic cars to handle. There's the eco-friendly ones like Sparky, the slow but green electric, and there's the gas guzzlers like Sixteen. Your job is to smash those gas guzzlers to bits while helping the others slip out of town.

It's not a complicated job. You're presented with a overhead city block, stylized and designed from real maps of American cities. The cars are positioned on the road, and all you can do is tap to rotate them. They can only go straight, and will drive until they hit something. Once you find a solution that will let the good cars escape and smash the bad cars into each other, a building or a dead end, hit the gas and it all plays out.

It sounds pretty straightforward (and maybe a touch heavy-handed), but in practice it's a lot of fun. The early puzzles are simple, but as more cars are introduced there are more elements to handle. The cars travel at different speeds, so lining them up to intersect each others paths can be tricky. Some can take off-road routes, others can leap over a single car or crush opposition beneath them. By the time you've met all the cars, you'll be faced with some major challenges. Even physics come in to play on some levels.

(more...)

Before I begin, I'm just going to pat myself on the back for this marvelously sensational sounding yet entirely appropriate headline. Alright, with that out of the way-- OnLive CEO Steve Perlman is back to his old tricks of blowing minds and unveiling technology that is all too easy to dismiss as vaporware, impossible, and all the other things that got thrown around when OnLive was first revealed. To make this a little easier to digest, let's back things up a bit and discuss exactly what Shannon's Law is all about. If you've ever been at a concert, sporting event, convention, or any other densely populated area and haven't been able to use your phone, you've already experienced it first hand. Shannon's Law (or the Shannon–Hartley theorem) has to do with the maximum amount of error-free data that can be transmitted wirelessly, which is why you can't Rick Roll your buddy at a football game, place a call in New York City, and other common problems that have just become normal in the world of cell phones-- Particularly as smartphones become more prevalent.

Dealing with the huge amount of data that smartphones use has turned into a massive problem for cellular carriers worldwide, but the latest breakthrough from Rearden Companies might change all that. They've made brand new radios that don't work anything like existing radios, and starting from the ground up have come up with a way to utilize the wireless spectrum in a way that isn't limited by Shannon's Law at all. With their earliest iterations of this technology they've been able to reach ten times what Shannon's Law says is possible. They also don't yet know the limit of just what they can do, but they know they can do "at least 100 times" what current cellular technology is doing in the same spectrum with 1ms latency at a few miles and 2ms latency at 30 miles.

Things get even crazier, though. Naturally you'd expect this new wireless technology to be both massive in size and complexity, but according to Perlman the radios are actually much simpler with a single antenna and use much less processing that's even taking place in current cell phones. That 30 miles mentioned before? That's not only beyond the curvature of the earth, it's also farther than a television station will transmit. Speaking theoretically, they expect to be able to reach 250 miles and the only reason they're even citing the 30 mile number is because of the time limitation of driving back and forth from test stations.

Perlman notes that the implications of this technology are "profound," and it's hard to disagree. Shannon's Law and the very real world limitations that we've all experienced using our cell phones is a serious issue for wireless engineers desperate to expand capacity to support the growing number of data-sucking smartphones in the wild. Beyond that though, with the latencies they're able to attain as well as the transmit distance, this could completely change the face of broadband in the world which has historically always been plagued by the last mile.

Aside from that, speaking specifically from a mobile gaming perspective, the massive decrease in latency would make twitch-based games completely playable without gobs of predictive netcode to compensate for massive ping times via current cellular networks. It's not hard to go wild speculating all the benefits this new technology could provide.

I know it's easy to dismiss all of this as impossible, wizardry, witchcraft, black magic, technobabble, or whatever other way you'd like to describe it. Consider this though: When OnLive was unveiled it wasn't entirely uncommon to see editorials like this one citing all the reasons why OnLive couldn't possibly work. But it does work. OnLive has been online and fully operational for over a year now. I've played games to completion using the service without issue, and the recent addition of the Micro Console to my household has made gaming with OnLive even better.

Specific details on how all this works are yet to be released, and it's hard to say how long it will take this initial unveiling to turn into an actual real-world product... But, the future looks bright and I'm overjoyed to have people like Steve Perlman in this world.

[via Engadget]

Kairosoft’s Pocket Academy [$3.99 / Lite] takes the best and worst elements of its prior releases, Game Dev Story [$1.99 / Lite] and Hot Springs Story [$3.99 / Lite], blends them together, and then applies them to a school environment. It’s not remarkable on the surface. It has the same cutesy art direction used in these prior games. It also re-hashes a lot of mechanics, continues to shroud a lot of its crucial foundational and tycoon elements in mystery, and it controls like crap. But it does still deliver in the form of the studio’s should-be patented carrot-on-the-stick design approach and fleshes out a crucial, but oft-forgotten, driver in all simulation games: the people.

Provided the gun to my head wasn’t real, I’d argue until the moment the trigger is pulled that Pocket Academy isn’t as much of a school simulation as it is a over-the-top student simulation game because, at the end of the day, this game isn’t about how pretty your school is or about how many trees you’ve planted. It’s about what your kids are learning and how well they can prove that your system, either totalitarian or social-focused, works.

On the top end, this game puts you in the shoes of an administrator planning out the next greatest thing in education. You’re in charge of building classrooms, researching new facilities like restrooms, libraries, and nurses’ offices, and creating statistical bonus zones with bonus-laden objects like shrubbery, trees, or even rocks. Chaos is frowned upon, as the careful planner who puts like buildings together can string together dramatic bonuses to student-side factors like learning and school spirit.

This is where the one real rub rears its head: Pocket Academy isn’t good at telling you what is “good” versus “bad.” It hides a lot of bonuses and mechanics from viewing. The only solid way to find out what works well with something else is via experimentation, which is a costly and horribly slow, pace-chewing endeavor. Even buildings and research subjects have terrible descriptions that can lead to hair-pulling strategic misfires.

Like Game Dev Story understood, to some extent, the development process and let you lead it, Pocket Academy allows you to do the same with a school. The end product is a well-learned student body, and you get several years to turn kids’ mush into iron. Ample classrooms and activities are a necessity to do this, as well as teachers. Students come in once a year or through transfer if your school is attractive enough. Teachers, on the other hand, need to be hired and then leveled up. Satisfactorily, you are put in charge of what statistics receive boosts upon leveling up, which lets you mold a curriculum that feels... well, you. It's pretty redeeming building something in your own image.

Science, math, English, Spanish, and history are the subjects each student can learn. As they sit in classrooms, they’ll automatically receive points in these areas. As they roam and participate in other facilities, they’ll earn additional points that you can then, in turn, spend in classrooms to boost their core attributes or apply to research. This is the push and pull: do you spend these points in order to get more areas for interaction, or do you spend them to educate the students more?

I usually go with the latter since it’s the real meat of the game. In order to attract more kids, you need to compete in challenges based on those core subjects. The higher the IQ, the likelier they are to pass the challenge. Also, schools as a whole are rated and a lot of funding, as well as those ratings, depends on end-of-semester test scores. The goal is to be the best school in the world, so the students actually matter. But the other decision is a fundamental one, too. Without interaction, you don't get points for research or tests.

Weighing these two options, as dull as they sound, is entertaining. I think it helps that there's always something you could be doing in the process or, at least, building towards.

To its credit, Pocket Academy really fleshes out who these kids are. They’re all named and you deal with them over the course of several years. You’ll also see them make friends, attempt to date other students, get frustrated, succeed, and fail. Students all have certain disposition traits, too, which factor into how they learn and where they learn the best. As if that wasn’t enough, there are also activities they favor which you can cater to by building clubs or more facilities.

After spending years with these kids and using them in the right way, you do tend to bond with the character, as silly as that sounds. But it’s that connection, as flimsy as it is, that makes this simulation game much more satisfying than most. You have a stake in the systems, at least.

I could go on and on about the systems at play, what you can do, and the billions of little things that you’ll end up doing to improve the experience. There are tons of mechanics and little touches at play in Pocket Academy, all of which are satisfying to some extent to use, deal with, or think about. The game starts brutal, so be prepared.

I have a feeling that, like Game Dev Story, you’ll run out of meaningful things to do in Pocket Academy after an epic several-year run but I don’t think that hurts. As it is, there are plenty of things -- perhaps too much in places -- to do for several, several hours. For those of you who didn’t download sight unseen, no worries: this is a sharp little simulation game packed with depth and, oddly enough, a little emotion. It might be hard to penetrate at first, but stick with it and you’ll be rewarded with an awesome game.

EA is spending big cheese in order to become a major entity in the smartphone, tablet, and social sectors of the market. With this in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear an EA executive say, “Hey, we’re into this smart devices and the Web.” But the way that EA is attempting to dive in differs from its competition.

The other week, Take-Two’s CEO said that phone games, for it, weren’t meaningful in terms of returns. It would like to, actually, see the prices of tablet games raised. EA, on the other hand, is building its AAA-tier console and PC titles with an eye towards the App Store and other places from the get-go.

“We've been changing the way we develop games so that we can have them on smartphone, tablets, in addition to console and PC,” EA Games label manager Frank Gibaue told GI.biz in a brand new interview.

“It's all part of the digital transition that we're going through and Origin is the platform on which we'll be able to publish and service customers on mobile as well as PC platforms. And then link to the consoles in unique ways as they develop.”

You’ve heard of Origin before. It’s EA’s new digital distribution service. The PC version of the software is available now. An App Store equivalent is in the works.

Origin for PC, thus far, is rocking the PC digital download boat in all the wrong ways. As opposed to being a valid alternative for a compelling reason, it’s simply the de facto place to download new EA-published games. Crysis 2, for example, was pulled from Steam as the service launched, as well as Alice: The Madness Returns. Battlefield 3 is looking like it won’t appear on other platforms as well. The Star Wars MMO won’t for sure.

Free-to-play, which has become a favorite topic of ours in our most recent podcasts since Eli fell in love with League of Legends, is also going to be a part of this new initiative to reach everyone, though we’re not sure on the specifics -- we just know, for now, that Gibeau was name-dropping it in a recent interview alongside smartphone games.

"Launch some new services like Star Wars that are unique, and in addition to that do a bunch of free-to-play businesses, that frankly when they get to scale, have huge audiences, are very profitable, they're not cannibalising the main games and they actually reach markets that we're not currently serving,” he said in the same interview.

“With Need for Speed World, Russia and Brazil are number one and two - the Ukraine is in there. I can't sell packaged goods in those territories. But I'm reaching an audience with Need for Speed content. It's an engine that's not as advanced as Frostbite 2 but it's certainly got great production values and great game designs, and it's free-to-play with micro transactions. It's a very exciting time from our perspective because it's not all about consoles. It's about smartphones, tablets, free-to-play, browser, social.”

So what’s new in the world of EA? Video games on our phones -- and possibly more F2P ones, since they have a longer tail and reach a broader audience. Also, Origin. Makes you wonder if we’ll start getting App Store titles with all three of these things combined into one package.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

My ability to write an amusing introduction for this week's bucket full of Wednesday night game releases has been obliterated due to my mind being blown that the powers that be are still making James Pond games. Maybe it's just me, but my perception of James Pond as a video game mascot was about in line with Bubsy. In the 90's it seems like everyone and their brother in law was trying to come up with the next Mario or Sonic, and I'm really not sure any succeeded. I suppose persistence isn't a bad thing though, and you can't fault 'em for trying. I'll still play a James Pond game 21 years later!

Anyway, here's how this works-- Developers are able to set specific release dates for their iOS games. Since App Store features are updated on Thursdays, it seems that's most beneficial day to release a game if you're shooting for featuring. Of course the whole featuring process is a closely guarded secret surrounded by black majicks, so who knows if releasing on a Thursday even helps. Regardless, with a specific release date set, games become available in the regions of the App Store as it becomes that date. Thanks to New Zealand's proximity to the International Date Line, they get a first crack at everything. All of these games will be available at 11:00 PM Eastern, or earlier if you're east of North America:

Ballistik Wars, Free - Forum Thread - I'm not entirely sure yet what the catch is with this game being free, but I've loved everything Ponos has released so I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Ballistik Wars will also be great. I could be wrong, but seriously, Ponos has a great game catalog.

Cargo Runners, $7.99 - Forum Thread - This is the second entirely iOS board game by Trouble Brothers. Cargo Runners is a 2-4 player game where you race around the world collecting cargo. I've had a great time with board games on the iPad, and it's great seeing brand new ones being developed for the platform.

Color Bandits, 99¢ / HD - Forum Thread - I'm digging this game's gimmick. Apparently aliens have stolen color from the world and you're fighting to get it back. The whole black and white slowly transitioning to color thing seems really cool. And, hey, boss fights.

James Pond in the Deathly Shallows, 99¢ - Forum Thread - Agent Pond RETURNS!!! Oddly enough, James Pond games (at least the ones I played) always had lots of platforming elements, this one seems to be more of an underwater-themed horizontal shooter. Regardless, it's universal, a buck, and based on some great (although likely unknown to most) IP.

MapleStory Cygnus Knights Edition, $4.99 - Forum Thread - This is the second single player MapleStory game to be released on the App Store, the first of which being MapleStory Thief Edition [$4.99]. It's a bit of a mystery to me why they don't just bring a full MapleStory client over to iOS, as surely recent devices have to be powerful enough to run it... But, I guess they wouldn't be releasing Cygnus Knights if Thief didn't do well.

Mooniacs, $1.99 / Lite - Forum Thread - Namco is taking a crack at the "casual physics based puzzle game where you do things to earn stars" genre. (That is a genre now, right?) I tried this game at E3, and it's actually pretty cool. You fling your little dude up to catch flying things called "JujuBees." Namco has an interesting plan for releasing new updates, and additional content will apparently be unlocked as people globally reach some collected JujuBees threshold.

Postal Panic, Free - Forum Thread - This is a sorting game, but instead of needing to sort colors or shapes like so many sorting games out there you're sorting packages to a specific zip code as they come across a postal scanner. It seems like a clever real-world spin to the typical sorting game type.

Puzzle Agent 2, $4.99 / HD - Forum Thread - The original Puzzle Agent [$4.99] won a ridiculous amount of rewards last year, and I'm expecting the sequel to be just as awesome. Like the first one, Puzzle Agent 2 has Professor Layton-like puzzle-centric gameplay with a heavy coating of that signature Telltale Games charm.

Street Fighter IV Volt, 99¢ - Forum Thread - This is basically Street Fighter IV [99¢] but with online multiplayer. Oh, and it's got Balrog, Vega, and Cody which aren't available in the non-Volt version. Also, Capcom is planning on doing some kind of wacky incremental price raising where they're hiking the price by a buck each day it's out until it caps out at $6.99. Street Fighter IV was excellent, and the addition of online multiplayer in Volt should make this an easy day one purchase.