We broke the news a few weeks back that Namco Networks had created a dedicated Apple Games group, separate from the rest of its mobile division, to allow a particularly strong focus on the iPhone as a games platform.  We recently had the chance to interview Jonathan Kromrey, head of the new Apple Games group, regarding the formation of the division and what it means to iPhone gaming.

Kromrey, who spent time as a producer at I-Play Mobile Gaming, has most recently been part of Apple's own, internal iPhone apps division and was involved with the phenomenally successful Apple iPhone game release of Texas Hold'em [App Store].  He came to Namco Networks, bringing with him a team of developers from both Apple and EA, with the goal of "bringing freshness and newness to iPhone gaming."  He indicates that his group has plans to not only bring a number of popular Japanese Namco titles to the iPhone, but also to generate wholly new titles written specifically for the platform.  And when asked if the division intends to act as a publishing arm for independent developers, his response was a definitive "hell yes!"  In fact, the group has signed two such deals, one of which will bear App Store fruit within the month.

Kromrey calls the iPhone "a wide open platform," ripe for both hardcore as well as casual game titles that everyone can enjoy.  And games along these lines should appear scattered across the price-point scale.  His group feels that a sound strategy for iPhone game releases involves basic, quick-play games at a low ($.99) price point, more involved and full-featured titles at a moderate ($4.99) price point, as well as long-play, large-scale games complete with microtransactions at a premium ($9.99) price point.  And, in our reckoning, this seems the right strategy to maximize a studio's market penetration.

iPhone 3GS owners have particular reason to be excited about Namco Network's newly formed division.  Kromrey calls the difference in capabilities between the iPhone 3G and 3GS "huge," and points to Namco's popular I Love Katamari [App Store] as an example of a title that illustrates the increased power of the 3GS.  And, more than just delivering games with higher framerates on Apples' new unit, Kromrey's team fully intends to exploit the features of the new device (such as the OpenGL ES 2.0 pipeline) in full.

In other, recent interviews, Namco Networks' Apple Games chief has been asked about the possible arrival of Tekken, Soulcalibur, and the like on the iPhone platform.  And while he would not confirm any specifics, Kromrey indicated that, with such titles, getting the controls exactly right is key, and that depending in particular on success in this area, the iPhone may indeed see such titles lighting up its four-inch touchscreen.

This certainly has been an interesting last couple of days, between Sega's challenge to gamers to come up with what game to make next and then Christian Whitehead's surprise response unveiling a remarkable Sonic CD proof of concept port created with his own Retro Engine Development Kit.

Eager to know more about both Sonic CD and the iPhone Retro Engine and Retro Engine Development Kit (or RDSK), we fired off a series of questions. The interview is totally worth a read, but beware, it will only make you want Sonic CD and other games produced by the RDSK even more.

Eli Hodapp: How flexible is the RSDK? Is it tied to a game like Sonic or would something like Castlevania with RPG elements be possible?

Christian Whitehead: All of the actual Sonic CD logic is script driven, so the Retro Engine is more than capable of different styles of gameplay. A game like Castlevania would definitely be possible, since the engine excels at handling 2D side scrollers. Stuff like top down RPG's would be fine too, I wouldn't count it on doing something like a full on 3D racing game though!

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At WWDC Touch Arcade had the opportunity to interview Gameloft President and CEO Michel Guillemot concerning his views on iPhone gaming and what the announcement of the new iPhone 3G S means to his studio.

Guillemot's involvement in the game industry began with the formation of Ubisoft Entertainment by him and his brothers in 1986.  Ubisoft quickly became a very successful publisher as gaming evolved into a major industry.  But as Guillemot tells it, he longed to get back to the days of home computer gaming, when people owned a computer primarily for reasons other than gaming, but would engage in casual gaming as a matter of course.  Seeing the rise of the mobile handset, which he (correctly) believed most everyone would soon be carrying, Guillemot saw an opportunity to provide games in a model analogous to the home computer days of old.  And so was born Gameloft in 1999.

The highly successful Gameloft of 2009, with 4,000 employees worldwide, develops games for around 1,200 different mobile handsets as well as most major home and mobile consoles.  But Guillemot makes no effort to hide his particular excitement for Apple's iPhone platform.

When Steve Jobs announced the App Store and the business model, I said they are going to do as well on the App Store and on the business model as what they did on the iPhone itself, which is creating something which is quite mature, quite balanced, quite sustainable in the long run.  And that's why, as a company, we decided to really invest and support it, because it was, to me, really a kind of very advanced thinking to have these three elements [iPhone, iTunes and the business model] connected and together, reaching consumers with a very comprehensive approach.  So, I think it was very much 21st century in the making and a clear cut from anything we had seen so far.

In his view, Apple set the tone for the mobile gaming device of the 21st century.

What I think is that two years ago, handset makers and carriers were a little bit lost. We were telling them that they should bet on the game side — to make sure that the handset would be game friendly. But, for some reason, they were not. And then Apple came and convinced many people — the right way: see, it works! And now what we see is that everyone is trying to emulate them. Apple came from outside and took the lead…. And so I expect that, in the race where the leader is still running and still accelerating [ laughs ], it's challenging. Because, if they already overtook you and they're still accelerating, you really have to consider that seriously if you want to remain in the race.

And while he is dedicated to supporting the newly emerging units that seek to surpass the iPhone, he points out that for gaming those companies are at a disadvantage.  The just-launched Palm Pre, for example, Guillemot considers to be a nice device, but feels its webOS HTML5 development model puts it just about where the iPhone was for gaming before the SDK was announced.  The Android devices, he feels, also hold less promise for gamers as compared to Apple's device.

Android is Java … Java takes two-thirds of the power.  So, when you drive a car – if you take the same car with 1/3 of the horse power, you will not have the same experience.

Guillemot was pleased by Apple's announcement of the iPhone 3G S on Monday and is eager too see what advancements the new hardware will enable for his studio's games.  And while he feels the more capable device will raise gamers' expectations and make the coming year more challenging than the last for iPhone gamemakers, he appears to be rather undaunted.

Perhaps no surprise from a man whose studio creates games for most every mobile platform on the planet.

This past Saturday was an open "Game Day" at Peter Hirschberg's Luna City Arcade.  Peter is a devout retro gaming fan and is author of the iPhone port of Atari's Adventure [App Store] as well as Battlezone-like Vector Tanks [App Store].

The Luna City Arcade is a two-story, 60' x 40' building housing, presently, about 80 retro video games and pinball machines primarily from the late '70s and early '80s.  Peter has a Game Day every few months at the arcade, which is located about 70 miles west of Washington D.C.

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend the Game Day and gather some photos and video footage of the retro gaming goodness taking place as well as corner Peter for a few minutes to get his thoughts on retro gaming and a few details that went into the making of Adventure and Vector Tanks for the iPhone.

See the fun that was had in the only existing arcade of its kind, the Luna City Arcade.

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

After the jump, see our causal video interview of Peter, held in the loft above the arcade.

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William 'Trip' Hawkins III was the Director of Strategy and Marketing at Apple when he left in 1982 to form software house Electronic Arts which, during his tenure, became the world's largest video game publisher (and today, remains one of the world's leading publishers).  He left EA in the early '90s to form 3DO which, thanks to Sony and the Playstation, was a venture of rather less sucess.

As mobile devices began seeing widespread use, Hawkins formed mobile game development company Digital Chocolate in 2003.  The now 350 person, San Mateo, CA-based company has developed games for a wide variety of mobile handsets and has received a number of accolades, including the Best Developer of the Year awards from both IGN and Mobile Entertainment.

And while four of the five iPhone games Digital Chocolate has released for the iPhone since December have hit No. 1 in the App Store — no small feat — Hawkins admits to VentureBeat that the company was late to the game with the iPhone.

The iPhone for us was a spectacularly pleasant surprise. We had no idea it was going to be as good for us as it turned out to be.

Hawkins indicates that the iPhone presents a rare opportunity for Digital Chocolate and that it is really incomparable as a game platform to the myriad of mobile handsets on the market.

It’s by far our most effective platform. We make as much money with these games on one device as we do putting a game on 100 different cell phone platforms. Between the iPod Touch and the iPhone, I think the platform is freaking out Sony and Nintendo. Apple has sold 30 million units so far and it has created tremendous awareness. It has taken ground all over the world. But it has only penetrated one half of one percent of its total market.
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The platform can finally keep up with the things that you want to do. It reminds me of the Sega Genesis, when EA finally had a platform that could keep up with the games we wanted to make.

See VentureBeat's full interview to hear more of Trip Hawkins' thoughts on Apple's mobile games console.

Firemint CEO Robert Murray

We've been closely following Firemint's Real Racing game since its initial preview back in August 2008. We were very impressed by the brief clip that was provided at that time and have been anxiously awaiting its release.

Now, seven months later, we are finally approaching the game's release, and despite the number of existing of iPhone racing titles, Real Racing seems even more impressive than ever. Since that time, Firemint has also released Flight Control which is a wonderfully polished and addictive original iPhone game. While Flight Control was a much simpler project, the quality of that title makes us believe that Firemint's Real Racing will deliver on the hype.

Firemint's CEO Robert Murray has provided TouchArcade with this exclusive interview to reveal some details about his company, the game, and why Real Racing should stand out amongst the competition. They've also provided new screenshots and a new high definition video:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

Both Robert Murray and Alex Peters of Firemint have also been active in our forums and have also agreed to field some of our reader's followup questions in this forum thread.

Q: Thanks for speaking with us Robert. Can you tell us a little about Firemint, the company's background. How long you've been around etc…
 
Rob: I founded Firemint in 1999. I’d been working on PC and console games for a medium sized game development company and decided to start my own business. Initially I focused on providing high-end technology products to game development studios, but in 2001 I had the opportunity to develop a Nintendo GBA game, Nicktoons Racing, which led to further titles. Firemint really took off in 2003 when we started recruiting additional staff. 

Since then we’ve had growth bursts where we sometimes doubled in size in a short period. We now have 40 full-time people in our team and close to 30 published titles, mostly on mobile phone,  including three years of EA Sports Madden NFL 3D, The Fast and the Furious: Fugitive and Pink Slip, FIA World Rally Championship and also The Sims DJ for click-wheel iPod.

Our core business is still developing games commissioned by top tier publishers, however we are increasingly working on original IP, both for ourselves and for our publishers.
 

Q: So, getting straight to the heart of the matter, as you know, there's no shortage of racing games in the App Store. Tell us about Real Racing and what makes it different or better?
 
Rob: Well, Firemint Real Racing is a high calibre pro racing game. I haven’t seen anything like that on iPhone yet. I think there are a lot of racing games on iPhone because it is a genre that the platform lends itself to very naturally. Similarly you will find lots of great first person shooters on the PC, simply because the controls work so elegantly.  I think this is a great thing for racing fans with an iPhone.

As for what makes Real Racing special, we have a lot of unique features that I think people are really going to love.

For example, we have a cockpit view with animated driver and integrated instrumentation.  In other camera views we have a HUDless UI (that is, there is no head up display cluttering the user interface).

The game has amazing graphics and effects like lighting, specular highlights, filtered light effects, shadows, reflection mapping, smoke and skid marks. Our engine delivers extremely high polygon and texture throughput, optimised through years of work on lower spec’d hardware. The control system works the way you want it to; holding it in front of your face, in your lap, upside down in bed or using the touch screen if you choose.  We’ve brought together a brilliant physics engine with the right camera and control systems to produce that elusive ‘feels right’ vibe.  The game has a massive amount of high definition content , with 12 uniquely built tracks, 36 cars and numerous online leagues.

The other unique aspect is the connectivity built into the game [with YouTube and other social media networks].

However, what’s really important to Real Racing is not just the unique features, but how polished they are and how well they fit together into the whole game.  Some games feel so polished, so whole and complete that everyone appreciates them, whether they are fans of the genre or not. When you deliver a game like that, all people can say is “it’s great, you have to play it”, they can’t always explain why in terms of features. That sort of game, and that sort of polish is the holy grail for us and it is what we want to achieve with Firemint Real Racing.

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Metal Gear Solid Touch will arrive in the App Store on March 19th, and the upcoming title has been a hot topic of discussion lately, what with its tap-to-shoot gameplay that is a departure from the style of the popular console franchise.  G4 recently spoke with the game's producer Yasuyo Watanabe and director Ikuya Nakamura about their upcoming iPhone release.

In the interview, director Nakamura shares a few gameplay details.

G4: Kojima Productions is known for taking advantage of new hardware for some great gameplay. How will multi-touch change the way we control Snake?

Ikuya Nakamura, Director: The theme for MGSTouch is "Simple MGS."

As a result, we have come up with a simple, yet strategic control scheme that takes advantage of the unique strengths of the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.

G4: How does the actual gameplay work with targeting and shooting? Is it an on-rails shooter? How much control do you actually have with Snake?

Nakamura: Players can trace their finger along the screen to move the targeting sight, then tap the screen to fire at enemies. Headshots are possible.

In addition, you can pinch out on the screen to switch Snake's weapon to a sniper rifle, or lift your finger from the screen to take cover and hide behind walls.

They indicate that the iPhone holds appeal for Kojima because of its unique input methods, large high resolution screen, and the fact that, as a platform, it holds the potential to get the game into the hands of those outside their typical gaming audience.  Kojima hopes that once people get a glimpse of the Metal Gear Solid world through Metal Gear Solid Touch, they will become interested in the overall series.

Pocket Gamer recently sat down with Apex Design's James Daniels, the man behind Payback [App Store], the Grand Theft Auto clone that started life on the Amiga in 2001 and saw recent release for the iPhone and iPod touch.  The interview covers Daniels' beginnings as a developer as well as his thoughts on bringing the game to the iPhone platform.

Payback's been around for quite some time now. Can you tell us how it began, and give us a bit of info about the game on other systems?

It began way back in 1998. I'd written a few games for the Amiga in my spare time and decided I wanted to have a go at a commercial project. I experimented with a few ideas (everything from a first-person RTS to a Zarch/Virus-style game) before stumbling across a certain little-known game called GTA. I really liked the concept and there were a lot of additions I wanted to make to it – not to mention that it wasn't available for my platform of choice at the time.

I initially developed the game in my spare time, but it soon became a full-time job. Payback was released for the Amiga in 2001 and won several "game of the year" polls. Support for 3D graphics cards and PowerPC processors quickly followed.

Amazingly, the game is still popular among Amiga enthusiasts today.

We reviewed Payback when it debuted in late January.  See the full interview with Daniels at Pocket Gamer's website.

While we had generally considered the iPhone and iPod Touch to be one cohesive platform, as games have started to push the boundaries of these devices, it has become apparent that there are differences in performance between the different models.

Handheld Games Corp's CEO Thomas Fessler has reported to Touch Arcade that performance of their 3D TouchSports Tennis game [App Store, $4.99] is noticeably different across models. TouchSports Tennis delivers some impressive 3D rendering (video) and required optimization specifically to run consistently on every device.

Our first step to increase fps performance was to introduce hardware dependent levels of detail. Where we can easily display two 1500 polygon tennis players with 32 bones each on the iPod touch 2G and maintain fast and fluid game play, the original iPod touch just chokes, and in some instances so do the iPhones. To speed up the touch, we reduced the players to 800 polygons in farther away moments of gameplay, and are now using 1000 polygon models for close ups, bringing the original iPod touch game play performance level close to that of the iPhone 3G. We've taken this approach across the board with great results.

The most clear difference is that fact that the iPod Touch's processor was quietly boosted to 532MHz (up from 412MHz) with the 2nd generation model introduced in September. Meanwhile, the iPhone 3G, Original iPhone and 1st Generation iPod Touch continue to run at the original 412MHz. Though not the intended purpose, this video from Handheld Games Corp shows that the app load time of the 2nd Generation iPod Touch is notably faster than the 1st Generation model.

It seems that there are additional factors, however, as there are performance differences even found between the models that run at the same speed. The models rank in the following order (fastest to slowest) for 3D rendering, with the 2nd Generation iPod Touch being the fastest "by far".

#1. iPod Touch 2nd Generation
#2. iPhone 3G
#3. iPhone (original)
#4. iPod Touch 1st Generation

Due to the heavy 3D nature of his game, Fessler speculates the GPU speeds could have been tweaked as well, but there is no hard evidence of this at this time. Due to these findings, Fessler even says he would not recommend anyone interested in gaming to buy a used 1st generation iPod Touch.

Our in-depth look at the iPhone's internals, "Under the Hood: The iPhone's Gaming Mettle," has been updated to reflect this new information.

Design Week recently ran an article in its Interaction Design supplement that examines the golden opportunity for indie developers that is the iTunes App Store. With $30 million in sales for its first month alone, Apple's access-anywhere mobile application delivery vehicle is quite a success.  Design Week sits down with three indie iPhone developers and shares their experiences and thoughts on the platform.

Nathan Hunley of Igloo Games, author of Dizzy Bee

‘BUDGET? What’s that?’ laughs Nathan Hunley, Dizzy Bee’s designer, when asked how much the development of his first iPhone game cost. ‘I made Dizzy Bee by begging. Every few months I had to borrow cash from my dad to pay for rent and macaroni cheese. Friends helped translate some text, and did the play-testing, and I was even borrowing the iPod Touch I did my development on.’

Simon Oliver of Hand Circus, author of the upcoming Rolando

Despite being one of the iPhone’s more ambitious first-wave games, the oddball Rolando is largely the work of one person – Simon Oliver, a Flash developer who contracts for design consultancies such as Ideo and All of Us. With a day job creating experience prototypes and game-based museum exhibits, Oliver had been circling the indie development scene for some time, searching for a way in. ‘I’d been looking for the right platform to focus on, but the opportunities for innovation and huge potential user-base of the iPhone stood out,’ he explains. Oliver set up Hand Circus, his own micro-studio, in June 2008. ‘It’s just me at the moment,’ he says, ‘but the plan is to bring other people on board on a project-by-project basis, to get the best and most suitable people working on each title, according to genre and style.’

Steve Demeter of Demiforce, author of Trism

By day, Steve Demeter writes ATM software for Wells Fargo. By night, he programmes and releases casual games under his own Demiforce label. His latest, Trism, has become one of the early success stories of the iTunes Apps Store.
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Demeter suggests the iPhone games market is likely to become crowded fairly quickly. ‘Within the next month, people will start getting their first pay-cheques from Apple. Companies like EA are probably already well on their way to getting a return,’ he predicts. ‘In one year the iPhone will have a lot of all kinds of games on it. I’m interested in seeing how long that period lasts. In the end, I think we’ll see a good variety of simple timewasters – a mix of casual games and toys, simple experiences for busy professionals.’

Hats off to these and all indie developers who are turning the iPhone into the best mobile games platform on the market.  See Design Week's story for the full interviews with these three talented individuals.