Games developer BioWare has found itself in the spotlight of late thanks to the XBOX 360 release of the rather popular Mass Effect.  And as evidenced by the recent PC release, it’s clear that BioWare is looking to broaden its platform horizons.  In so doing, the company hasn’t overlooked the iPhone.

As BioWare revealed in a recent MTV interview,

“We look at every platform that comes along. Obviously, something that’s as big a cultural and technical success as the iPhone is something you really got to take a close look at. Certainly, there’s nothing written in stone yet but we’ve got a lot of folks looking at it. It’s intriguing. I think one of the things that we’ll have to see how it shakes out is what type of consumer buys games on it and what type of experience they’re looking for. You want to always mash the consumer experience with what you’re building. We want to understand what people are going to do with it. Who knows. We’re definitely looking at every platform.”

Will we see an iPhone port of Mass Effect in the iTunes App Store before long?  Let’s hope.  But until then, stay tuned…

Gamasutra recently interviewed former EA executive, Neil Young, who plans on forming a new iPhone-focused gaming company. The company will be called Ngmoco.

Young says “It feels to me like the time is right to really innovate, both in terms of the business and the games that can get made for mobile platforms.”

When questioned about the appeal of the iPhone platform, Young talks of the performance of the iPhone being up to par with the PSP. In addition, the iPhone’s set of standard features, including location aware, touchscreen, accelerometers, always on and always connected to a network opens the doors to unique possibilities.

The interview provides some interesting insight into the App Store from a business perspective and the future potential:

We’re at this moment where there’s an opportunity to lead both in terms of the type of software they we make and give to people in mobile phones, specifically, starting with the iPhone. And from a business standpoint, there’s an opportunity to lead in the growth of the industry. And not incremental growth, but dramatic growth. And that’s, from a business standpoint, why I’m excited about the device.

Ngmoco plans on both commissioning both original games as well as funding independent developers. They seem to be taking iPhone development seriously with the goal of leveraging the strength of the platform.

I don’t really think the right path to go down is to immediately start thinking about how to build bigger, better, higher-end, more traditional gaming experiences. Rather, not to obviate or ignore those things, but rather try to take true advantage of what’s in the system. So if you saw a game on the iPhone, you’d say, “Wow, this is only a game that can function on this platform.”

Apple has posted a Guided Tour of the iPhone 3G and the 2.0 Firmware update. Existing iPhone users will be familiar with most of the demoed features, but towards the end, Apple shows off the App Store on the iPhone and the download process. We’ve clipped the relevant video here:

We’ve been waiting as anxiously as everyone else about the launch of iPhone Firmware 2.0 and the iTunes App Store.

The WWDC keynote gave us no specific release date for the 2.0 Firmware or the App Store.

Recent comments by Apple reps, however, confirm what was tucked away in the iPhone 3G press release: that the 2.0 Firmware and App Store will be released on July 11th.

Existing iPhone users will also be able to run the 2.0 Firmware that lets them download and run 3rd party applications. A number of apps are in development but announcements have been scarce due to concerns about Non Disclosure Agreements surrounding the iPhone SDK. Stay tuned, however, because on launch day we expect there to be hundreds of announcements from 3rd party developers promoting their wares.

Pocket Gamer reports that PopCap, makers of the popular web-based game Bejeweled for the iPhone and iPod touch, is currently developing several native iPhone games to be sold through the iTunes App Store.

PopCap VP James Gwertzman, in a recent interview with Pocket Gamer, revealed that the company is very excited about Apple’s mobile device as a gaming platform.

“We love the iPhone,” he says. “I’ve seen some of the stuff we’re working on in our lab, and it’s a terrific gaming device. The screen is beautiful, it’s powerful, and the interface is incredibly intuitive.”

The company is preparing to launch a new (undisclosed) title which Gwertzman describes as their best yet.  We’re anxious to see what the company has in store.  Stay tuned.

The iPhone packs a rather notable punch when it comes to CPU horsepower for a mobile computing device of its size and class.  The 620MHz Xscale-based ARM core in its chipset is no slouch–in fact it’s one of if not the most powerful extremely-low-wattage mobile processor out there.  But, that’s not to say that the iPhone is up to any and every computer gaming challenge.

Here, we look to the work of an Intel research group in Israel that is striving to develop technologies to allow mobile devices of modest power to run graphically tasking applications such as heavyweight MMORGPs like World of Warcraft and Second Life. 

Second Life and World of Warcraft are among the most prominent MMOGs. They demand lots of computing power – both from the CPU and Graphics. These demands overload any mobile device of today or near future, even including MIDs. By the time the mobile clients have caught up, the performance requirements for MMOGs will grow higher yet.

The 3D Streaming technology developed by Comverse and Intel computes and renders the MMOG content on a powerful backend server, then smartly compresses and streams the graphics onto a client. A network gateway designed by Comverse allows streaming over both WiMAX and 3G cellular networks. With advanced software optimizations including SSE usage, a single Xeon 5400 backend system can serve simultaneously up to 14 clients.

A demonstration video featuring Alexander Sterkin, Sr. SW Application Engineer in Intel’s Software & Solutions Group–but not featuring the iPhone or iPod touch, explains the project further.
 

This is an interesting technology to follow that may enable the iPhone or iPod touch to act as clients to games and applications more demanding than the platform would normally allow.

Details have emerged surrounding what developers wishing to distribute games and other applications through the iTunes App Store will face as far as control over their content and store limitations.

AppleInsider reports that people familiar with the matter indicate that developers will have wide-ranging control over the manner in which their applications are presented.

…the iPhone maker is said by those aware of the submission interface to be offering a significant amount of control over how and where apps are delivered.

A web-based portal lets developers manage a large number of business and store presentation elements. It also lets these creators set the compatibility of the app with the iPod touch, the global regions where program should be distributed, and even game content ratings that roughly match American and European standards, warning parents of particularly sexual or violent content during play.

Some limitations developers will encounter concern application size and price.  Applications uploaded to the App Store via the iTunes Connect service have apparently been given a maximum file size limit of 2GB. Apps that need to draw on an extensive, local database may be limited by this restriction–but 2GB does not seem claustrophobic for a device such as the iPhone.

Apple is reportedly implementing a tiered pricing system in the App Store.  Developers wishing to charge for their applications can set the price as low as 99 cents or as high as $999.99.  Movement in price between those extremes occurs in increments from between $1 and $100, depending on the relative price of the app.

According to AppleInsider sources, Apple will not sell titles through the App Store that would merit an “adult” rating.

As for just when the App Store will make it’s debut, there is evidence that the “early July” launch that Apple has spoken of will coincide with the July 11th launch of the iPhone 3G.

When customers will have their own turn at the App Store isn’t clear from the information Apple is sending out. The company has officially stated “early July.” However, those familiar with the App Store submission process say a ’sell-on date’ option included as part of the application submission process currently defaults to July 11th, the same day as the iPhone 3G first goes on sale. Others who’ve spoken directly to Apple about the launch date have also been told July 11th.

Major mobile applications developer Handmark has announced, at Apple’s WWDC conference in San Francisco, that it intends to develop a variety of games and applications for the iPhone.

“Handmark has an unmatched level of experience and expertise in developing top-quality games and applications for nearly all of the leading mobile platforms in the market today,” said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO. “As new mobile platforms successfully emerge, like the iPhone, we view it as a great opportunity to expand our licensed titles and help others develop their titles for a new mobile audience.”

UK-based Astraware, the Handmark Game Studio, will play an integral part in the development of various game titles for the iPhone, the company indicates.  Astraware was one of the first companies to develop games for the fifth-generation iPod in 2006.

A few of the many mobile gaming titles release by Handmark:

• The Sims 2 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC
• Sims Bowling for Windows Mobile Pocket PC
• Konami Frogger for Windows Mobile Pocket PC
• Super PAC-MAN for Palm OS
• Galaga for Palm OS
• Contra for Windows Mobile Smartphone
• EA Tetris Mania for Windows Mobile Smartphone
• Dig Dug by Namco for BlackBerry
• Monopoly Here and Now for BlackBerry

This year’s 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off with the launch of the iPhone 3G and demos of a number of new iPhone and iPod Touch games. We were hoping that Apple would finally provide some solid details on the exact launch of the iTunes App Store and also release developers from the somewhat vaguely termed Non Disclosure Agreement which accompanies the SDK.

During the keynote, however, Steve Jobs never gave an exact date for the launch of the iTunes App Store, but did say the iPhone 2.0 Firmware would be released in “early July”. The iTunes App Store has always been one of the major features of the 2.0 Firmware, so we should expect the app store launch at that time.

We’ve been told the App Store is still undergoing active development so Apple may not even know when the final version will be ready.

Also, there’s been reports that the latest 2.0 Firmware is “locked down like no phone has ever been.” So, Jailbreaking is currently out of the question.

Once the iTunes App Store launches, we suspect the popularity of Jailbreaking will decline, but some apps (such as emulators) will have to remain outside of the official App Store due to restrictions placed by Apple.

The iControlPad developers posted a video of an early hack connecting the original SNES gamepad to control an emulated SNES game on the iPhone.

The hack was the basis for early testing for them to developer their future gaming accessory for the iPhone. The video also nicely demonstrates the SNES4iPhone emulator available to Jailbroken iPhones.