Atari has released two new games for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Backyard Baseball [App Store] and Backyard Soccer [App Store]. The two games cost $0.99 each, but based on our initial gameplay, they may not even be worth those prices.
Backyard Soccer
Welcome to Backyard Soccer! Joey is ready to play some soccer. In three rounds of exciting soccer action, help Joey pass the ball to his open teammates and score as many points as possible. Use the touch pad to pass the ball to the three teammates as the defenders attempt to stop you from scoring. Careful though! A missed pass or goal costs you as many points as you could have gained. Keep your high scores and hand off the game to your friends to see if they can put up more points than you!
Gameplay involves no player movements. Simply tapping on one of three of your players results in a corner kick which is deflected towards the goal. Opposing players scroll up and down the screen to block your shots. Very simplistic gameplay.
App Store Link: Backyard Soccer, $0.99
Backyard Baseball
Dmitri built a batting simulation in his back yard! Join him in some Backyard Baseball as you attempt to hit the coded targets. Each one will earn you a different hit: a single, double, triple or a home run. You have three innings to get as many runs and points as possible. To keep your skills sharp, the targets will reset as you work your way through the innings and doing well brings up fewer and fewer to aim at — just to keep you on your toes! Keep your high scores and hand the game off to your friends to see if they can put up more points than you!
Gameplay simply involves tapping on the screen to strike the automatic pitches. Tap early and the ball goes towards the left. Tap late and the ball goes towards the right. Depending on which icons you knock over, you earn different types of runs (single, double, home run). Very simple gameplay.
App Store: Backyard Baseball, $0.99
While both of these titles seemed very promising, after spending a brief amount of time with both games, it’s hard to say they are even worth the $0.99. Despite their themes, both games are very simple representations of their respective sports.
To calibrate:
Labyrinth is not on the top ten, yet at $6.99, it has had over 4.5 million downloads (and counting). See:
http://labyrinth.codify.se/
Is that even possible for labyrinth to have 4.5 million downloads? I see it on the homepage and it looks like it just goes up one every 5 seconds or so... cause at 6.99 with 4.5 million sales that would be like $31,822,359 not including what apple takes from it.... chopper was in the top 50 for about 3 months (higher thank labyrinth i think?) labyrinth didn't get too far, and chopper has only made 1,000+ dollars....
goes up one download every 4 seconds, i timed it in my head, so i dont think thats realistic...
One can speculate then whether the counter on the Labyrinth site is a marketing gimmick...
Remeber: Pangea made more in 4 months in the App Store than the combined total of all commercial releases they have come out with - combined - since 1988. It was a no-brainer for them to drop all platforms and focus on iPhone.
The iPhone / App Store scenario is a phenomenon indeed...
Well, that money made was spread over about 5 or 6 games, so comparing the sales of one game to 5 or 6 which ranged in the 9.99 range for times, while labyrinth never went over 7.99 and its one game.
@Blake
Yeah, they are focusing on the iphone now, but look at what game they debuted: Antimatter ( not very impressive IMHO compared to some of their ports)
This list is complete b s, these are all of the games that those greedy pigs at apple have been paid to sponsor since day one of the appstore back in july. All for propaganda and large sums of money with no regard for quality and demand
It would be sort of cool to see touchArcade's "BEST games of 2008" list. The reviews are great, but there are so many games coming out and being reviewed all the time that it's impossible to keep up, or filter through it all when you get that hankering for a new game.
@ibwb we're working on such a list.
arn
I'm very excited to have made that list. I hope my next games do as well.
@Smokin I can only speak for myself, but I haven't paid Apple a penny besides the 30% they take for commission. They've featured my app in several places, but that was their decision & I only found out about it by noticing it myself (i.e. no lobbying on my part).
@SalsaMD The Labyrinth count includes downloads for their free & paid versions. Millions of free downloads is entirely attainable.
Aurora Feint: The Beginning is not on there and yet the awful, awful Audi A4 Driving Challenge is?
@Killquake: I actually was curious about that so I looked at the code for their page and the only thing the counter does is increment the counter by 1 every few seconds or so with a starting value of 2 million or so at some given date.
Labyrinth says it counts _all_ downloads. There's a lite version that probably get a ton of downloads. But even with the lite version excluded, they are still probably up 1mil+.
@Tetrad:
Yes, it's definetly just a counter clock!
So they are faking the numbers! Really lame!
Labryinth is a timer, anyone can see that.
I'm just as suprised as many of you at some of the results, but maybe I should remind you all that the App Store is a popularity contest, not a quality means test.
All it says to me is, the human race still has a long way to go....:P
Actually, if you read through http://labyrinth.codify.se/... you'll see that the counter is indeed just fake.
This is the line that generates a number of downloads from the current time/date:
curCount = count+Math.round((today.getTime()-countFromDate.getTime())/(speed))
I have no idea whether or not the Labyrinth sales claims are legit but a clock as counter in and of itself doesn't mean they're lying. A "world population" counter at a museum doesn't actually update as each kid is born, right?
Skippy... go stand in the corner!
How many iPhone exist? I'd like to see some of these downloads expressed as a percentage. So, like 4.5M downloads seems like it's gotta be around 40% of all iPhones.
Of course, the light version was one of the first apps available, so it could be everywhere.