If you’re not already familiar with my love of Joypad, you might want to check out yesterday’s video filled review. It’s really neat (and nerdy) to pull an iPod touch out of your pocket to play a classic on your Mac or PC with a virtual controller, and I think you’ll love this app-controller gone must-have-gizmo too. We’re giving away ten copies of Joypad to several lucky readers this weekend, so if you love blasting pixel pirates or have an iOS toting gamer in your life, you might want to click the tweet button after reading our rules past the break.
Posts tagged with "ipod touch"
We Think You’ll <3 Joypad Too: We Have Ten Copies To Give Away
I Love Joypad For iOS
I recently completed Cave Story (for the thirteenth time) with the aid of niche but awesome iOS app by the name of Joypad. Turning your iPhone into a virtual video game controller, Joypad is a pocketable companion for 8 bit, indie, or emulator crazy Mac gamers who don’t have a USB controller accessible. NES, SNES, N64, SEGA Genesis, and GBA controllers are all available to smash those Cheeto flavored fingers on, but how well does a flat display work with bumpers?
Are iOS Game Prices Creating Culture of Disposability? Nintendo Boss Thinks So
The head honcho of Nintendo North America, Reggie Fils-Aime has criticized the price levels of apps in the iTunes App Store claiming that the low prices create a “mentality” for consumers that portable games should only be a few dollars. Fils-Aimes who is the Nintendo North American president and chief operating officer felt that such a mentality also breeds a culture that believes content is disposable because of the cheap price and that this was one of the gaming industries biggest risks today.
Whilst Fils-Aime’s is not the most independent commentator on this issue with his company’s Nintendo DS platform directly competing with the gaming aspects of iOS, his points do have some validity. Games on the App store have tended to be below $5 compared to DS and PSP games that are typically well above that range. The presumption is the Fils-Aime’s fears that the App store prices will spread across to all platforms and lead to more gimmicky, simplistic games rather than well though out, in-depth game experiences.
iPod Touch Turned Into DIY Phone With Original Packaging
Lifehacker has a knack for showcasing crazy DIY projects like this one: an iPod touch turned pPhone (p is for plastic) thanks to Apple’s original packaging. By coordinating a pair headphones to create an earpiece, he uses VoIP to make calls over WiFi, and some creative modding to get his solution to work as third party microphones crapped out or simply didn’t function. We think it’s a great idea: you have a free hardcover case on the cheap, and you’re not paying a contract with AT&T or Verizon. All that’s left is to draw the Apple logo on the back with a sharpie.
Also: I wish I was born with those amazing headphone tying skills.
[Lifehacker via TUAW]
iAds Twice as Effective as TV Says Apple, Campbell’s
A Nielsen study shows iPhone users are paying attention, while TV views – eh, not so much. iAds started around 7 months ago on our iDevices and now there are effectiveness studies showing up, this one from Campbell’s (the soup maker).
People exposed to one of Campbell’s iAds were more than twice as likely to recall it than those who had seen a Campbell’s TV ad. This five-week Nielsen study showed that consumers who saw an iAd remembered Campbell’s brand five times more often than TV ad respondents and the ad’s message three times more often. iAd respondents were four times as likely to to purchase Campbell’s than the TV viewers. Users also liked the ad five times more than the TV commercial. Read more
iPad 2: No Retina Display, Anti-Reflection Screen, iPod touch Cameras?
A new report by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities details the components of the iPad 2 and the features Apple is expected to implement in the next-generation model of the device. The analyst believes the iPad 2 won’t have a 2048x1536 Retina Display, as resolution isn’t what Apple is focusing on at the moment due to production volume and costs. Rather, the iPad 2’s screen will be built with anti-reflection technologies and a thinner form factor to put it in direct competition with Amazon’s ebook reading device, the Kindle. Anti-reflection is indeed one of the key features in Amazon anti-iPad commercials.
According to the report, iPad 2 will also have faster processor, RAM and graphics as previously reported. The new tablet will likely come with an ARM Cortex-A9 dual core processor, Imagination’s SGX543 dual core GPU and 512 MB of RAM. Currently, the iPhone 4 has the same amount of RAM but the original iPad only has 256 MB. The graphic technology Ming-Chi Kuo thinks will go into the iPad 2 should be 200 - 300% more powerful than the iPhone 4.
Last, the report mentions the iPad 2 will feature iPod touch-like cameras, rather than higher-quality ones found on the iPhone 4. Cameras should be 0.3 mega-pixel VGA front-facing one and a 1 MP (iPod touch-like) rear one. Because of the 1024x768 rumored resolution, these cameras should be enough to guarantee good picture quality. Previous rumors suggested the iPad would get cameras similar to the iPod touch’s ones, although earlier reports pointed to Largan Precision as the selected manufacturer for 5 MP camera lenses.
Beat The Parking Meter With Honk For The iPhone
Have you ever gotten a ticket because you forgot to refill the parking meter? Sucks doesn’t it? Here’s the deal: you can pay a monkey to keep popping quarters in the slots, or you can pay for an iPhone app that’s honk worthy. Really: parking meters (and remembering your parking spot) shouldn’t be so hard.
Flight Control Lands Nearly 4 Million Sales
Firemint, which recently acquired Infinite Interactive has posted on it’s blog some sales statistics of it’s popular Flight Control game that is currently featured in Apple’s Top Paid Apps of all time. As of the post it had sold 3,881,634 copies and has raked in $3.8 million dollars and that’s after Apple 30% take.
As demonstrated by the graph it released that is shown above (click for larger size) it’s pretty clear that Christmas and big feature updates really helped increase sales of the game. In particular the addition of Game Center support led to a peak of 120,000 sales, the largest peak since the release of the app. The new maps update and Retina display support were the other notable peaks.
Also notable is the sales by country, as the graph below the break shows, the US has the lion’s share followed by Great Britain, Australia and Germany.
XBMC Comes to the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 2
XBMC, a popular media center originally made for the first Xbox has become fairly widespread has been available for a variety of platforms, today that platform base extended to include the new Apple TV, iPhone and iPad.
The client on these new platforms is not stripped down to simply just view streams but is fully fledged with all the features you would come to expect it to have on a Windows PC. Because of this it is being distributed for the iOS devices through a Cydia repository and for the Apple TV through an apt-get install.
Scott Davilla one of the XBMC developers talked to TUAW and he revealed that development for the Apple TV 2 started only on November 1st last year and the iOS versions a few weeks later. He notes that the built in web server is currently disabled and the skin isn’t optimized but says improvements will be made including the possibility of implementing AirPlay into all the Apple related releases.
Perhaps one of the most interesting developments that occurred whilst XBMC was ported was the discovery of an API called VideoToolBox that allows hardware video decoding, encoding and scaling of the video size to match the final display size. So powerful is this API that Davilla and others that developed XBMC for iPad are able to stream full 1080p video with no transcoding to the iPad and it plays nearly perfectly, only dropping a few frames. Davilla’s confident however that the A4 processor can handle 1080p and will be working to ensure fully smooth playback.
TUAW put together some video’s demonstrating it running on all three of the new platforms, check it out here.