Another ‘analyst’ clearly earning their money, commenting on iOS making ground on the PSP and DS in mobile gaming:

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities:

what’s the difference if you play Tetris on an iPod Touch or on a DS? Well, you pay a buck on the iPod Touch, you pay $20 on the DS. Parents prefer $1 or free software. I think the iPod Touch is going to sell really, really well. I really think as the iPod Touch gets more and more powerful, you’re going to see a lot of free games over there.

Yes, because iOS doesn’t already have a lot of free games. And the iPod touch isn’t already selling ‘really well’. Let’s also ignore the primary reasons behind the success of iOS as a gaming platform: huge range, bringing fun and novelty back to gaming, millions of credit cards already being hooked up to iTunes, the ability of bedroom coders to fight alongside industry giants. But, no, it’s all about cheap shit, says the analyst.

Gah.

Also, Tetris. Great example. First, it’s very rarely a buck on iOS (usually $2.99); secondly, it’s a pretty mediocre version, unlike the rather spiffy DS one.

GAH.

…

Just… GAH.

I spent a fair chunk of October working on content for Tap!, the iPhone and iPad magazine, on the stands later this month. The magazine’s official Twitter feed just announced that it’s doing a one-off special offer of three issues for a fiver, for anyone who subscribes before Friday.

From what I’ve seen of the mag so far, it’s going to be all kinds of fab, and so anyone with an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad would be a banana to not take advantage of the offer.

UPDATE: So someone from Touch Arcade found this post and said to me: “Really Craig? Your blog post is preceded with ‘I haven’t tried iDOS yet’ and you still go on to admonish Eli? Grain of salt.”

It’s a fair point, but my argument was more to do with the fact emulators for iOS never work as well as native games. Having since spent a couple of happy hours mucking about with iDOS, I certainly agree that it’s a fun curiosity, but the game-playing experience pales in comparison to games designed specifically for iOS, much as you’d expect.

Yesterday, an app called iDOS came to the App Store. Essentially a port of DOSBox with a couple of nicely IP-infringing Namco games welded to it, I predicted the emulator would be pulled off the store within two days. In fact, it only took a few hours before the Apple Police took it out back and shot it.

I’ve not tried iDOS yet (the developer was kind enough to send me a promo during the few hours the app was live), but I like me some retro-gaming, and it’s a nice curiosity. I have vague ideas about maybe getting a few old DOS games I’ve got knocking around working, but ultimately I probably won’t have enough time.

This is a good thing. That’s because it’s part of the slippery slope that I experienced with DS-based emulation. On Nintendo’s system, the lack of decent new games meant I very often ended up playing ZX Spectrum games via an emulator. On iOS, I pretty much download a new game every day, which is far more interesting than repeatedly playing stuff I’ve already played; also, I’m potentially supporting more developers; additionally, this means I’m getting optimal experiences, since the games are made for the system.

Touch Arcade doesn’t get this. In an article called The Importance of iDOS, Eli Hodapp says this:

What if developers leveraged the power of iDOS, or, more accurately, the open source nature of both Dospad and Dosbox to release individually tailored versions of iDOS with a specific game embedded and the emulator extensively tweaked to run that game well?

I can’t think of anything worse for iOS gaming. Emulators already exist on the system. Sega’s Mega Drive one is dire. Manomio’s C64 one is a good effort, but those old 8-bit games just don’t work without digital controllers. About the only emulator I can deal with is Frotz, and that’s because it’s a text adventure player (specifically, it runs Z-Machine files), and so it only needs a decent keyboard, which the iPad happily has.

I’m fine with retro games on iOS, but I sincerely hope if iDOS has inspired people, it’s inspired them to remake old games, or at least adapt them to iOS. I’d love to see Cannon Fodder for iOS. I’d be perfectly happy with the DOS version, but only if it had controls reworked specifically for iOS devices. What I don’t want is to be swiping my iPad screen like a crazy person, trying to move a cursor, thereby providing another layer of control abstraction that’s totally unnecessary in iOS gaming.

TechRadar reports that Angry Birds is to get a new Mighty Eagle character. Available only as an in-app purchase, it changes your weapon to a sardine tin, which upon landing causes a gigantic eagle to come down and obliterate everything. Rovio argues that this will aid users who cannot get past certain levels.

Since Angry Birds has several difficultly walls—levels that abruptly require an insane level of precision to complete, despite being surrounded by far more forgiving ones—adding a paid-for cheat is a pretty loathsome tactic. It’s a band-aid to cover up for poor level design and a rather cynical way of generating revenue (rather than adding value with extra levels, which would be worth 59p).

Still, at least Rovio hasn’t broken Angry Birds in terms of scoring. Using the eagle doesn’t enable you to get a full three-star quota for the level it’s used on. Compare this to Bejeweled Blitz, totally ruined by PopCap when it added ‘boosts’ that can be bought using Facebook credits. With these, PopCap rendered its online high-score tables largely irrelevant, since players no longer start on an even playing field. It’s the rough equivalent of pitching two Pac-Man players against each other, only in one case a player’s yellow dot-muncher is accompanied by the Ghostbusters and a priest. Here’s hoping Rovio stamps on the brakes regarding ‘cheats’ before Angry Birds suffers the same fate.

So I just installed iOS 4.1 on my iPhone and started farting about with Game Center. Like Ping, it does make me wonder if Apple understands that when it comes to social networking, it’s best not to avoid the ‘social’ and ‘networking’ bits.

The good

Game Center has a pretty straightforward interface that shows up the likes of OpenFeint as being even more of a mess than you originally thought they were. I can take or leave (well, if I’m honest, leave; well, if I’m really honest, set fire to) the casino-like gambling table green-fuzz and wood visual appearance, but at least the navigation is fine.

The bad and the bonkers

In the case of Game Center, ‘the bad’ and ‘the bonkers’ are both the same thing. Currently, most of my social gaming happens on Facebook, but via iOS games that happily connect to my Facebook account. I sign in, and immediately I have an arcade-game-style high-score table, populated with my friends’ scores. It’s great, and it’s simple (one click and a sign-in).

Because Apple hates relying on others, it’s eschewed this approach, instead forcing you to go through a protracted set-up to get your Apple ID talking to Game Center, followed by an invite system that’s either by known username or by email (seriously).

The modern web and online services are entirely based around networking, and are successful when these services all talk to each-other. By sealing itself off from the rest of the world and existing social networking (be it Facebook, Twitter or other services), Game Center irks. I don’t doubt it’ll be a success—there are too many iOS gamers and excited developers for it not to be. But it is awkward, unwieldy and unnecessarily time-consuming to deal with, and these are direct opposites to the things Apple has historically been known for.

Update: Game Center also cunningly provides usernames only with friend requests. I’ve already had a request from someone who I’ve no idea who they are. Gnh.

Update 2: ‘The Rev’ writes in the comments: “It’d be nice if it worked, too – the Flight Control leaderboard is showing my first score today, not the better score from my next attempt and not my best score from before Game Center launched.” Oh dear. Follow-up-o-tron: “It’s actually my FIRST since GC – not best since. I’ve done better today and it’s not uploaded. Other people okay, though.” Fire up the Bug Kill Machine, Walter!