Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits
By Paul Miller 
posted February 19th 2009 6:50AM
posted February 19th 2009 6:50AM
Palm did confirm that games are in development for webOS, and seems a little defensive at accusations that the OS can't handle that stuff -- Palm hasn't changed its stance on app development, of course, there are no "native" apps allowed currently, but they seem more reticent to admit that web-style app development will limit gaming options. Perhaps they're hoping Adobe's Open Screen Project will save them some grief on this front, since Flash will be ready for webOS by the end of the year. Palm's currently working with a small amount of developers in private beta, refining the SDK to their feedback and needs, and will slowly expand that as the phone approaches launch, but we don't expect a full SDK to reach Joe the Coder until very close to before or after the launch. We asked about the potential for a soft keyboard, and they said that there's no reason that developers couldn't build their own -- though we're not sure how that would work. Out of the gate developers won't have super deep access to the OS from what we understand -- they wouldn't be able to do something like Facebook's level of OS-wide contacts integration, for instance -- but Palm hopes to open those APIs up further down the line.
We get the impression that Palm feels version 1.0 of webOS is very feature complete, and that the most surprises we'll get from here to launch will be mostly along the lines of 3rd party development and release details.
It looks like Salon is changing the article to be "first half" now...but not really doing it very well Lol!
Freakin ljit, you might want to read that again.
directly copied and pasted from the article:
"To attract customers, Sprint hopes to launch the new Palm Pre phone in the second first half of 2009"
That looks like a typo to me. "Second first half"? Do they mean the first half? Second half? Second quarter?
The original mistake simply read "Second half". then they poorly editted it to read "first half" but...well...poorly editted it.
The text I quoted above is, too, directly copied and pasted. Salon just isn't doing a very good job of editting it...
I call Sprint every week or so to ask when the Pre is due out. The answer is consistently Q2.
I don't think Palm Pre games are going to be able to match the games on iPhone. But I still think Pre will turn out to be a great phone in other categories.
I really hope Palm caves in and gives a full SDK with native access to the hardware like Apple finally did. Then Pre games would probably be superior to iPhone games as long as there are the developers out there willing to write serious games for the device.
If a phone doesn't do what I want out of the box, I don't want it. Who cares about availability of apps.
Am I the only who doesn't care whether pre has games or not?
When do you people find the time to play games on your mobiles anyway? For me the only time when I potentially could play games on my cellphone/smartphone is when I'm at home, where I would much rather play on my PC or 360.
And on a device like pre - I mean do you really need monkeyball or quake on it - seriously? Because if you just want your bejeweled, or tetris, or even some 2d scrollers - pre won't have any trouble handling that.
Interesting - so Palm is having trouble landing a carrier in Europe. All this hype about a big announcement by Palm and they were virtually a no-show . Boring event really. All the phones etc announced had already been leaked and were no big deal anyway. Add to that that the Pre is still likely a long way off, Apple didn’t even show up - I guess it’s time to look for other things to amuse our gadget hungry public.
If anyone is seriously interested in developing applications for the Pre, a couple of us have set up a new site dedicated exclusively to webOS application development. We'll be adding new tutorials and resources to it regularly as new information becomes available from Palm, and even before: in fact we just posted an HTML5 tutorial with a webOS slant on it.
http://www.weboshelp.net
We encourage you to visit and post about what features and information you want to see, as we plan to evolve the site based primarily on user feedback.