FreePlay
Latest
Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD available for free through new Free Play program
Touch Arcade blogs about iOS games, and they've just announced Free Play, which will periodically feature selected iOS games for free. There are quite a few programs like this around, of which Free App a Day is probably the most popular. But a lot of those programs do things such as charge developers to be promoted on the service, essentially selling installs to boost chart listings, Touch Arcade's Eli Hodapp tells TUAW that this program will specifically pick games based on quality. "Everything 'free' nowadays," he says, "has a catch deserving of a giant asterisk and a load of fine print. We just want to work with developers to get people playing their games." Free Play will target games chosen by the site's editors as quality titles and one that have only been sold as paid apps, making them free for a limited time. "Take your typically heavily promoted free game," Hodapp says. "Chances are moments before the game goes on sale, an update lands that totally rebalances the game into a free-to-play [in-app purchase]-powered experience, at which point it's hardly even a 'sale' or 'deal.'" The Free Play promotion will offer new titles periodically, and Hodapp says the plan is to offer selections "as often as we can but seldom enough that they still feel special." The first title chosen to go free is Crescent Moon Games' Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD, a 3D-roleplaying game that's been popular on the App Store. It'll be interesting to see which titles are chosen with a strategy like this, and the end result is a great one: We all get more free games.
Freeplay's ZipCharge spotted, priced and dated
Freeplay's ZipCharge has already made its debut, but it's showing itself once more at Mobile World Congress now that it has a definitive ship date and price. For those out of the loop, this here power stick can charge up in just ten minutes, and the supplied cable provides all sorts of tips to juice up whatever random gadget you have laying around (Palm's Foleo notwithstanding). The device is expected to splash down on store shelves this April for around £60 ($85), and you can peek a few more hands-on shots in the read link below.
EA sets focus on Wii-exclusive versions of sports games
If you're in the gaming industry on the development end, odds are you've had plenty of meetings talking about the success of the Wii platform and how your company needs to get its own slice of the pie (well, unless you're Epic). EA has decided that they want a fairly decent slice of that pie, and are doing so with special Wii versions of their sports games. EA expects that sales of its sports games will account for $1.3 billion in its fiscal year (which just ended in March), coming to a third of their total revenue. The model for them (like others) has been Wii Sports. Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, commented that EA has "no intention whatsoever of dumbing down the experience that we all love and that drives this multibillion dollar business ... we need to make sports games more approachable." He then comments how Wii Sports became so popular "and we saw that and decided we needed to redefine what our sports games were about." These new accessible Wii versions of EA's popular sports games will have an "All-Play" label attached. Moore explains it as "like how swimming pools have a deep end and a shallow end. EA Sports has really only built a swimming pool with a deep end. It's intimidating for a lot of people to jump right in the deep end. With All-Play, we're building a shallow end."Maybe with all this Wii support, Reggie will finally send Peter one.
Project LifeLight set to illuminate African homes -- no electricity required
First it was radios, now lights. The Freeplay Foundation has undertaken a new project -- dubbed LifeLight -- which aims to provide just a few hours of lighting each night to the 500 million or so sub-Saharan Africans without appropriate access to electricity. The idea is to place a wind-up (or foot-pump driven we presume) base station into the home which charges a collection of detachable lights. Similar to the technology behind the 150,000 wind-up Lifeline radios (pictured) they've already distributed. Freeplay hopes to replace expensive and unhealthy kerosene or battery powered lamps currently in use with their low-cost, environmentally safe alternative -- local women will be trained to sell and repair the devices. Prototypes are being readied with tests to begin in Kenya in the "next few months."
Sony wants The Agency to be free to play
At this week's Leipzig Games Convention, the president of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley held a talk on "Subscriptions vs Micro-transactions" in regards to MMO games. During the briefing, he indicated that Sony was looking at making their upcoming pc/ps3 spy-themed MMO a free play title, meaning there would be no subscription fee (unlike World of Warcraft). Instead, SOE would fund the title via micro-transactions and a 'velvet-rope policy' where certain area are only available if people pay for access.Smedley acknowledged that consumers are used to the subscription based model (as is SOE, considering their long history of subscription based MMOs), but said that they "believe very strongly that this is the future of MMO gaming, but we also know that it is something that players have an issue with... There's going to be an aftermarket, and we want to control it so that players don't get duped into having something switched out from them."So instead of paying a gold farmer or a rare-item hunter to hook you up with in-game goodies, Sony wants to have you pay them for the loot in a controlled manner so you don't have to deal with shady dealers. Also, this way you don't have to pay a subscription fee -- you just pay for what you want, in an a la carte method. An interesting idea all around, but sure to be controversial. Which would you rather do, pay 15 dollars a month in subscription fees or pay 5-20 dollars a month (depending on what you buy) in micro-transaction fees?
Sony's ICF-B01 emergency radio with hand crank
Thanks to Walt Mossberg, we know how important it is to keep a crank-powered radio around the house, and now Sony has joined the likes of Eton and Freeplay in offering one of these necessities to its Japanese customers. The ICF-B01 isn't as full-featured as some of the models we've seen -- for instance, it doesn't seem to charge your cellphone -- but it does manage to pack in an LED flashlight to help you change stations while you're trapped in the dark. We're not sure how much loot Sony wants for this radio, but if it's more than $30, you're probably better off stocking up on batteries for your old Walkman.
