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iOS devs appear in new Develop 100 listing
The Develop 100 is a list put together every year of the top video game developers in the world, and this year there's a surprising trend showing up: a lot of iPhone and iOS developers are starting to make the grade. Touch Arcade spotted around 50 iPhone and iPad developers in the list, which is more than I've ever seen in a list usually populated with the likes of Bioware, Nintendo and Blizzard Entertainment. Sure enough, Nintendo is number one this year, but World of Goo creator 2D Boy is in the second spot, with Cut the Rope developer Zepto Lab in third. A little further down, there's Chaos Rings developers Media Vision, along with 1337 Game Design (Dark Nebula), Rockstar Leeds (GTA: Chinatown Wars for iOS) and The Coding Monkeys (Carcassone). That's pretty amazing -- these little iOS developers are beating out much larger devs, like Halo's Bungie and Call of Duty's Treyarch, for the top spots on a pretty prestigious list. One reason for the changes is probably that the list is now weighted more towards the ratings on Metacritic, where iOS games tend to do very well compared to other video game titles (for a number of reasons, from a lower price to a completely different type of media and market). Still, it's interesting to see upstart iOS developers we know and love stacked up in such a favorable way against much larger and more experienced traditional game developers.
OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash
Are you a developer seeking the widest and most profitable distribution for your mobile software? The traditional platform for achieving such goals over the past couple of years has been Apple's iOS, but Android's rabid ascendancy has recently turned that into a legitimate question. A question that OpenFeint is looking to sway even further in Google's favor by announcing it will fund the porting of games from "other app stores" to Android with the help of Chinese online game operator The9. The specially selected games will of course get saddled with OpenFeint integration and the whole effort does have the waft of a publicity grab to us, but hey, it's another few pennies thrown into the bottomless well known as "Android gaming." Surely something worthy will eventually come out of it, no? [Thanks, Calvin]
Chillingo officially launches Crystal SDK for iPhone game developers
Chillingo recently announced that it would be launching Crystal SDK, a service joining the increasingly crowded social network market for iPhone games. Xbox Live on the Xbox is an official social network, but the iPhone has no such official service. A crowd of contenders, from the popular OpenFeint service to ngmoco's Plus+ network, are jumping in and trying to get developers on board with them. Crystal SDK is one of those -- they've now launched the official website and are asking developers interested to sign up and see what their software has to offer. Like many of the other services, Crystal is offering to integrate challenges, achievements, leaderboards, and other social services into iPhone apps. The SDK seems like it's still pre-release, however -- there's only a signup, no information on cost or implementation or anything else on the site. Still, if you happen to be an iPhone developer still looking for a network to hook up with, they might be the one for you. While we're at it: what do you consumers think? Have you actually chosen a network to go with, or are you doing what I'm doing and still basically going game by game? The goal of these networks eventually is to have a unified stable of developers, where you'll jump into a new game simply because it's linked to the network you're signed up with (and your friends will be playing over there and encouraging you to join). But in reality, I haven't seen that -- most people I know are just playing the games they're interested in, and the network the games are connected to hasn't made a big difference.
Watch out EA, Foundation 9 is behind you
When we hear about big developers, behemoths like EA normally pop into mind; however, there is a player in town looking to make waves. Meet Foundation 9. Foundation 9 -- an indie developer -- made the news last month after snapping up Shiny from Atari, adding another development house to its formidable arsenal. This time, Amaze Entertainment (think licensed handheld games) was caught handily in the buy-out cross-hairs. According to Jon Goldman, CEO of Foundation 9, the move was to better diversify F9's already large (725 employees over 11 studios) house. While we're all for seeing the indie crowd get bigger -- it should help make gaming less stale -- how big can you get before you lose that indie badge? If Foundation 9 gets big enough, they'll be able to wield some significant power over publishers and, if that happens, existing publishers will likely go elsewhere. The only options are to stop expanding or join the ranks of "The Man".
The top hundred game developers -- from Ancel to Zampella
If you're after a "who's who" of modern game development, then Next-Gen's "The Hot 100 Game Developers" list might just do the trick. An A-Z rundown of the 100 "most influential" developers, based mainly on studio success last year, it covers a number of well-known and lesser-known industry figures. Useful if you're trying to work out who to approach at GDC.Incidentally, the developer pictured right is Samantha Ryan, CEO of Monolith, who is also the only woman in this list--draw what conclusions you will.
