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Ngmoco shutting down some titles March 31
Ngmoco announced on its website earlier this week that some of the game maker's biggest iOS titles, including We Rule, Godfinger and Touch Pets Dogs 2, are going to be shut down for good on March 31. The games will be off of Apple's App Store later this week on February 1, so no new users will be able to download them, and the servers for the games will go offline at the end of next month, effectively ending the games completely. Ngmoco didn't give a clear reason for the shutdowns, but it's not hard to guess: The company, once one of the biggest app developers on the App Store, has been fairly steadily transitioning over to Android titles in the past few years, and has seen a sharp decline in popularity on iOS. Not to mention that many of the figures who made the company so large, including former EA exec Neil Young, have left the company in recent days. In other words, it's finally game over for Ngmoco on iOS. Ngmoco was purchased by Japanese network DeNA a little while ago, and that company is still steadily trying to grow its own iOS sales and popularity. But Ngmoco as a brand is effectively done on the App Store, especially since these once-thriving games are shut down. One of the biggest names of the App Store's first generation is finally on its way out the door.
Ngmoco's iPhone titles nominated for a few GDC Online awards
Nominations have been announced for the Game Developers Choice Online Awards (to be announced at the upcoming GDC Online conference in Austin), and iPhone developer Ngmoco has secured a few spots in among the rest of the big PC game developers. We Rule picked up nominations for Best Online Game Design, Best Online Audio, and Best New Online Game, and Godfinger was recognized in the Best Online Visual Arts category. iPhone developers Booyah and Digital Chocolate also got nominated, but both of those companies were chosen for their Facebook titles, not their iPhone creations. So congrats to Ngmoco -- the company has certainly made a splash on the App Store with its freemium model, but these nominations show that former EA exec Neil Young's company is competing on quality with much larger PC titles like League of Legends, Aion and Dungeon Fighter Online. The awards will be given out at GDC Online, taking place October 5-8 in Austin, Texas.
Unity CEO disses Jobs on gaming
Unity CEO David Helgason gave a talk at the Develop conference, going on this week in Brighton, England, and had some harsh words for Steve Jobs on supporting iPhone gaming. Jobs previously said that using "middleware" like Unity to develop iPhone games "produces sub-standard apps," but Helgason fires back that Jobs "doesn't understand the economics of game development fundamentally." Most developers, Helgason seems to be saying, can't be jack-of-all-trades with their code -- they need libraries like Unity to do some of the lifting, especially on smaller-scale platforms like the App Store. Stuart Dredge at Mobile Entertainment is doing a great job of covering all of the other iPhone gaming news coming out of Develop as well -- he's got talks by the developers of Ngmoco's Godfinger, Rolando's Simon Oliver, and Ideaworks Game Studio, the company that brought World at War: Zombies to the iPhone for Activision (that last talk sounds similar to the one we saw earlier this year at GDC). If there's a theme among everything developers are saying, it's probably that they're finding flexibility a must on the App Store -- while an app may be developed with one feature or pay model in mind, things often have to change quickly during development or even after the app goes live. Lots of interesting things to read in there if you're interested in iPhone game development.
Canabalt now universal, Godfinger now available
Here's two big updates to big games on the App Store lately -- first up, the much-loved Canabalt has now gone universal, so if you have an iPhone and an iPad and have already purchased the app, you can now play it in full resolution on your iPad. Of course, if you haven't bought the app yet, what are you waiting for? It's a classic one-button app, dripping with ambience, that's just $2.99 for both platforms. Ngmoco has released their second big freemium title worldwide -- Godfinger is now available on the App Store for both iPhone and iPad. I got to play an early build of the app at GDC, and it basically combines Ngmoco's We Rule social and persistent functionality with some Pocket God-style gameplay. In other words, it'll likely be popular. I'm a little surprised the app didn't come out sooner -- Ngmoco is supposedly planning to release twenty new titles this year. If that's still true, they better get a move on.
Crazy usage stats from Ngmoco
Ah, ngmoco. You wacky purveyors of "freemium" games. I love you so. If you have any doubts, check out my account. Oh yes. See? I'm there. Playing two different versions of We Rule on my phone, and a version on the iPad. Don't even get me started on the Godfinger! Good heavens. Turns out I'm not the only one on the verge of needing an intervention. According to Neil Young, CEO of ngmoco, they are up to thirty MILLION minutes of playing time every DAY. This is up from the 20 million stated for April of this year. This would explain why my personal minutes of use vary widely: with that many people on every day, you need ten more servers than you actually have. ALL the time. And now I know why my crops keep going bad. My back-of-the-envelope math tells me that is something like eleventy squillion people (give or take) on the Plus+ network at any point, raising puppies or ordering rehabilitated criminals or flinging followers around a planet.
Kleiner Perkins iFund doubles to $200m, investing in iPad apps from Shazam, ngmoco and more
Apple said it expects the iPad to be a "second gold rush" of app development as consumers rush to add content to their new devices, and it looks like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers agrees: the venture capital firm just announced that it's expanding the iFund to $200 million to invest in iPad app development. If you'll recall, the iFund was originally announced alongside the iPhone OS 2.0 SDK, and provided $100 million in total investments to 14 iPhone app developers like Shazam, ngmoco, and Shopkick -- companies responsible for 18 apps that have hit the App Store Top 10. Keep in mind that this money was promised before the iPhone App Store was even launched -- so given how that bet paid off, it's not surprising that KPCB's decided to double down on the iPad, which looks like it'll have even higher app prices. Along with the announcement, some iFund devs announced the following iPad apps: Pinger: Doodle Buddy and Starsmash Booyah: MyTown, a popular location-based game Shazam: Shazam, optimized for the new screen size, ngmoco: Flick Fishing, a new MMO called CastleCraft, Charadium (described as "massively multiplayer Pictionary"), God Finger, We Rule, WarpGate, and one more we missed -- anyone catch it? GOGII: TextPlus Nothing too surprising here, but it looks like the heavy hitters are going to be on the iPad bandwagon from day one -- and pushing hard for this thing to be a success.
Six Ngmoco iPad titles revealed
In his panel at GDC last week, Ngmoco's Neil Young dropped the news that his company was going all out with their freemium business model -- not only are they releasing twenty iPhone titles by the end of this year, but they're planning on having six iPad titles ready to go right away at launch. Touch Arcade has done a little digging, and they've come up with what they think the six iPad titles will be. Here we go: GodFinger We Rule (both of these were previewed last week) Flick Fishing (probably re-created as a freemium app) NBA Hotshot (also likely remade into Ngmoco's model) CastleCraft (an MMO strategy/wargame) WarpGate As you may have noticed, two of those are Ngmoco originals, and four of those are Freeverse titles that were either planned for the iPad or are being remade for the new platform; again, presumably free-to-play, along with microtransactions and freemium resources in the Ngmoco mold. That's definitely a sizeable library going into the new platform, and if Ngmoco really does have these ready to go on April 3rd (and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't -- even if they haven't gotten one of those test iPads from Apple, their model is designed to release early and make updates quickly if needed), then they'll be positioned to grab iPad app space very early on.
GDC 2010: Ngmoco previews We Rule and GodFinger
We stopped by Ngmoco's suite at GDC 2010 on the afternoon of the first day of the show, and got a chance to preview two upcoming titles they're working on testing and releasing soon. Both of the games follow Ngmoco's popular (and yet much-maligned) "freemium" model, in which you download the game for free with the option to buy in-game items or currency that can change up or speed your gameplay. Still, while the model might turn some players off, the games we saw were the kinds of games Ngmoco is slowly becoming known for: polished casual experiences that bring an established genre squarely into their business model. The first game we saw was called We Rule -- it's currently "beta testing" in the Canadian App Store and will be available to users in other App Stores soon. It was described to us as "Farmville meets Age of Empires," but what we saw was much more like Farmville rather than the more combat-based RTS title. The game opens on a screen full of "realms," each one developed and grown by one of your Ngmoco Plus+ friends, and you can zoom into your own to start building it up.
Ex-Lionhead devs form Wonderland Software, announce 'GodFinger'
Venturing forth from Peter Molyneux's famous dev house, Lionhead Studio veterans Mark Rose, Al Harding and Matthew Wiggins recently announced their new mobile game startup Wonderland Software. In addition to the studio's unveiling, the trio has also offered up information on the their first project: GodFinger. "We're collaborating with some awesome freelancers, along with the super-talented girls and guys over at ngmoco, to bring the god game back to your fingers," the announcement post reads. According to ngmoco's description of the game, GodFinger puts you in the position of a "fledgling deity" trying to "make a name for yourself amongst the pantheon of gods in this universe." Given the fact that GodFinger is planned for release on iPhone and iPod Touch, there's no solid release date (Apple decides that), but both the devs and the publisher note we'll see a release "very, very soon." So get out that God Hand and chop off a digit, you'll need it soon! [Via Develop]
