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The Daily Grind: Are there too many MMOs?
It's no secret that there are more MMOs on the market today than at any time in the genre's history. How many good MMOs are on the market today is another thing entirely, though it's of course a subjective observation. That said, it sometimes seems as if there are too many games, as companies are tripping over themselves to MMOify popular IPs or rush assembly line products to market in order to capitalize on the free-to-play craze. As one Massively commenter put it, "We're saturated as is. We're going to lose some good games over the next year or so just because of the amazing number of MMOs to play." What do you think, dear readers? Are there too many MMOs, or is there no such thing? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Ice Cream Sandwich takes a bite out of Gingerbread, represents 15.9 percent of Android devices
Two major updates later (three if you count the tablet-exclusive Honeycomb), and Gingerbread is finally starting to falter. According to Google's latest two week survey of devices accessing the Play store, Ice Cream Sandwich is on the rise, filling out 15.9-percent of the Android user base. That's a full five points ahead of Android 4.0's July score, and it's eating into the OS' other flavors: Gingerbread (Android 2.3) dropped by 3.4-percent, Froyo (Android 2.2) by 1.8 and Eclair (Android 2.1) by a meager half a percent. Google's latest confectionery update, Jelly Bean (Android 4.1), made an appearance as well, eking out a shy 0.8-percent of the market. Check out Google's collection of charts for yourself at the source link below or let us know where your devices falls in the comments.
Ice Cream Sandwich consumed by one in ten Android devices
The latest Dashboard numbers for Google's Android operating system have been released. The verdict? One in ten devices is leveraging Ice Cream Sandwich as their mobile OS of choice. The numbers, which are current as of July 2nd, put Gingerbread (Android 2.3) in first place with a 64-percent install base; followed by Froyo (Android 2.2) with 17.3-percent and ICS with 10.6-percent. Jelly Bean (Android 4.1), announced just last week at Google's IO Developer Conference, was not included in this instance of the report (as it is not officially available yet). Hit the source link to view all the stats, and feel free to let us know what Android codebase your handset is rocking via the comments.
US free-to-play MMO market oversaturated?
With new free-to-play titles, like Earth Eternal, in development while other titles are being ported over from Asia to the US at a rapid-fire rate, the question of oversaturation is being spread amongst the lips of the industry. Are we looking at a market too filled with low-budget free to play titles?The answer is yes, if you're speaking with Reality Gap's J. Mark Hood, co-founder of the company specializing in free-to-play MMOs. Thanks to a AAA game market mostly locked down by the immense budgets of Blizzard and EA, the small developers turn to the F2P market as a place to compete. However, the market is now crowded with all sorts of titles not only developed here, but also many titles ported from Asia.The Asian titles, however, don't seem to strike the same chords here as they do in Asia. Our market is more focused on gameplay, while theirs can be focused on a number of other different options."Things that are more important here are actually how the game plays, getting yourself more advancement and skill," Hood said to Gamasutra. "So, it is really different."For Hood's full comments, check out both his thoughts on free-to-play MMOs and the entire Gamasutra interview.
Pixelmator 1.3 Tempo is on the street
The team over at Pixelmator has announced the release of their much-awaited 1.3 version, which they've titled Tempo. TUAW did a preview of this version a while ago -- it features lots of back-end updates, making the app itself much, much faster, especially when handling large images. And it brings to the table a few things Pixelmator has promised since the app first came out, including the Magic Eraser functionality, and a few magic touches elsewhere (you can use almost any of the tools in the "magic" way, by clicking and then dragging until the program automatically fills in your selection). There are also updates to the Hue and Saturation, Colorize, and Replace Color tools, and there's an auto-hide feature (that can be turned off) that clears out some of the clutter when you're working with important tools. As a Pixelmator user, I really like the update -- I'm not sure if it's quite enough to pull you into the app if you aren't already using it (and as we've said before, this is not an app for power Photoshop users), but if you're looking for a relatively light, very stylistic photo editor, it's definitely worth a trial again. You can pick one up over on their site. %Gallery-32631%
