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CES 2013: Duo Gamer controller sees success after a half price cut
We posted about the Duo Gamer iPhone controller back when it first released in October of last year, but I hadn't gotten a chance to try it out yet. Fortunately, Duo is here on the floor of CES this week, and they of course had the controller on display and available for a demo. It's actually a really great controller -- the form factor is a little strange, but the buttons are quite responsive and the analog sticks are especially impressive, something that not a lot of iOS controllers have gotten right. Plus, the Duo Gamer is actually half the price it was when it started out. The company dropped the price from US$79.99 to just $39.99 late last year, and the company's rep says that (surprise) sales have gone up considerably since the price drop. So where's the catch? The biggest problem with the Duo Gamer is that because Duo has made a deal with Gameloft, this controller only works with Gameloft's games. Those games aren't bad -- they include big iOS hits like NOVA, the Asphalt series and Gameloft's Warcraft clone Order and Chaos Online. But that's it -- if you want to use the controller with any other titles, you're out of luck. That's kind of a shame. And Duo's representative told us that there were absolutely no plans to open up the controller at all. The company picked Gameloft to pair up with because it believed those were the most console-like apps on the store (not necessarily an invalid claim), and Duo says that even if it wanted to allow other app developers to make their apps compatible with the Duo Gamer, that decision would be out of their hands. Which is too bad -- it'd be nice if a solid controller like this had a more open API (stay tuned for news on the Phone Halo controller, which has a slightly more promising future). The Duo Gamer is a good piece of hardware, and it provides an impressive way to control these games. If you're a fan of Gameloft's titles and would like to use some buttons to control them, this is obviously a great option for you.
TUAW's Daily iOS App: Order and Chaos Online
All right, here we go. Gameloft's new title is called Order and Chaos Online, and in the Gameloft style, it's pretty much an iOS remake of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Odds are that if you understand that sentence, you probably already know whether you want to go download this or not. But if not, I'll explain: Gameloft has a habit, as we've said, of making iOS titles that basically rip off larger console titles, and Blizzard's World of Warcraft is of course the extraordinarily successful massively multiplayer online RPG for PCs. So Gameloft has recreated the MMO on iOS for us, and while it supposedly works as promised (though there's a Wi-Fi restriction for playing, only four races available and not nearly as much content to start), it's obviously not quite as good as actually having WoW on iOS. In this case, a reasonable facsimile might be as good as the real thing, especially if you're a fan of the real thing. Gameloft's app is US$6.99 for a universal version, and it comes with three months of gametime for free. After that, you can subscribe for a buck a month, or go for three months for $1.99. There are also in-game purchases of gold and potions for various amounts, which is something WoW hasn't quite resorted to yet. At any rate, early reviews of Gameloft's app are good, so if you're a big WoW fan and wouldn't mind playing a copy of that game on iOS, check it out.
