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WAKFU offers an overview of unique gameplay
WAKFU, a tactical turn-based sprite-animated free-to-play game from Square-Enix and Ankama, is among the more interesting offerings heading toward launch. It's precisely because of that unique blend of flavor, animation, and stylized design that it's also attracting a fair bit of attention as it approaches release. And while the beta for North American players has been a bit delayed (it's starting elsewhere on April 27th), the new trailer should help salve the pain... or possibly make it even worse. While it's only a two-minute trailer, this offering gives players a broad overview of how the game will work, from character creation to the customizable battle system and the playstyles of the 14 different character classes. It also talks about the game's ecosystem, a unique feature whereby damaging the landscape will have long-term repercussions. If you're excited to get your hands on WAKFU from what you've seen and heard so far, the trailer is well worth the time it takes to watch.
Fallen Earth takes us to Terminal Woods in a new video
Some folks like to get away from it all, step out of the bustle of the big city and relax in untouched nature. Perhaps you're one of the people who like to do that in your MMORPG. Well, too bad! The forests of Fallen Earth are swarming with feral fauna and grotesque ghouls born out of the apocalypse. Patch 1.8 introduced the survivors to Terminal Woods, an all-new area of the wasteland. Crafters are introduced to a new ecosystem, recipes, and gear. For those who prefer more combat in their MMO, Terminal Woods grants them new bosses, missions, and more action combat. Massively's Edward Marshall wrote about his experiences in the update for the post-apocalyptic MMO in a recent Wasteland Diary, and we snagged a new video displaying some of the changes for the patch. Follow after the break for the full video featuring the music of Kataklysm.
Switched On: Back from the Mac
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Last week's Switched On discussed Nokia's quest to help Microsoft create a third mobile ecosystem alongside those of Apple and Google. That word – ecosystem – has clearly passed into the pantheon of buzzwords, leveraging many synergies from purpose-built paradigms. And yet, building and maintaining ecosystems is something few companies really understand. True technology ecosystems are more than just successful platforms or throwing many products together simply because they are owned by the same company. They are characterized by strategically implemented nurturing. One concept that Apple seems to have adapted from natural ecosystems is the concept of the water cycle you probably learned about in grade school. Apple turns up the heat on the life-sustaining water of innovation that passes between the well-grounded Mac market and the soaring growth of the iOS market. Apple alluded to this cycle in its Back to the Mac event. After inheriting many technologies from Mac OS X, iOS began offering Mac OS X launch screens, full-screen apps, app resuming, and document autosaving. This week's announcements, though, show that the cycle may soon be heading again in the other direction as Apple showed off two Mac technologies that may well wind up strengthening the iOS ecosystem.
Myriad 'Alien Dalvik' runs Android apps on any phone... starting with MeeGo (video)
You know that N900 you keep around, just because. The one that's been hacked so many times you call it "leatherface?" Well, it's about to get a lot more flexible. Built upon the app quickening Dalvik Turbo, OHA member Myriad just announced Alien Dalvik with the promise of running "the majority" of unmodified Android apps on non-Android platforms "without compromising performance." A bold claim, no doubt. Myriad will be backing this up at Mobile World Congress starting next week with plans to release it later this year on MeeGo. But why wait until then? You can see it demonstrated right now running on a Nokia N900 in the video after the break (it's running Google Maps in the picture above). Hey Mr. Elop, you want to build, catalyze or join a competitive ecosystem? Maybe this is your solution.
Has the iPhone App Market already crashed?
At GDC Europe earlier this week, Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz claimed that the iPhone app market "has already crashed. You cannot sell your game for 99 cents and expect a return." Apple has said that developers are collectively making more than a billion dollars on the App Store, but Hubertz knocks that figure down a few notches, suggesting that because there are over 250,000 actual apps on the store, no one developer is making enough to cover the development costs of any game worth making. Is he right? In a sense, he is -- it's already pretty clear that for a number of reasons, prices have raced to the bottom on the App Store. And while the audience is still growing (people are buying more and more iPhones every day), so is the pool of developers and apps. While there are definitely some runaway hits, the average developer isn't going to see profits that will keep an EA-level game afloat. That said, the market certainly hasn't "crashed." Apple wanted an app ecosystem that anyone with a Mac and some knowledge and time could join, and that's what they've got -- a developer who puts a worthy amount of time and talent into an app, with some help and promotion from sites like ours, can likely turn over a profit, if not make a good amount of money. Sure, the App Store's not very friendly to big budget producers, but that's probably not what Apple wanted in the first place anyway.
LotRO's devs have some real estate in Enedwaith to sell you
All eyes in Lord of the Rings Online are set on the expanding frontier of the game, as both the Fellowship and players alike begin to head south this fall. This means a brand-new zone, Enedwaith, and all of the secrets and discoveries that it holds. We previously got a glimpse of this new area through a sneak-peek tour, but it's still great to read a nine-page dev tour of Enedwaith by Turbine's Jonathan Rudder. It's interesting to note that Enedwaith is comprised of several "biomes" or self-contained ecosystems that range from rolling prairie to winter tundra to jagged bluffs. Each area has its own theme and unique critters, including the terrifying shadow wolves. And before you ask, yes, Turbine threw in a few demonic goats free of charge. As players progress through Enedwaith, they'll encounter the united Grey Company of Rangers and assist in their quest to help Aragorn. Turbine's proud of the amount of content in this region, claiming that it has more quests and deeds than North Downs (which was the previous non-Moria record-holder for a zone), and it has more new and unique art per square meter than Moria. Read through this hefty dev diary for the complete skinny on Enedwaith!
ARM, Samsung, IBM, Freescale, TI and more join to form Linaro, speed rollout of Linux-based devices
My, my -- what have we here? No, seriously, what is this hodgepodge of (rival) companies, and why have they suddenly decided to high five each other here at Computex? Frankly, we're still trying to piece it all together, but after sitting through a Linaro launch event in Taipei, we're beginning to get a better handle on the relationship that Samsung, ARM, IBM, Freescale, ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments and the Linux Foundation have just made official. The outfits mentioned above are coming together to form the UK-based Linaro (a not-for-profit entity), which currently has 25 engineers but will see that figure shoot up to nearly a hundred around the world in the coming days. In short, the new firm -- which will have an annual budget in the "tens of millions of dollars" but below "$100 million" -- is seeking to "speed the rollout of Linux-based devices," with one of the key points being this: Linaro will "provide a stable and optimized base for distributions and developers by creating new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of SoCs, every six months." Read on for more...%Gallery-94261%
App Store payola, and what it means for the app ecosystem
Earlier this week, Wired posted a story about what they call "App Store Payola" -- the practice of sites that solicit cash payments (or other compensation) in order to expedite or publish app reviews. This isn't anything new. Ever since the App Store first went online, there have been sites that have offered developers a chance at the spotlight in return for behind-the-scenes payment. Apparently, it is still going on, and Wired's piece takes a good look at what's under the table. It should go without saying, but for the record: TUAW isn't involved in this practice, and never has been. We will use promo codes for reviews rather than buying the apps directly, but a promo code doesn't guarantee a review and it definitely doesn't influence our stated opinions on the products we cover. Informally, our editorial team gives a thumbs up to the OATS standard, although TUAW hasn't officially joined the sites promoting the 'code of conduct' for app reviews. Nevertheless, this is an interesting issue. My main question actually revolves around whether or not this practice actually "works" for the developer -- do devs who pay the $25, or whatever these "Reviews R Us" sites are charging, actually see returns in their product's sales or downloads?
GDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures
One of the best things about going to a convention like GDC is what we in the business call "doing research," which you might know as "playing games." We often get to check out the latest and greatest that developers are working on, and so when Tactile Entertainment offered us a chance to check out their upcoming Pocket Creatures title, we gladly took it. The company is founded by four friends from Denmark, one of whom used to be the Development Manager at Crytek (makers of the PC graphics engine and its flagship shooter Crysis), and Pocket Creatures, due out later this year, is their first title. The game's backstory tells of an island somewhere with an egg in an ancient temple, and in an intro movie, the egg hatches to reveal the game's main creature character. But the game isn't merely a virtual pet simulator. While you can pet the little guy to make him happy or slap him to make him sad, the rest of the game actually embodies a pretty complex ecosystem, of which the creature and his emotions and abilities are only a part. %Gallery-88237%
App Store review shenanigans, real and imagined
We first heard from iPhoneography and SCW last week about their two-man campaign to have skeevy developer Molinker pulled from the App Store (I included a link to their post, possibly a bit too subtly, in Sunday's post about the NYT story). Molinker was allegedly using the underhanded (and unfortunately under-caught) trick of distributing promo codes to 'puppet' reviewers who gave the company's photography apps five stars... and noticeably failed to review anything else on the store. Since the independent reviewers of the same apps were uniformly one-star, this resulted in star distribution graphs for the apps that looked like sideways versions of the devil's horns. Satanic mischief, indeed. After the site delivered its investigation results via email to App Store top cop Phil Schiller, the offending applications (more than 1,000 of them) were summarily yanked from the store. While it's good news for the App Store ecosystem that this kind of behavior is being monitored and corrected, and the iPhoneography team are to be commended for their diligence (although I doubt they'll be getting the requested "investigations reward for unearthing this blatant attempt at misleading and stealing from the public"), review manipulation schemes are seldom this blatant or easily identified -- and sometimes we start seeing them even when they may not really be there...
Do Android & WebOS need iPod touch clones?
Dan Frommer's post this morning over at Silicon Alley Insider suggests that one of the missing pieces from the competitive pie, as far as Google and Palm's mobile OS offerings are concerned, is a 3G-free & contractless device. Something, perhaps, like the iPod touch. Absent a way for consumers and developers to buy into the platform without the burden of a monthly cellphone contract, he argues, the two players are unlikely to build the critical mass of apps and app purchasers that would grant vitality and staying power in the face of the Apple/App Store ecosystem. It's easy to see that the touch provides a great boost to the App Store juggernaut; about one-third of the 50 million-plus iPhone OS devices are estimated to be iPod touch units, and all those owners are potential app and music customers. Certainly there's an audience for Android (if not WebOS, which is more telephony-centric to my mind) on a disconnected gadget? Unfortunately, Frommer's analysis is missing two key pieces of market data. Number one, as was adroitly pointed out by Joachim on Sunday's talkcast, there already is a contract-free developer handheld for Android, available for $399 from the Android Market... exactly what he proposes in the last paragraph of his story. There's also the new Archos 5 Internet Tablet, a consumer-grade, contract-free and phoneless Android tablet, ready for the eager Android personal media player buyers to snap up. (The equivalent contract-free Pre is a stark $899, and there is no 3G-less WebOS device that I can find.) Update: A commenter notes the Creative Zii Egg, another impending Android PMP that looks astonishingly like an Apple product. That's where we come to the second market truth that Frommer missed, and it's a harsh one: Nobody knows, and nobody cares. Even a guy writing about this precise topic had no idea -- and apparently couldn't quickly discover from a casual search -- that these devices were already out in the field, despite frequent coverage of the Archos device on Engadget and elsewhere over the past few months. If there's any starker evidence that the market for non-phone Android and WebOS devices simply doesn't exist yet, I can't imagine what it would be. Part of the reason for the iPod touch's success is that it clearly combined two already-successful products: the iPhone and the iPod. The 'elevator pitch' for the device ("It's an iPhone but with Wi-Fi instead of the phone") is simple and straightforward. Unfortunately for Android, there really isn't a dynamic personal media player market anymore that supports a phoneless entrant... it got eaten by the iPod. I do think it would be healthy for the iPhone and for the portable OS market in general if developers and customers had more contract-free options on the other platforms. Still, the retroactive wish-fulfillment of Frommer's post doesn't bode well. "Oh, they already have that? Gosh."
New details on Ecoris
The more we learn about Ecoris, the eco-centric RTS, the more we're planning to riot if the game doesn't get an English-language release. Get Atlus on the project right now!The latest updates on Ecoris focus on the beginning of the game, and there are some new details on online play as well. As the story opens, our fruity hero, Durian (sometimes Dorian in non-Japanese articles) begins to notice that not all is well in the forest. Development and pollution are destroying the ecosystem. He's not alone in his observations; the squirrels have noticed the same thing. On their own, the forest creatures are too weak to fight back ... but if they team up, anything is possible. Some other interesting facts about the game: apparently, there's a level-creation mode (we can only guess this comes in as you start to rebuild the forest), and once created, you can utilize those new stages in online battles. Our translation here may be a little rough, but it also seems as though Durian can either summon some sort of ancestral spirit, or take on its form, and you will need that power to pass certain sections. Ecoris is sounding more fascinating every day. For those gamers for whom the language barrier isn't a barrier at all, this one is looking like it may just be a must-import title.
