Indie games on iPhone and iPod Touch

[ZuluBoy]

Now that Apple has opened up the iPhone and iPod Touch for third party apps (http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/17/iphone_sdk/), do you guys have plans to port you indie games on them?

[Nikos Beck]

I suppose it depends on engine support. I use Torque from Garage Games so I have PC, Mac, Linux and X-Box support for very little recoding effort. But, I plan on modding the engine which immediately breaks my ability to port without making my mods port-friendly. My biggest concern would be having to either rewrite my game, write a wrapper for the iPhone API to support my game or rewriting parts of the engine. That'd be less of a concern probably for Flash and Java which are probably natively supported on iPhone.

[WaveRider]

I would think that the touch screen interface could severly limit the types of games that could be developed for the IPhone. I don't actually own one, so I could be wrong about that.

[Pyabo]

Yes, you'd be limited to all the game types that are totally mouse-drivine. Not too many of those! :p

I think it's going to be a great market. First-to-market will also have a huge advantage, so start now.

[lennard]

Not entirely true Pyabo, there is an important difference in not being able to see the cursor.

[vjvj]

Not entirely true Pyabo, there is an important difference in not being able to see the cursor.

Unless your name is Nintendo and you herald your system as a spectacle of innovation and harbinger of never-before-seen gameplay mechanics. Then it really doesn't matter wtf you do, because everything is now "in the name of innovation".

[Tom Cain]

Many good games came out on Palm using the touchscreen and they worked well, so I think it can be done. There were also many games that used the hard buttons, which you could do on iPhone with virtual buttons on the screen but off the play area. I think the bottom of the screen may become the de-facto game button spot.

[Pyabo]

You can see the cursor, it's your FINGER. :) Yes, it's a little different. But think about the way you use a mouse on a regular desktop machine. You could easily go without the mouse if you could just tap your finger on the screen anywhere you would click the mouse. Probably the biggest difference will be the lack of fine resolution that a mouse gives you.

Some random thoughts:

Multitouch... very cool. Lots of possibility here.

How is the tilt detected on the iPhone? I was playing with one today and I noticed that you can spin the browser around 360 degrees so it's not just vert/horizontal. If it's sensitive and fast enough, this would be utterly fantastic for games! Driving / flying games controlled like the Wii. Not holding my breath for this one though.

An attachment that connects to the doc port and gives you a joypad and buttons would be fantastic. I believe something like this already exists for some devices. Actually it wouldn't even need to connect to the port, doesn't the iPhone support Bluetooth? You could go either way.

[gamer4maker]

Yeah, i intend to release PUZZL3, a bejewled/luminies like game of mine on the iPhone. I am usualy just a PC developer, but hey, I'm working on a PSP version, so why not do o ne for the iPnone/iTouch?

(You would've never heard of PUZZL3 as it is not released to the public yet)

[Diragor]

How is the tilt detected on the iPhone? I was playing with one today and I noticed that you can spin the browser around 360 degrees so it's not just vert/horizontal. If it's sensitive and fast enough, this would be utterly fantastic for games! Driving / flying games controlled like the Wii. Not holding my breath for this one though.

I believe it is fast and sensitive enough. There are already demos available that demonstrate real-time game control using that feature of the phone. I've installed two of them (a butterfly catching game and the old, familiar ball in a maze) and it works very well.

[jaguard]

What makes you think that there actually is a market for 3rd party IPhone games out there?
I'm a little sceptical about this - there's a 9 years old PocketPC platform, there are millions of devices sold every few months, including Windows Mobile phones with stylus input or without one. And yet it's a depressingly small market for games.

[ZuluBoy]

What makes you think that there actually is a market for 3rd party IPhone games out there?
I'm a little sceptical about this - there's a 9 years old PocketPC platform, there are millions of devices sold every few months, including Windows Mobile phones with stylus input or without one. And yet it's a depressingly small market for games.
I don't have a clear answer to your question, but for me the iPhone platform (like the PocketPC platform) is just another channel for selling my games. I agree that it is risky to develop games exclusively for those platforms, but if you have a game that is doing well on one platform and if you can easily port the game to other platforms, then why not?

[jimflip]

I agree with ZuluBoy. One of the main issues with selling on PocketPc is that their is not a good sales channel, the main one (as far as I know) is Handango, which I think is awful. Further more PocketPc is very fragmented (at least all using same processor arch now though), so it is a bit of a pain for developing for small sales.

[MiceHead]

What makes you think that there actually is a market for 3rd party IPhone games out there?

The atmosphere surrounding the iPhone feels more like the rabid excitement of the Palm Pilot (circa 1999) rather than today's reserved "this will help me check my work e-mail" philosophy that I'd associate with the Pocket PC. If the iPhone is more of a "gee whiz" gadget than the Pocket PC, would/wouldn't users be inclined to add cool third-party apps (e.g., games)?

http://www.dejobaan.com/bebop/anim_color.gif

I'd like to port our 2000 best-seller to the iPhone.

[Pyabo]

Yep, there is a world of difference between the PocketPC market and the iPhone market.

The PocketPC crowd can't even decide on a standard resolution. Of course it's difficult marketing games on that platform. The iPhone offers a very standardized platform, a huge gee-whiz factor, and built-in marketing hype. It's just a completely different platform. It's more comparable to the Nintendo DS than the PocketPC.

[James C. Smith]

It will be very interesting to see what kind of distribution channel Apple will offer and who will have access to it. A think a lot of iPhone users would be more likely by games if they came from Apple and they could be purchased with their iTunes credits just like songs are. But would Apple be willing to do business with indies and very small companies? And how much of the revenue would they share with the developer?