Thanks Arn - Care to divulge the source of your info? I've googled a lot tonight I haven't picked that bit up yet.
Good news for developers, was waiting for this long time. Would be even better news if they will support online multi player out of the box as well, like on xbox live. Now that would be super cool.
Probably just bad-eyesight but if someone could quote the bit where Apple say that they won't ban other networks, I'd really appreciate it. (I honestly don't think they will but it'd be nice to actually see where that is written).
sorry, I guess I remembered it being more explicit, but the implication is that developers have a choice in the matter rather than "you have to". http://live.gizmodo.com/
Thanks Arn - it's a little fuzzy but I can totally see how it could be interpreted the way you read it.
Yep, that said I don't think it matters either way I don't see how they'll be able to survive - banned or not arn
Yeah, I can't imagine Apple feeling the need to ban the social services when everyone will inevitably adapt the 'official' one. It's a shame that the features and products that helped make the iPhone as strong of a gaming platform that it is today is now being overtaken by Apple.
How many of the 85 million existing devices are never going to get updated to OS 4.0, either due to cost, or whatever other reason? They won't have access to the new Apple game center frameworks.
Well, since iPhone OS 4.0 requires an iPhone 3GS or the latest generation iPod touch, the majority of those 85 million devices are automatically ineligible for the OS upgrade. However, it's just a matter of time before everyone replaces their older device with a new one. I'm one of those nutty people who stood in line for hours to get an iPhone when it launched and I'm still using it today. However, it is breaking down on me little by little and I'm getting annoyed by the increasing number of games that run slowly on it so I am eager to upgrade when the next generation iPhone comes out later this year.
I am wondering about this as well. It would be really nice if Apple helped support (or boost) multiplayer gaming by offering some kind of framework to host game servers. Right now, devs are stuck paying 100% of the ongoing costs for hosting a game server. This makes it harder to reach long-term profitability and may be the reason why we don't see more multiplayer games out there.
OS 4.0 supports iPhone 3G and later. My iPod Touch 1G that I bought so I could test it on even the slowest devices will be obsolete. Judging from my stats, not many people still use the iPod Touch 1G anyway, so I don't feel bad about dropping it all together.
i thought only you could upgrade to os 4.0, just not have the multitasking with the iphone 3g or a ipod touch 2g
I think Gamecenter will be great because I prefer convergence over fragmentation. I don't want to deal with multiple services when I can have a good all in one solution.
No reason for those services to go away completely, but I'm betting Game Center will do half as much as them and still supplant them. We've not gone with any of the services because we couldn't support them all, so now we at least have a single source for social connection. No if only Apple would offer a single solution for packeting between apps. Like a RakNet-esque api. That's be something.
GameCenter and iAd makes me feeling that Apple is trying to disable every business models on iphone that Apple itself cannot share a profit from them. I agreed that when GameCenter will fade out all other similar services provide by other companies. We might benefit from certain aspect. But in another view, service provide by OF and plus and others are competing with each other. They are trying to enchance their features so that more developers and users will choose to use. Such equilibrium competetion leads to evolution of the service so that we will see more and more functions are included. Once GameCenter make other service elimiated, there are no more reason for the service to evolve. GameCenter is not a business and I think apple is not going to earn money from the service, I don't think there are any critical reason for it to add more functions anymore
Oops, my bad, you and MrBlue are right. OS 4.0 won't work on 1st gen iPhones and iPod Touches but it will work on everything else and it's just multitasking that requires the latest device models. Ah well, it looks like I will be retiring my 1st gen iPhone soon...
Strongly disagree. Apple doesn't do everything, but what they do, they do with perfection. And something they do do is caring about the user experience. People, both developers and customers, have asked for something like GameCenter and now they have delivered. It will not earn them money, however, it will improve the user experience and that is basically what do earn Apple money. Therefore I have no doubt that they will make sure GameCenter is a solid service and will continue to improve upon it and offer a superior user experience compared to the competing services.
So it'll just be ANOTHER gaming network... Sigh... I really hoped they would either ban the old ones or somehow incorporate them.
Well, OpenFeint have already said they're going to develop easy migration features. And I doubt you'll see many developers continuing to use OF, etc. instead of Apple's system - it's going to take over by natural economics, it doesn't need to be forced in. I suspect we may see a number of games offering both Apple, and 3rd party systems alongside one another while things transfer over, as this is going to be 4.0 and upwards only and I suspect we'll be wanting to support 3.x at least for some time to come. Most games still support 2.x after all.
