iOS Gaming (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)

We've got a Steam thread. Now that I'm going to pick up an iPad 2 tonight for the living room, I figured we could use an iOS thread.

http://toucharcade.com/2011/03/10/ip...chmark-results

Anyone else picking up an iPad 2? Or already have an iOS device? I started out with a 3rd gen iPod Touch tough that I bought on a whim one day in November 2009. I liked the thing so much that I grabbed another one for my girl a week later. She liked it so much that we both grabbed iPhone 4's in September, as soon as we knew what the 4th gen iPod Touch consisted of. We skipped the iPad the first time, as my iPod was still pretty new at the time, but also because I just wanted to wait for version 2. The lack of cameras on the first one seemed lame, and it just felt a little bulky.

Anyway, iPad 2 releases tonight, and since I use my phone around the house enough, I figured it was time to grab a tablet for the couch.

iOS in general is a very slick mobile operating system. Having played with both Windows Mobile 6.5 and Android, iOS is still worlds ahead in usability. Windows Phone 7 made great strides in throwing away the old Windows CE code that WinMo was based on, growing alot as a touch interface, but with that shift came a lack of software to run on the thing. If I have a major complaint with iOS, it's that iTunes very much shows it's age, and feels as if it is an MP3 player with a bunch of stuff grafted on to it. Specifically, the complete lack of a usable purchase history eats at me every time I have the question of "Did I already buy this?".

Discuss?

Oh, and I'm playing Tiny Wings and Infinity Blade right now. The first is a great casual game perfectly matched to the touch interface. The second is a beast of a tech demo, Unreal 3 running on a mobile device. It's beautiful, and has a pretty damn good game hidden underneath that beauty!

Not the point of the thread.

"The cameras on the Ipad 2 are crap, just as bad as the ones on the ipod touch 4th gen. Ok for facetime or a picture mailed to a cell phone, but nothing else at all."

You're missing the point then. Cameras on the iPad are important for Facetime, but more so for augmented reality software, not for saving memories. We all have 5MP in our pockets attached to our phones for memories.

"This doesn't really fit in with the HTPC gaming forum all that much."

'Cuz we stay soo on topic here, right? If the PSP belongs in the Playstation section, and the DS belongs in the Nintendo section, then portable PCs belong in the PC section. Besides, it's not like I'm taking up valuable bits that could be used on other topics here. Maybe you haven't noticed, but this isn't exactly the most active section on AVS. If you're going to go ahead and dictate that HTPC talk is the only thing allowed here, then you're going to end up with about three active users real quick. Really, how many of us here have actual HTPCs? Isn't that idea a little 2005?

"I have some pretty amazing games on my iOS devices and I almost only buy on .99 sales"

Yes! Hi again, Frank. You've written in to In Game Chat before, huh?

What are you playing right now? The volume of extremely good quality product available on the platform for $5 or less is amazing. It's also pretty shocking how often the big publishers get it so very wrong, spitting out a cut-down console port for $7-10, and then never updating the product beyond it's original release.

On the other hand you have the Minigores and Angry Birds of the platform constantly spitting out updates and expanded content, all included in the original price. It's as if the smaller guys are really paying attention to the Valve business model. Support the product with years of free content, and you can't help but sell billions of copies as your user base sells your product to their friends for you.

Daver brings up a good point. TouchArcade is my primary source for iOS gaming news. You just have to internally filter out their overzealous nature. It's as if they are afraid to piss off any publishers, therefore losing access. For new regarding awesome sales and whatnot though? They are fantastic!

http://toucharcade.com/

And I must have missed $1 Dungeon Hunter 2 HD. I only see DH1, and I already have that for iPhone.

Playing Dark Nebula 2 right now on my phone. It's one of those titles that makes great use of the platform's input strengths, relying on tilt motion. It's always nice to see devs avoid on-screen button sprites.

dysfuntion: The definition of "can't see the forest for the trees". Getting stuck on little details, completely missing the point a bit, aren't you?

You have a Droid X I take it? You like it? Good! I'm glad. Android will absolutely be the largest OS on the planet real quick. Since you seem to be intent on picking out details though, let's go ahead and cover a couple.

Usability? Well, Android works well enough as a phone, browser and PDA. It's a bit of a Linux geek toy, but it works. Until you want to install an app at least. Then you have the horrible problems of "Do I get it from the store? The developer's website?", "Does it work on my device? Has it ever even been tested on it?". Yeah, Android runs on a lot of things, but with that variety in hardware has come a headache in software, and a greatly increased chance of programming for the lowest common denominator. Companies can throw all the fancy input tools and performance hardware that they want in to a handset, but devs are going to be targeting the Droid 1 for years, guaranteeing that newer hardware never gets used to it's full capability. All of this boils down to a pretty crap experience for the end user, when compared to the alternative. Windows Phone 7 suffers from a similar problem, except that it actually has a pretty fantastic interface and a proper app store. Unfortunately it will take a good 2 years to get a reasonable catalogue of software built up for the thing. Even then, the handset variety will be too great for targeted development, resulting in the Android problem of "everybody gets software made for a three year old phone".

Camera resolution? I wasn't talking about any specific device when I said "We all have 5MP in our pockets attached to our phones", that's just the average resolution these days on a phone. But hey, if you want to talk about specific models, hands down the iPhone 4's 5MP camera beats the crap out of the Droid X' 8MP camera. Megapixels mean roughly nothing, and haven't meant anything in any type of non-SLR camera since we passed the ~3MP range. The software behind the 4's camera is fantastic, but more importantly the CCD is rather large for a phone. You won't find a better quality camera on a phone. It's not best camera ever made, nor is it even as good as your average $150 point-n-shoot.

What it is, is the wrong thing to try and make a smug comment over though. You win!!1

Video will already stream wirelessly from the iPad to AppleTV. It's not much of a stretch to see that coming the games in the next iOS update, if it isn't already there.

Nevermind. AirPlay came to apps with iOS 4.3. You'll see games wirelessly streaming to a $100 ATV fairly soon I'd think.

From what I can tell AirPlay doesn't care if it's a BT or wifi connection. It's just a protocol layered on either. So, wifi AirPlay from iPod to ATV should handle HD just fine. I just don't know if it's implemented in that fashion yet in anything.