A year ago, one of my classes did a project on Xbox. A lot of the talk at that time was about Apple and about turning the iPod into a game player. Which never happened.
A few months ago, my HTPC was sick and I was lamenting the lack of a solution from Apple.
Today it appears that both situations may have changed.
Apple has announced its first official move into the TV-realm as well as games for the iPod. iTV is unlikely to replace my HTPC but paying $5 for a casual game that sits on my iPod with my podcasts and music... that could be a winner. A big winner.
While Apple may be frustratingly slow, it is nice to know that when they finally act, the results are consistently solid.
Analysts: iTunes, iTV form complete package
In the span of an hour-long Steve Jobs presentation Tuesday, Apple gave its customers a new way to buy full-length movies online and, through a device the company expects to ship early next year, a way to watch those movies on their TV screen.
The combination of iTunes movie downloads and the iTV set-top box delivers iTunes video to the living room through a dedicated Apple hardware device. More important, analysts say, it solves a problem that has dogged other technology companies that have eyed the home-entertainment market.
“An end-to-end solution, that’s what it’s all about,” Michael Gartenberg, JupiterResearch vice president and research director, told Macworld. “It’s not enough to just have movies on your computer and your iPod, you also have to be able to watch them on your television and get them there easily.”
First Look: iPod games
Premium portable games deliver, even on iPod’s small screen
Games have long been included on the iPod, but they’ve been pretty basic: Solitaire, Brick, Parachute and Music Quiz. Now that premium games are here—available for all fifth-generation iPods from the iTunes Store—the big question is, are they worth the $4.99 Apple is asking you to pay? The answer may surprise you.
Apple’s new games for the iPod are sold from the iTunes Store the same way you can buy music and—if you live in the United States—television shows and movies. But unlike those last two genres, iPod games have been released around the world—everywhere there’s an iTunes Store, there’s a way to purchase games. Evidently Apple was able to strike a more favorable licensing arrangement with game companies than it’s been able to reach with studio executives.
The starting lineup
Of the nine games that debuted with Tuesday’s release of iTunes 7, two of them are Apple originals—a Texas Hold’em poker game, and a brickbashing title called Vortex. The others include three games made by gaming giant Electronic Arts, two games made by casual game maker PopCap Games, one classic arcade game from Namco, and one from an independent game maker called Fresh Games. Interestingly, there’s no representation from “traditional” Macintosh game developers, many of whom have petitioned Apple in the past to open the iPod to third-party game development.The starting lineup of iPod games is bound to deflate the expectations of “hardcore” gamers, but it’s a robust collection of casual games, puzzle titles, and tried-and-true classics that should appeal to a wide swath of iPod users:
