Apple hosted a media event today, the event was primarily music and TV based but there were a few gaming morsals…
The main gaming element was the reveal of Game Center the out-of-the-box social gaming network. Steve teased it back at the lunch of iOS4, but it’s been quiet on the game center for a while now. Unfortunately it wasn’t featured for long (a few minutes) but we did get to see how matchmaking works, and as you can expect with Apple it was pretty seamless, allowing you to matchup with friends, and send and accept game invites. Developers should have no problem in adding multi-player features to their games without worrying which of the many current gaming networks (openfeint, plus+ etc) they must support.
I have to say I’m not a fan of the visual style of Game Center at all. Ok, I wasn’t expecting something ripping off Xbox Live, but what they have designed doesn’t fit well with the modern day gamer. I think they’ve tried to be clever, but what they have done is give it an old fashioned look that would be more suited to a Cribbage tournament at a retirement village…. Yuck! Game Center will be released as part as of a free update to iOS4.1 next week.
The surprise for gaming was the unveil of Project Sword from Epic Games. Epic are responsible for Unreal Tournament and, more importantly, the Unreal Engine. Using this graphics engine, Epic have been able to create some hugely impressive gaming worlds, and all running in real-time on iDevices (most probably iPhone 4, the new iPod Touch and iPad only).
Check out this in-game screen shot (courtesy of Engadget):
The game is an RPG that lets you partake in one-on-one battles online using Game Center. We couldn’t see how the controls worked for fighting, but it seems to be as simple as dragging fighting moves from a character menu, onto your foe in a turn based style much like Pokemon.
That was it for gaming, the rest was all about the new iPod Nano’s, iTunes 10 and Apple TV. Other notable announcements for iPod Touch fans out there was the expected news that the iPod Touch will be updated to iPhone 4 specs, and now includes the A4 processor, retina display and gyroscopic control which all enhance the gaming experience.
