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GDC: Gamespy coming to iPhone

By Nigel Wood, UK
for www.touchgen.com

Published: March 9, 2010

iPhone game developers can now quickly and easily add Social Media Connectivity, In-App Purchases, Leader Boards, Stats and much more with GameSpy…
GameSpy Technology, the video game industry’s leading provider of online gaming services, today announced several updates to their successful suite of tools for developers of iPhone games, including an entirely new customizable user-interface (UI) toolkit and new services such as in-app purchases and push notifications.

“GameSpy Technology has made it easier than ever for developers of any size to add online features to their iPhone games,” said Todd Northcutt, Vice President, GameSpy Technology. “Unlike competitors in the space, GameSpy is not attempting to create another proprietary platform but act instead as a service provider in order to empower developers. Thanks to GameSpy’s iPhone
services, the power to control online destiny is now in the hands of people making the games.”

GameSpy’s new customizable UI for iPhone will come as a huge benefit to independent developers who are looking to add robust online features that can span multiple games without having to invest additional time and money. Developers can either implement the UI as is, change the appearance to match their game/brand or use the provided APIs to include GameSpy’s services into their existing game UI. Providing this standardized UI for its services for the first time will ensure more consistent, higher quality of online services, while making it that much easier for developers to implement into their games.

The GameSpy API is common across all gaming platforms, making GameSpy the only online service provider powering games on the iPhone and all other connected gaming platforms. GameSpy’s iPhone services are already in use in titles like Warner Bros Interactive’s Guinness Book of World Records and Rockstar Games’ Beaterator. Moving online features to and from the iPhone is easy with GameSpy’s iPhone technology.

“This aligns perfectly with GameSpy Technology’s strategy of supporting all gaming platforms with a truly open approach,” said Northcutt. “By offering multiple options for integration and turning over control of the branding and customer relationship to developers, GameSpy continues to play the role of true service provider. In keeping with its newly announced GameSpy Open initiative, we have enabled in-app purchases to facilitate development of new business models, especially for games and IP moving over from other platforms.”

GameSpy offers iPhone developers all the benefits of a platform (such as a standardized user experience and ease of integration) with the additional upside of being able to own the relationship with their customer and control the presentation of their branding and UI. The entire suite of iPhone tools encompasses a large number of services, including connectivity to existing game identities and social networking sites, leader boards, user statistics, player buddy lists both from Facebook and from other GameSpy-powered games and important usage metrics. GameSpy also provides a number of high value services like push notifications (with the first million messages delivered to users free of charge) and in-app purchases.

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Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

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