WebProNews

Tag: Developer

  • Amazon’s Announces Major Android Appstore Expansion

    Amazon has just announced that they are making another international expansion of the Android Appstore.

    They’ve notified developers that they can now submit their apps for distribution in a bunch of new countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City.

    Amazon says that the Android Appstore will launch in these countries “in the coming months.”

    This brings the total number of markets with access to the Amazon Appstore to almost 200.

    If you’re a developer, and you’re already registered, your apps will be internationally distributed automatically, unless you designate otherwise.

    “Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. “Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

    Of course, Amazon’s Kindle Fire isn’t available in many of these new countries. But with the expansion, Android users in those areas can still utilize that Amazon App Store on their mobile devices = giving Amazon a foothold some new markets where they can compete with the likes of Apple and Google.

    Amazon’s Appstore turned two years old a few weeks ago. Since it’s launch, it has already expanded to many parts of Europe and Japan.

    [Photo via Chris.Gray, Flickr]

  • Facebook Announces Mobile DevCon 2013 Cities and Dates

    Today, Facebook has unveiled the cities and dates for their 2013 Mobile DevCon.

    This year, you’ll have three chances to catch the mobile developer conference: april 18th in New York, May 2nd in London, and May 7th in Seoul, South Korea.

    “We’ll have sessions for iOS, Android and Mobile Web developers. There’ll also be sessions dedicated for Product Managers. We’ll be covering Open Graph, social games, Mobile App Install Ads, and our mobile SDKs – but the focus is helping you grow your apps. In addition, there will be sessions on how we at Facebook build our own mobile apps,” says Facebook.

    You can also look forward to session with companies who have worked with Facebook and built for mobile like GetGlue, Fab.com, and Zeebox. The DevCon concludes with one-on-ones with Facebook engineers and product managers.

    Facebook warns that “this is a highly technical event – we’ll be deep in product and code,” but the event is open to any mobile developers, engineers, or product managers that are “at the sharp end of mobile app development.”

    Facebook says that they have over 680 million active users on mobile, so you know when you’re developing with Facebook you’re developing for a giant audience.

  • Facebook Launches Developers Live, a New Hub for News, Tutorials, and Live Video

    Facebook has just announced Developers Live, a new destination (in the form of a Facebook app) that allows developers to keep up with all of the latest news.

    Facebook says that it will be “central place to learn about the latest tools and to get access to the product managers and engineers who created them.”

    Developers Live will also feature tutorials and other speaking sessions – both live and recorded. There will also be interactive broadcasts at some point down the line.

    Here’s more on what Facebook will offer on the new video channel:

    • Mobile developers will learn how to go deeper and grow their apps with Facebook
    • Game developers will learn how to build better games across web and mobile
    • Websites and publishers will learn how to use Facebook to drive traffic

    The new video channel was announced on Facebook’s Developer Blog, which up until now has been to premier destination for developers to learn about the happenings in Facebook land. You can head on over to the Developers Live app today, but there doesn’t seem to be anything there yet.

    The first live event will take place on February 19th and will feature Director of Product Doug Purdy. You can register for that event here.

  • Facebook Tests Star Ratings, “Install Now” Button in Mobile Ads for Apps

    In early August, Facebook made their new App Center available for all users worldwide. And just a few days later, they announced new mobile ads for apps that allows developers to pay to give their apps just a little bit more play on users’ news feeds.

    The new ads for apps work kind of like Facebook’s Promoted Posts. App-makers can chose which of their apps they wish to promote to more users, designate a target audience, and set a budget. After that, Facebook takes control and promotes the app to the selected group of users. You may have seen these “ads” pop up in your news feed under a “try these apps” heading.

    Now, Facebook is testing a new look for these mobile ads for apps that makes it a little more apparent to users that they should install the app. The new ads also look better and provide more information on the apps in question.

    Inside Facebook obtained a screenshot of the new test ads, which feature better images (coming from the app’s page in the App Center) and also include the app’s star rating and an indicator of how many of a user’s friends are using the app.

    There’s also a giant “Install Now” button, which doesn’t exist on the current design.

    The current “try these apps” mobile ad uses the app’s icon and features no star ratings or friend info. It also has an icon that takes users to the install page instead of the words “install now.”

    To be honest, this is a test that Facebook should eventually promote to the big leagues. It’s a much better design, both for users and app-makers. Have you seen this new ad design while browsing Facebook on mobile? What do you think?

  • Twitter Acquires Mobile App Development Startup Cabana

    In order to put more talent on their platform team, Twitter has acqui-hired the team from mobile app development startup Cabana. The specifics behind the deal are still unknown, but Cabana has announced the acquisition on their blog and Twitter has confirmed it via tweet.

    Cabana was founded by Reeve Thompson and Jeremy Gordon, and the team comes from high-profile companies like Sega, Pixar, LucasArts, Adobe, and EA. Its investors included Digg founder Kevin Rose, Path CEO Dave Morin, and former Google employee and Twitter investor Chris Sacca.

    “Cabana team draws from a past of deep technical wizardry and merges it with a innovative and effective design. Accustomed to GPUs, animatics, and pixel shaders, we take a different approach to developing for the web; one that we believe gives us a unique perspective on mobile app development,” they say on their site.

    Here’s what the Cabana team had to say about “Joining the Flock” in a blog post:

    We built Cabana because we are passionate about empowering people to develop interactive content in new and innovative ways. That same passion for innovation and the democratization of content creation is also shared by the amazing team at Twitter.

    Over the past few months, we’ve gotten to know the Twitter team and discovered the tremendous amount of technological synergy and alignment of our visions. The more we explored this synergy, the more excited we became about joining forces and working together.

    Starting today we will be joining Twitter’s platform team, and will build tools to help third-party developers create new experiences on Twitter and empower the larger Twitter ecosystem.

    Cabana also announced that their standalone mobile app will be shut down on December 1st of this year.

  • U.S. Census Bureau Releases First-Ever Public API

    For the first time ever, the U.S. Census Bureau is making their giant database accessible to app developers with the release of a a public API. This will allow developers to work much of the government’s statistical and demographic information into new web and mobile apps.

    With the public API, developers now have access to two different statistical databases – the 2010 Census and the 206-2010 American Community Survey.

    The former is the basic statistical record of the country, complete with everything on population, age, sex, racial stats, and geographic breakdown.

    The latter goes a little deeper into some specific topics like education, income, occupations, commuting, etc.

    Apps give people simpler access to our statistics so they can get the information they need to answer questions or solve problems,” said Stephen Buckner, chief of the Census Bureau’s Center for New Media and Promotions. “As Web developers exercise their creativity with our statistics, we believe the public will gain more opportunities to access more of our information on their laptops and mobile devices — anytime and anywhere they wish.”

    Along with the release of the public API, the Census Bureau has also unveiled an “app gallery,” which houses a couple of web apps that have already been developed using Census data (the gallery will hopefully become more populated as developers use the new API).

    If you’re a developer and you want to get started with Census data, here’s your portal.

  • Facebook’s New Follow Action Keeps You Up To Speed On Users’ App Activity Right In Your News Feed

    It’s possible that your News Feed is about to become much more crowded/informative, depending on how you feel about a massive influx of new stories. Facebook has just announced the follow action in Open Graph apps, and it’s sure to populate your News Feeds with tons of stories from the dozens of Facebook-connected apps users currently use every day,

    Of course, that’s if you want to see a bunch on user app activity in your News Feed.

    Facebook’s new “follow action” in Open Graph apps is pretty simple. As a developer, building Facebook’s follow action into your app allows users to follow other users of your app, whose updates related to your app are then pushed directly to the follower’s News Feed, Ticker, Timeline.

    “Content a person publishes within your app will be displayed in the follower’s News Feed even if they aren’t Facebook friends. People can control who sees what they publish through the privacy settings of the app,” says Facebook.

    Let’s say a restaurant review app integrated the new follow action. I could Facebook follow any user of that app and their reviews would start showing up on my News Feed. I wouldn’t even have to open said review app.

    Here’s how the process will work for someone who choose to follow another app user:

    Facebook follow action

    This will show up on the user’s Timeline:

    And they’ll also receive a notification:

    And here’s how it will look on the follower’s Ticker and News Feed:

    Here’s what Facebook is telling developers:

    Starting today we will no longer approve custom follow actions. Apps that currently use a custom follow action must migrate to use the built-in follow in the next 90 days. We have updated the Platform Roadmap to reflect this change.

    It’s pretty obvious that it’s a win-win for Facebook and developers. Facebook gets more stories to potentially use as ads and developers get much more visibility of their apps directly in the News Feed. For users, it all depends on if you’re the kind fo person who care to have a bunch on new app-related stories populate your feed. If so, “following” app users is a great way to never miss an update. If not, well, then it would just be clutter.

  • Facebook To Simplify Notification Opt-Outs

    Facebook users will soon have another way to control the flow of notifications they receive on a daily basis, and this one doesn’t even involve accessing a settings page – or even leaving your News Feed for that matter.

    On the Facebook Developer blog, the company just announced that users will now be able to opt out of notifications from various sources (apps, groups, photos, etc.) straight from the notifications drop-down menu at the top left of the page.

    We’re introducing a way for users to opt out of notifications from apps, groups, or other sources (photos, etc.) directly from the notifications drop down menu. People have always been able to opt out on the Notifications Settings page, but this update makes it easier.

    People will see more notifications from the apps, groups and features they engage with most, and none from those they choose to remove. For app developers, a less cluttered drop down menu means that notifications from high quality apps will stand out more. Early results have shown that apps that send high quality notifications have seen a lift to click-through and revenue with this update.

    You can monitor and improve your opt-out rate for notifications with a new dashboard in Insights. This does not change the way users receive updates from apps through channels like news feed and App Center.

    Back in May, we told you that Facebook was testing a similar function – letting users silence some types of notifications directly from the notification box.

    Facebook has been tweaking notifications and notification management quite a bit recently. Last week, Facebook changed the notifications settings page to give users a bit more control over the volume of notifications they receive. We also saw two tests emerge last week – the first was Facebook suggesting apps via notifications, and the second was new notifications for declined event invites.

  • Prototype Camera Describes a Picture’s Content

    Prototype Camera Describes a Picture’s Content

    Imagine a camera that doesn’t take a picture; it gives you a description of the scene you are viewing. Doesn’t sound too appealing, you say. But a picture is worth a thousand words, you say.

    Well, imagine a camera taking and picture AND giving you an instant description of the scene. Now the uses of this technology are starting to make sense. In today’s snap happy society, having those descriptions and being able to search for them would make a huge difference in cataloguing and retracing all of your fondest memories.

    (image)

    Imagine having all the pertinent information about a photo attached to each one automatically. Information like who is in the picture, where it is taken, and what everyone is doing would be key in keeping a clean photo album.

    That’s what Matt Richardson is working on with his Descriptive Camera. Right now it is only a prototype, a bulky prototype at that. But it is an option to explore.

    The core technology used to create the descriptive camera is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk API. According to Richardson, “It allows a developer to submit Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for workers on the internet to complete. The developer sets the guidelines for each task and designs the interface for the worker to submit their results. The developer also sets the price they’re willing to pay for the successful completion of each task. An approval and reputation system ensures that workers are incented (sic) to deliver acceptable results.”

    (image)

    So basically what he is doing is sending a picture to a worker who is writing out a description of the picture and sending the information back. Wait. That isn’t impressive at all. I could have come up with that, and I would have had the good sense to not make a prototype of such a moronic idea.

    You can even set the camera to “accomplice mode”, sending an instant message to your friend asking them to create a picture description for you. Like, here catalogue my photo album for me…

    (image)

    Sending the photo to Mechanical Turk costs $1.25 per photo and takes 3 to 6 minutes for the information to return. This has got to be the stupidest idea I have ever heard of. It doesn’t even take three minutes to write your own description of a photo, a feature most photo-sharing and cataloguing programs accomplish. And it doesn’t cost $100 to complete an album.

    Find a way to use computer AI to make a description and you might have accomplished something.

  • Cargo-Bot, First App Developed Solely On An iPad, Is Ready To Play

    Call it an app of the iPad, by the iPad, for the iPad – Cargo-Bot has just hit iTunes and is available to download for free.

    Cargo-Bot is a puzzle game that has you “teach a robot how to move crates.” Sounds fun, I guess. But even if the game (which I haven’t played yet, could be spectacular) isn’t one of the greatest of all time, it will live on in history for another reason: it was “prototyped, programmed, and polished” entirely on the iPad.

    The game comes to us from Two Lives Left, who used their own Codea app to make Cargo-Bot. Codea is a coding app that “lets you create games and simulation, or just about any visual idea you have.”

    It’s the first game of its kind, prototyped, programmed and polished on iPad. Cargo-Bot was created by Rui Viana, a Codea user who developed his initial prototype and shared it with the Codea community. Two Lives Left reached out to Rui in order to turn his prototype into a published App Store game. They also enlisted the aid of Fred Bogg, a composer who developed a music library for Codea, to create the music for Cargo-Bot.

    Viana is an MIT grad, and Cargo-Bot is his first iOS app.

    Check it out below:

    Retina optimized graphics, puzzles, and truly native to the iPad. Can’t wait to get home any try this one out for myself. How about you?

  • Unemployed Game Developer Makes Awesome Solar System

    Christopher Albeluhn found himself unemployed after 7 years as a game developer. Realizing he needed to update his portfolio, he started to work on building a planet Earth in a Unreal Engine 3 as a simple test for a shader idea. The idea quickly got out of hand and he decided to build the entire solar system. Including all 8 planets, the asteroid belt, and real constellations. The model goes as far as to include gravity wells and the height of each planets rotation around the sun.

    Chris currently has his project on indiegogo.com, and while he met his goal of $8,000 dollars, he needs more to complete his real dream. He wants to give his program away to schools and universities as a learning tool. If he gets to $13000, he can donate some copies of The Solar System to Science World in Vancouver BC. With $16000 he will start handing out pc versions for free to school and educational institutions.

    His project became noticed when his roommate got word of a youtube video and posted it to Reddit.com. Within a few days his video had 50,000 views on Youtube and he was on his way. After he reached his goal of $8,000 he made a blog update that said: “So I have achieved the financial security I wanted to complete this project while surviving for the next few months.” The project has 16 days left to make as much money as possible. And remember that the more he gets in donations, the more copies he can give to schools in need.

    Check out the video of the utterly amazing solar system model that he created:

  • Bing Search API Becoming Premium Service

    Bing Search API Becoming Premium Service

    Regardless of what you think, Microsoft’s Bing is still pretty popular. It’s the number two search engine on the Web. So obviously Microsoft wants to continue this momentum by making Bing get better results, easier to use… and charge for it?

    That’s what Microsoft announced today on the Bing blog at least. The company is making some changes to the Bing Search API and will be bringing the updated service to the Azure Marketplace. The key word there is marketplace as the company is going to begin charging for its use.

    Let’s get to the good news first. Microsoft claims that the updated Bing Search API will “have access to fresher results, improved relevancy, and more opportunities to monetize their usage of the Search API.” Of course, these features come at a price with that price being $40 a month for up to 20,000 queries a month.

    They aren’t just going to start charging for the Search API right away, so don’t worry about that. In fact, there’s going to be a transition period that will last several months. During this time, they encourage developers to try the Bing Search API for free. From now until the end of the transition period, the Bing Search API 2.0 is free to use for everybody.

    For developers, they say that you can look forward to a “new API end point, moderate changes to the request and response schemas, and a new security requirement to authenticate your application key.” More details including those Web sites that process over 3 million queries will come shortly.

    With this, Bing is moving more in line with how Google handles their Custom Search API. Google offers free use of the API for up to 100 queries a day. After this, they will charge Web site admins $5 per 1,000 queries up to 10,000 queries a day.

    It’s hard to say at this point which one would be better – Google or Bing. On one hand, Bing is immediately cheaper, but you get far less queries since Google allows Web sites to handle half of what Bing offers a month in a day for a maximum of $50. I think it’s all going to come down to the pricing for Web sites that handle a much larger volume of searches. Neither Google or Bing display pricing for searches in the millions, but it would be a lot if Google still sticks to its $5 per 1,000 queries.

    On a different note, the comments on the blog post bring up a good point. What about non-profits that use the Bing Search API for their Web sites? One of the comments comes from a library that uses the Bing Search API that only gets 100 to 200 queries. Charging them $40 per month might be a bit too much. The only thing the Bing Team would say is that they’re “thinking about ways to enable smaller scale applications to keep experimenting with the API.”

    Is the Bing Search API too expensive? Should they make exceptions for non-profits? Let us know in the comments.

  • RIM Giving Developers Next BlackBerry In May

    Poor RIM, they have been nothing but down lately. The company is hoping to make a turnaround in a big way with their new handset release. Developers will find out before anybody else if their new product could truly turn the company’s fortunes around.

    Bloomberg is reporting that developers will be receiving RIM BlackBerry prototypes in May. About 2,000 of the devices will end up in the hands of developers at the BlackBerry Jam conference in Orlando, Florida. Alec Saunders, RIM’s vice-president of developer relations, said it’s a “huge step on our path to eventually launching BB10.”

    This is coming on the news that Apple is finally selling more iPhones than BlackBerry devices in Canada. While that was definitely a major blow for the company, they have been on the downward spiral for a few years now.

    In January, RIM hired a new CEO after the two former CEOs stepped down after an embarrassing global outage of BlackBerry phones that affected millions of users. To make matters worse, RIM is now facing a class action lawsuit for those same outages.

    As perhaps a way to make up for all of this, RIM offered free apps, announced new products and even created a super hero team to combat the negative press. It doesn’t really seem that none of it is working. A recent study of mobile development trends has BlackBerry developer interest even below that of Windows Phone.

    From all this negativity, it’s obvious that RIM needs a hit to get back in the game and they’re hoping that BlackBerry 10 is that hit. We got our first look at the device at the beginning of February. The BB10 from the image looks like your average touch-interface smartphone. If they’re hoping to get back into the game, they had better bring something better than just improved hardware. They need the OS and software in the form of apps to prove they can still compete in a world that already has iOS, Android and Windows 7 (soon to be Windows 8 phone) all vying for market supremacy.

    Regardless, I’m a “glass half-full” kind of guy and I still have a soft spot in my heart for my old BlackBerry phone. It had one of the best QWERTY keyboards of any mobile device on the market. Even if the new BlackBerry is a bust, they can always sell, right?

  • Yahoo Developer Resents ‘Weaponizing’ of His Work

    Yahoo proved this week that it is very easy to go from patent defense to patent troll. In today’s lawsuit happy climate it is common practice for companies to stockpile patents to be used in defense of their work. With so many patents out there it has become a sort of arms race. Most are afraid to sue because they are afraid of being sued.

    Former developer Andy Baio was shocked when he heard the news of Yahoo’s patents lawsuit, and like many us, a little disgusted. Actually, more than a little; as a former Yahoo employee, with a few patents of his own, this one really hit home.

    Upon hire at Yahoo, Baio was asked to participate in the companies “Patent Incentive Program,” offering big bonuses to anyone that applied.

    Yahoo assured Baio that the software patents were a precautionary step, only to be used defensively. If another company attacked Yahoo with their holdings, they would have some of their own to fight back with. Baio described it as a “cold war, stockpiling patents instead of nuclear arms, and every company in the valley had a bunker full of them.”

    Baio went along with it, meeting with patent attorneys, who authored documents and diagrams that Baio, the creator of the program, didn’t even understand. These patents were so broad in scope and vague in wordage they could have covered any number of softwares on the market.

    Though none of Baio’s patents have been used in the current lawsuit, he says they were so abtract they could have encompassed Facebooks Newsfeed, or any other activity feed for that matter.

    He points out a particular patent in the lawsuit that protects a “Dynamic page generator.” By Yahoo’s definition, every web application in existence is in violation of the patent.

    “Yahoo’s lawsuit against Facebook is an insult to the talented engineers who filed patents with the understanding they wouldn’t be used for evil. Betraying that trust won’t be forgotten, but I doubt it matters anymore. Nobody I know wants to work for a company like that,” Baio writes.

    “Yahoo tried and failed, over and over again, to build a social network that people would love and use. Unable to innovate, Yahoo is falling back to the last resort of a desperate, dying company: litigation as a business model.”

    It really is a shame that it was Yahoo! to take these actions, a company that broke ground on so many levels in the 90’s. They may have been the first to introduce some of these concepts, but there is a big difference in basic structure and a fully formed vision.

  • Mika Mobile Drops Support For Android

    Mika Mobile Drops Support For Android

    There are some developers who have been successful in monetizing games on the Android operating system, but some developers have not found the same success. This is one of those developers.

    Mika Mobile, creator of Battleheart and Zombieville, took to their blog to announce their intentions to drop support for the Android operating system. What led to this decision? It seems to be a combination of the complexity of developing for Android and the lack of revenue from their titles on the operating system.

    What many saw as good news with the Android raising the app size limit to 4GB, Mika Mobile doesn’t see it that way. They say that they still have to use old methods of making the installer under 50 MB and then have the app download the game proper afterwards. This is due to the app market downloads being downloaded to what they call a “finite download cache” that is stored on the internal memory.

    Mika Mobile says that it would be far easier for them to develop for Android if they could take advantage of SD cards that many Android devices have. Google unfortunately only allows downloads to be first downloaded to the internal memory that varies wildly without any kind of standardization.

    The other problem with Android apps is that they make no money for them. While they have seen sales coming from their Android sales, it’s not enough to continue working with the problem. They said that Android sales accounted for only five percent of their revenue while Android development accounted for about 20 percent of their man-hours.

    When you have multiple hardware configurations, developers have to take all of those devices into account. This creates more work without the promise of any kind of return. It’s the same problem that’s inherent with PC gaming, but it’s handled much better in that market. There are just far too many Android devices running off of too many hardware and software configurations to get to them all.

    It’s this one problem that makes Apple’s hardware much more preferable. Besides the annual hardware revisions, there’s not much keeping these devices at different levels of operating ability.

    One developer leaving Android doesn’t signal the end of support for the service or anything, but it does illuminate the problems inherent to the Android platform. Hopefully Google and its hardware partners can reach some kind of solution. Until then, developers are just going to have to keep testing for the numerous devices that exist.

  • Nintendo Licenses Autodesk Gameware For Wii U

    GDC has been crazy so far with developers saying it’s alright to piss off gamers to indie developers saying that Japanese games suck. Where’s the real news though? Where’s the mind blowing announcement that nobody saw coming? Oh, Nintendo just licensed Gameware for all Wii U developers? Close enough.

    Autodesk and Nintendo announced today at GDC that they have entered into an unheard of agreement that will see Nintendo offering Autodesk Gameware to any developer who wants to work on Wii U games. Why is this unheard of? This is a major console manufacturer and publisher ponying up the funds for game tools that should encourage game developers to work on their console. To be more direct, any developer who works on a Wii U game is going to get free support from Nintendo in the form of Gameware.

    What’s that? You’ve never heard of Gameware? You might not have heard of it, but you’ve surely played games that use it. The Gameware suite has been seen in games that use Unreal Engine 3 (Gears of War 3), CryENGINE 3 (Crysis 2), Havok’s Vision Engine and Unity.

    Back to the license agreement, any developer working on Wii U games will have access to three of the products in the Gameware suite from Nintendo – Scaleform, Kynapse and HumanIK. I know for a fact that many of you have at least seen the Scaleform logo on a few opening screens for games, but what do these middleware solutions actually do?

    Scaleform is a tool that lets developers create user interface environments using Flash. You know how awesome the HUD was in Batman: Arkham City? Yeah, that was built with Scaleform.

    Kynapse is perhaps the most important of the three as it provides a middleware solution to one of the most challenging concepts in game design – artificial intelligence. What Kynapse, Nintendo is providing third-party developers with the tools to create compelling enemies (and allies) that use the latest in artificial design technologies.

    The third middleware, HumanIK, is a character animation engine. It allows character models to interact seamlessly with the environment and other characters. You know how fluid Ezio moves in Assassin’s Creed II? That’s HumanIK at work.

    “Autodesk Gameware technology is used by the industry’s elite development teams and has been adopted across the industry. Through our relationships with key companies like Nintendo, we can put our solutions into the hands of more game developers,” said Marc Petit, Autodesk senior vice president, Media & Entertainment. “Adopting Autodesk Gameware helps streamline the production process, freeing more resources for innovation in new areas. This shift in development focus will help make the next-generation of titles more compelling than the last.”

    While this may not seem like the biggest news to a lot of gamers, just trust me on this one. This is a brave new step for Nintendo as it shows they’re getting serious about third party support. It seems they really want to buck this trend of their consoles only doing well for their own games while leaving third party developers out to flop in the cruel world of games retail.

    Nintendo will be showing off more of the Wii U console at E3 in June. You can be sure that we’ll have all the details then.

  • Intel Unveils Graphics Performance Analyzers 2012

    At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) today in San Francisco, Intel released Intel GPA 2012, the latest suite of tools for game and media app developers to optimize performance. The new software is now available for smartphones, tablets, and ultrabook app developers, and will be able to support Android devices later this year.

    Intel Corporation today introduced Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel GPA) 2012, the latest version of a powerful tool suite to optimize performance of gaming, media and entertainment applications. Expanding upon Intel’s mobile momentum, Intel GPA 2012 will support mobile applications for ultrabook devices and Android based smartphones and tablets for the first time.

    Previously available only on PC platforms, Intel GPA helps developers improve the experience of game and media applications by accessing powerful tools to analyze and optimize performance on Intel Core and Intel Atom processor-based platforms. The tool suite enables developers to enhance application performance on smartphones, tablets, Ultrabooks and PCs. Developers can also optimize Web content for browsers that support hardware-accelerated rich media, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

    “Gaming is one of the largest consumer segments for smartphones, but nobody wants a game that drains a smartphone battery,” said Craig Hurst, Intel’s director of Visual Computing Product Management. “There are few choices for developers who want to optimize apps for power, so Intel GPA 2012 introduces power metrics, ensuring that a game not only has great performance, but also runs longer on Ultrabooks, Android tablets and smartphones.”

    The Intel GPA tool suite includes:

    Intel GPA System Analyzer – Analyzes game performance and identifies potential bottlenecks that slow down performance or affect graphics. This tool allows developers to perform optimization experiments to fine-tune performance without changing application code. New in Intel GPA 2012, Intel GPA System Analyzer now supports a standalone mode that enables real-time analysis of application performance on smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks, including Android devices. Intel GPA System Analyzer can be used to analyze an application’s power usage and how it will affect battery life on mobile devices.

    Intel GPA Frame Analyzer – Offers application developers deep frame analysis of individual application elements such as shaders, textures and pixel history. Intel GPA Frame Analyzer shows the visual and performance impact of each individual element in real time without affecting the application source code.

    Intel GPA Platform Analyzer – Developers can visualize performance of application tasks and the effect on devices by viewing CPU metrics and graphics workloads. PC application developers can also see how their software would perform in a multi-core environment. Intel GPA Platform Analyzer has been rebuilt from the ground up for the release of Intel GPA 2012 to provide more system behavior information. Additionally, the tool is capable of handling large volumes of data to emulate application performance on an extended run.

    Intel GPA Media Analyzer – When used in conjunction with Intel Media SDK, Media Analyzer enables developers to see how effectively an application uses hardware-accelerated video encode and decode in real-time.

    Intel GPA 2012 is available as a free download at www.intel.com/software/gpa. Support for Android devices is expected to be publically released this year.

  • GDC 2012: Realm Of The Mad God Developer Talks Post Release Updates

    Spry Fox Games took a huge undertaking last year by releasing Realm of the Mad God. Not only was it an MMO which is already hard to manage and constantly develop, it was also a bullet hell shooter which requires constant balance updates. How did Spry Fox Games handle this enormous task? They didn’t listen to their players.

    Gamasutra is reporting that Spry Fox Games CEO David Edery delivered a post-mortem on their MMO shmup darling that pissed off players for the changes they made, even those if those changes made the game better.

    Edery references Star Wars Galaxies as the text book example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy of game design, but he argues that there’s always the exception. in the case of Realm of the Mad God, their changes to the core game saw their player retention rate go from 12.7 percent to 37.6 percent.

    What changes were made to the game? The developer found that players, like myself when I play a shmup, never actually look directly at the boss. Players were firing in the boss’ general direction while avoiding the bullet hell that was heading their way. They even found that some players were just looking at the mini-map and firing at the boss instead of using the actual game screen.

    To fix this, they developed a system that would allow the team to make changes directly to the game. This allowed them to change the behavior of the enemies based on a variety of factors. They then made the players’ projectiles have a shorter range and slowed down the enemies’ projectile attacks. This forced players to get in close and pay attention to the game.

    In regular bullet hell shooters, these changes would break the game. While it may appeal to some players, most fans are advanced players. So why change what has already been established as the mode of play for a game like this?

    Experimentation is key, even in a post-release environment. While most developers and gamers would be shocked to see the amount of tweaking and redacting that happeend to Realm of the Mad God post launch, the developer sees it as a win for them. It allowed to see real player reaction to their changes and if it really did make the game worse, they would change it back.

    Using this method of quickly deploying changes to the game, they were able to design, test and deploy updates in under a month. While the changes and the awkward phase in between testing may have pissed off some players, it helped them gain more players than ever before.

    The moral of the story is that it’s alright to piss off your players if the end result is a better game. Using players to test changes made directly to the game without external testing might not sit well with some developers, but Spry Fox Games have proven that it is possible. MMO developers should especially take note to the lessons learned here.

  • GDC 2012: Tweets From the Game Developers Conference

    The highly attended Game Developers Conference opened today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Here are some of the reactions to the opening day we have selected from Twitter:

    @YouTube
    YouTube    How many Post-it notes does it take to kick off the world’s largest game developers conference? http://t.co/aQXAqcla #GDC 3 hours ago via Social Publisher ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @Kiey
    D. Michael Moore    The line for Indie Game the Movie is pretty long. #GDC 1 minute ago via Tweetbot for iOS ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @CatherineJamal
    Catherine Jamal    Aw proud! RT @marleigh: A Swedish game developer named a paper airplane after me. This may be the highlight of my #GDC http://t.co/H9JwrgOf 2 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @TedBrunt
    Ted Brunt    My only read #GDC complaint: Moscone chairs are harder than fourth grade 3 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @mbhulo
    Adam Mayes    Games as research: It’s hard to make an entertaining game. Even harder to do it and solve a hard problem #GDC 4 minutes ago via Twitter for Mac ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @amperjay
    Jaime Banks    Health behaviors spread in social networks, social games can impact mental/emotional health. #gdc 6 minutes ago via txt ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @jenncaps
    Jenn    Awesome presentation @hyperandroid, very informative and honest! Thank you!!! #GDC http://t.co/Jjwc28QE 7 minutes ago via Twitter for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @will_luton
    Will Luton    Wikipedia claims Viagra is a possible cure for jet lag #GDC 8 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @indiegamemag
    Indie Game Mag    Line for indie game movie is crazy long and still an hour to go #gdc 11 minutes ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @ActiveNick
    Nick Landry    RT @Machkovech An EA employee just made fun of EA’s Dragon Age II to make a point about bad gaming AI. Internal friction! #gdc 13 minutes ago via Twitterrific ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @ActiveNick
    Nick Landry    “iOS only is hard and Apple is kind of a pain in the a**” #GDC 13 minutes ago via Twitterrific ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @deantak
    Dean Takahashi    #gdc. sorry folks, no free stuff from Google this year — colt mcanlis. 5 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @ActiveNick
    Nick Landry    RT @ditcomputing Game AI programmers need to do more people watching #gdc 15 minutes ago via Twitterrific ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • 2012 Game Developers Conference Is A Go

    This week will see the launch of the iPad 3, but another event is going down this week that vies for your attention – GDC.

    The 2102 Game Developers Conference starts today and will be taking place at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. While game developers and those in the industry are already there, there will be plenty of exciting news for those of us at home watching the festivities.

    While GDC has traditionally been an arena for developers to talk to each other and hone their craft, it has evolved into so much more. While the spirit of the event stays the same, expect plenty of announcements and pre-E3 buzz all week.

    Some of the major events that will be happening at GDC this year include the AI Summit, the Game IT Summit, the Localization Summit, the GDC Educational Summit and others. While most of these events will probably be only of interest to those in their respective fields; there may be a few announcements at these lectures that will surprise everybody.

    The coolest thing about this year’s GDC is the Flash Forward event which will open the convention proper. It will give each main conference speaker a chance to give a short preview of the topic they will be covering. Some of the keynote speakers include Zynga COO John Schappert, Plants vs. Zombies creator George Fan, Bungie lead engineer Brian Sharp and more.

    The Classic Games Postmortem is making a return this year where developers talk about their experiences making classic games. The speakers this year include Alone in the Dark designer Frederick Raynal, Fallout producer and lead programmer Tim Cain, Gauntlet creator Ed Logg and Harvest Moon producer Yasuhiro Wada.

    There will also be a new section for independent developers to show off their games. In recent years, GDC has become a huge launching point for independent developers to get their name out and even sign with a major publisher.

    “The GDC has long served as a platform for innovation and exploration within our community and we are proud to say that as we head into our 26th edition of the event, we continue to uphold those principles,” says Meggan Scavio, general manager of the Game Developers Conference. “With the addition of Flash Forward, GDC Play and our new Track Keynotes format, and the efforts we’ve put into enhancing our returning content, we continue to emphasize how important it is to evolve and introduce fresh ideas. We are on the cusp of a brand new era in digital entertainment and it has never been more crucial for the industry to come together and exchange ideas at a forum like the one GDC has provided for more than two decades.”

    While there will be plenty of announcements and maybe even an appearance of the rumored Valve console, there will be two other events that gamers will want to watch out for. Two awards shows – the Independent Games Festival Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards will both take place on March 7. These awards are unique as the industry themselves vote on the winners. It’s great to see the industry congratulating itself on the prior year.

    You can be sure that we’ll be covering all the big news emerging from GDC this year. The floor opens today and continues to Friday. There’s a lot of potential for a lot of great announcements.

    What are you most excited about at GDC? Are you hoping for any reveals? Let us know in the comments.

  • Atari Wants You To Remake Pong

    Pong is one of the greatest games ever made. Maybe not for its compelling gameplay, but for its simplicity that brought video games to millions of households. Atari has never really captured that kind of magic again, but they are going to try this year.

    Atari has announced via their Web site a contest for indie developers to remake Pong for the iPhone. They don’t just want a straight up remake of Pong, but they want indie developers to reimagine Pong as something completely unique and exciting.

    Finalists will also have their games submitted for review with the winners being decided by a panel of industry judges and the community.

    Speaking of industry judges, one of them is Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari. I wouldn’t want to be under his scrutinizing eye, but I’m sure somebody will please this giant of video games.

    The winner will receive $100,000 and a publishing agreement with Atari.

    If you want to enter, you can do so here. Atari wants any interested parties to have a design document ready at time of submission.

    The last proper Pong game was Pong The Next Level for the PlayStation. I never played it myself, but I remember the box art looking really trippy.