Tag Archives: mobile gaming

Epic v. 30%

I know there are two camps to be in when it comes to the whole Epic versus “the thirty percent” ordeal, but I find it difficult to base myself in either one.

On one hand, yes, Apple is making a huge pile of money off of the apps in the App Store. Thirty percent has been the industry standard for a facilitator’s take for quite awhile now and it’s not as if they’ve made that decision out of the pure intentions of spinning up an entire ecosystem for developers to cash in on.

However, it’s hard to dismiss that Apple own the entire ecosystem and that one can‘t simply have the government force Apple’s hand to do anything that’s not already considered under the law.

Ultimately, if you want to game on your mobile device and you would prefer to install whatever games you want, you’re not using an iOS device, anyway. If you are, you’re probably jailbreaking it, in which case keeping an App Store-based game up-to-date is more of a pain than a plus. And besides, with a jailbroken iOS device, you have access to the entirety of what emulation can bring you, and that’s a vast library of good ol’ games you can spend hours upon hours with and not spend a dime.

If you really cared about what you were putting on your phone to the point that you want to buck the official repositories for applications and run your own mix of software, you’re already on Android. And you have your own launcher. And you’ve probably rooted your handset already.

The suit that Epic is threatening Apple and Google with is about forcing these two tech giants to bow to another rising tech giant’s dream of becoming even bigger. Not to mention this only raises the platform of a slightly declining Fortnite, which maintains its status as the top tier battle royale in the industry.

Notably absent are the reactions of MSFT, Nintendo, and Sony. I wonder what they think about having their revenues cut back from Epic‘s crusade.

Epic’s spending with relation to esports has never matched up to its care for the integrity of its competition, but you can’t deny that the company has been itching for a real fight to prove itself beyond the gaming industry—especially as it begins furnishing its Unreal technology into more niches. While some might point at its Chinese backing with disdain, it’s still a majority American-held entity. I imagine that its Chinese minority holders don’t care for being shut out of a potential windfall that such an injunction could provide, but in such a politically charged climate regarding outside investment into what could be considered American institutions, I would have to wonder if they’re a little hesitant with Sweeney’s gambit.

In conclusion, the Epic fight is a dumb move to open up Apple’s walled garden in order to grow the slice of its pie.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E28 and S3E29.

Yeah, double post. Because holidays.

  • TV integration is half of the point of the Xbox One, isn’t it? This joke is trying to be funny. Eh.
  • Goth Kathleen on this episode? I don’t even.
  • Another DragonBall Z game that’s better than most of the television series? Standard.
  • Nintendo’s naming schemes for their first-party games reeks of some sort of Engrish that was corrected by native-English speakers for the sake of trying to save what’s left of Nintendo’s honor as a great gaming company. The only two titles holding that honor as close as possible are the latest Fire Emblem and Zelda titles for their 3DS handheld as far as I can tell.
  • I fully support CheckPoint being included in MSFT’s Xbox Live content plan for the upcoming year. They used to have Major Nelson and those two Brits do stuff on nearly a weekly basis. Why not bring those guys back? Oh wait–because Larry Hyrb is nothing more than a corporate mouthpiece and the two gamer tag show people weren’t funny at all.
  • More Nintendo news? STOP IT.
  • EA is just stealthily trying to rip off new IP to blow them up into the annual sequel plan, as most of their studios seem to be actually trying to make great new games for the latest generation, with this hackathon business.
  • Baww. But they’re Canadian, right? DEM JOKES, FOLKS.
  • Zach Galifinakis as Sonic? Comedy and game-to-film adaptations must be the two worst genre of movies that exist. Combining them surely creates a black hole of cinema, right?

  • A console commentary! Yaaay~!
  • Shin Megami Tensai 4 and Saints’ Row 4 as their games of the year? Boo.
  • ShiftyLook has some pretty funny stuff. The latest Scott & Kris creation is published there. And now a dating sim based on classic Namco properties’ characters? And the ship from Galaga is a romantic option? Is this the new CandyBox? It could be the new CandyBox.
  • A Tomb Raider card game for iOS? PASS.
  • A tie at retail but a clear win for the PS4 when you consider the second-hand market. Although the same number of systems have been sold overall… so maybe it’s still more of a tie, with the stipulation that PS4 owners are more likely to throw obscene amounts of money away in marked up prices.
  • Zoo… what?
  • A best-of-season sequence masqueraded as a finale review. Pretty good stuff.
  • DANCIN’

And the ultimate sad news: I’m not going to cover this anymore if it means having to watch Twitch videos-on-demand. Having to watch unskippable pre-roll commercials longer than 10 seconds is not acceptable. I hope they continue posting these episodes to YouTube.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E25.

  • Oh no. Another Angry Birds spin-off title. Oh no.
  • The second most popular game on Twitch last week was Diablo 2? Standard, since the only folks playing Diablo 3 anywhere near normal as it should be are on now-last-generation consoles. Nice job there, Blizzard.
  • Square Enix iOS title pricing joke aside, Rovio’s incessant push towards monetizing every single aspect of their Angry Birds related games (and every other game they release) is starting to really push me away from ever seriously considering future mobile titles that are priced as ‘free’ in their respective stores. At least with most of Square Enix’s titles, I know what I am paying for ahead of time because they’re simply porting their products they’ve already ported to other less popular platforms, like the Nintendo 3DS or the Playstation Vita.
  • It’s not a huge secret that development on the next title begins after shipping the game that your development house has been working on, and it’s definitely the case in the dynasty that is Gran Turismo. GT6 wasn’t a launch title for the Playstation 4, but that’s being addressed with its release this week. Forza never really held much of a candle to GT’s extreme simulation of everything car-related, but it was a title that Xbox One users picked up at launch. GT6 will certainly see success, but how long will it be until PS4 early adopters head back to their local game store, pull out their wallets and buy a new game? A fair question, I think.
  • Twitch integration has come to Minecraft. I’d have rather that Notch had been working on 0x10c instead, but I understand that subjecting the masses of Minecraft players to Twitch broadcasting while trying to run Minecraft in a stable fashion comes second to revenue generation.
  • Putting cameras in an average person’s living room with a microphone didn’t yield a second thought because of all of the marketing research potential that could be gathered from their players, but they didn’t realize that a camera pointing at a player could mean dicks on the Internet? Clearly, Sony hasn’t thought through the consequences of a player-facing camera as Twitch has decided that it would rather not list the PS4 Playroom as a title on their service, but what is MSFT going to do when this same situation affects them due to horribly, average Xbox One users?
  • Localization mixing as DLC isn’t exactly a new thing, but I suppose that Square Enix getting behind it makes the whole thing newsworthy. I’d buy the pack, but I still have to finish FFXIII, purchase and finish FFXIII-2 and then purchase FFXIII-3 before the optional patch becomes even remotely relevant to me.
  • That answer is easy, Graham: it’s FFVIII. Emo kids run about with swords that are also guns doing wire-fu maneuvers in order to save the world while playing random card mini-games and lamenting about not being in a relationship or something like that. What’s so hard to understand about that? It’s not so simple like the balance of the world has been destroyed and a party fights to correct it, yet I’m fairly sure I’ve got it nailed down in one run-on sentence.
  • GTA: San Andreas is the logical next step for Rockstar’s mobile gaming / porting strategy. Even though the controls aren’t really the greatest, all of their titles play flawlessly on iOS and Android. Can’t wait to not replay GTA:SA.