If your life revolves around making video games, then you would be in San Francisco this week. The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (http://www.gdconf.com/) is THE major event for the game development industry. GDC is five days of educational sessions, specialized summits, networking events, and expo & career pavilions.
We will be roaming the show to bring you tidbits of news that will affect the technology and games you will be playing soon. Many of the news stories we will bring you will become product reviews in the futures as new products announced at GDC reach your local retail store.
The first two days of GDC are specialized summits including Outsourcing and Mobile. These summits allow the attendees to get focused instruction on specific areas of the game industry.
Some things that caught our attention today were:
Imagination Technologies (http://www.imgtec.com), the leader in graphics acceleration hardware demoed the new 2.4 version of Imaginations’ POWERVR Insider SDK for content developers - plus the latest developments from Imagination’s third-party community. This technology looks great and will help mobile phone hardware and software developers to deliver high-quality video contents to users.
Zeemote (http://www.zeemote.com/) - makers of the JS1 Controller, the world’s first wireless joystick for mobile gaming, were showing their latest model and new game titles. This news follow a year of rapid momentum which saw deals signed with major gaming and wireless companies including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, RIM, EA, Gameloft, Glu, Telcel, Telus and many others. The JS1 will launch in Europe soon with Asia and the US to follow later in the year. The JS1 is a Bluetooth game controller that allows you to play your mobile phone games with a real analog joystick and 4 digital buttons rather than trying to play with the phone’s keypad. Playing a game with the JS1 is a major improvement over playing on a standard mobile phone and we found the gaming experience to be very enjoyable. The JS1 is currently compatible to S60 phones like the Nokia E and N series as well as any Nokia Ngage and RIM Blackberry phones. Future support for iPhone and Windows Mobile are currently under development.
Australian game developer Firemint today announced that its upcoming game Firemint Real Racing has taken home the IGF Mobile Technical Achievement Award at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This latest acclaim follows its recent win in Barcelona at the International Mobile Gaming Awards. Currently in the final stages of development, the circuit racing simulator will be available on the App Store in April. “We’ve been working hard for a long time to show that great things can be done on mobile devices,” said Kynan Woodman, Development Director at Firemint. “This award is a testament to our team’s dedication to developing a high quality game that pushes the iPhone’s technical capabilities to its limits including some not yet available on handhelds and all-new connectivity features.” Firemint Real Racing is a full 3D circuit racing simulator with high definition graphics, 3D sound and extensive physics modeling. The in-car cockpit view has an animated driver and instruments displaying race data. Connectivity features includes the ability for racers to upload video replays of their best races to YouTube with the push of a button, compete in online leagues on the game’s custom built web site, and to compare themselves against friends on Facebook. Firemint wanted to ensure that Firemint Real Racing had the best possible replay value and options and have done so by packing the game with 36 cars, a dozen tracks, four gameplay modes, three classes and three divisions. Control options include combinations of accelerator or touch-based steering, automatic or touch-based acceleration and automatic or touch-based braking. The AI gives opponents different personalities that affect the way each one competes. Some will be aggressive, others will be careless, but one thing is for sure, they are all in it to win! More information can be found at http://www.firemint.com/realracing.htm
On the mobile side, development for the iPhone continues to be hot with lots of attention being focused on the new Palm Pre. We expect to see lots of exciting announcements for new iPhone 3.0 apps. Symbian and Windows Mobile are still strong with many developers waiting for new Apps stores for those platforms.
Stay turned for more news and products from GDC San Francisco.
—Harvey Lee
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