Recently I expressed my interest in games using the gyroscope built into the brand new iPhone 4. Sadly, I won’t receive my device before middle of July, but Apple has already sold 1.7 million iPhone4s within 3 days. Ngmoco, an experienced iPhone games developer, already placed a game using the gyro in the app store, showing off  what can be done with it.

I couldn’t test the game, Gun Range, myself but there is a video on YouTube and while it seems to offer a very basic gameplay, it’s obvious how much closer this way of aiming in video games comes to the real thing. Instead of using a controller or swiping the screen to rotate the character in the game, the player actually has to move around with the iPhone, thereby changing the viewing angle in the game.

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Reported on Gamesindustry.biz , that’s 3 months after the first million registered users (and 7 months after going live). The European version, live since January, seems not doing bad either, with servers  regularly full or almost .

Core, PC players-targeted genres are doing well when it comes to client-based F2P games (much better than more casual genres, increasingly impossible to do outside a browser, or those whose audience usually plays on console). A core genre with a casual enough product (in the sense of being inclusive with players of all skill levels, meaning the vast majority of (losing) players can have a good time, and requiring little coordination/planning/advanced group tactics at the first level of gameplay, and that the business model makes it enjoyable for free players to play) is a good formula.  Combat Arms seems to have found a good balance there, with a simple product accessible to a large number, focused on small team close combat and with largely unintrusive micro-payments. Read the rest of this entry »