Filed under: Gaming, Retail, Software, Odds and ends, Apple
Apple to show off THQ's De Blob at Apple Stores
The good folks at THQ just dropped us a note that they've signed a pretty big deal with Apple -- their game, De Blob, which I played at E3 and previewed for Joystiq (and talked with the creator for TUAW), will be installed on in-store iPhones as a demo game. They say that the game's use of the accelerometer and solid 3D graphics (you use the accelerometer to bounce a little blob around a 3D world and paint various buildings in the environment) was what brought Apple to choose the game as a software demo for their handheld.
The good news is that De Blob is a quality game, but the bad news is that it's from a large developer like THQ -- Apple has shown a bias in their official outlets for larger companies like EA, and it's disappointing to see that when lots of the best games on the store are coming from much smaller developers. On the other hand, to their credit, Apple has occasionally passed the spotlight to smaller devs, so hopefully this won't be the only game to ever see a demo in the brick-and-mortar stores.
And the other good news here is the Apple seems to finally be giving gaming a space in their marketing, if not in their culture as a whole. For a long time, gaming has had to take a backseat at Apple, but the recent push behind the iPod as "the funnest iPod ever" and these in-store displays point to an Apple that finally recognizes how widespread especially casual gaming has become and how important it is to selling computers nowadays.
The good news is that De Blob is a quality game, but the bad news is that it's from a large developer like THQ -- Apple has shown a bias in their official outlets for larger companies like EA, and it's disappointing to see that when lots of the best games on the store are coming from much smaller developers. On the other hand, to their credit, Apple has occasionally passed the spotlight to smaller devs, so hopefully this won't be the only game to ever see a demo in the brick-and-mortar stores.
And the other good news here is the Apple seems to finally be giving gaming a space in their marketing, if not in their culture as a whole. For a long time, gaming has had to take a backseat at Apple, but the recent push behind the iPod as "the funnest iPod ever" and these in-store displays point to an Apple that finally recognizes how widespread especially casual gaming has become and how important it is to selling computers nowadays.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David said 8:51AM on 10-04-2008
I'm sure that Apple has nothing against the smaller developers.
Imagine a new user opening the demo game from well known developers on the iPhone/iPod Touch at the Apple Store. The EA or THQ splash screen appears and the customer thinks, "Cool. THQ writes for this thing".
Now imagine the same scenario with smaller developer demo installed, you wind up with "Who is Pangea Software, I've never heard of them". I'm not picking on Pangea, I love them, but they don't have the star power that EA does.
So a comment like "Apple has shown a bias in their official outlets for larger companies like EA" does not make sense. Apple is clearly using well known names to show customers how big developers are on board. It just seems like common sense that when you name drop you have to drop a name that people know :-)
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Jash Sayani said 9:20AM on 10-04-2008
Nice.... Waiting for it to come up at AppStore !
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Nick K. said 10:12AM on 10-04-2008
All of the Apple Stores that I've been to in the Ft. Lauderdale area have tons of apps already installed... Cro-Mag, Enigmo, etc. All of the iPhones/iPod Touches each have the same apps, so it's the store that put the stuff there. Is this normal?
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Dale said 10:30AM on 10-04-2008
DeBlob is also a great game, regardless of its host system.
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Matt said 11:05AM on 10-04-2008
at my local apple store they also had Enigmo on the iPod touches...
are they taking that off?
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Jeremy said 11:53AM on 10-04-2008
I can't think of a huge number of games for the iPhone that I would call "good" let alone so many of them that there are more small developers than large in the "good" category.
Besides, it's pretty subjective as to what's "good" and what isn't, isn't it? I can't stand driving games, others don't like puzzles.
It's really, really unlikely that Apple is deciding on the basis of company size, they are most likely using their own definition of "good," just as we all are.
In the case of a retail environment, "good" probably means it has to be exciting, and as great as Trism is (and I think it's great), it doesn't exactly "wow" the audience.
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Christopher said 1:50AM on 10-05-2008
Apple definitely shares some of the limelight with small startup developers. Our iPhone application, Cosmovox, has enjoyed the no.1 spot under "Staff Favorites" on the iTunes store for almost a solid week thus far. We really appreciate this recognition and exposure. While this list of apps isn't accessible from the iPhone App Store app, it is on the front page of the App Store under iTunes. The exposure hasn't rocketed Cosmovox into the top ten, but it might have done so for iChalky which is also in the Staff Favorites.
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Jonathan Wise said 9:18PM on 10-05-2008
I bought De Blob as my first and only major (over $5) App Store purchase, at the recommendation of this website. While it was entertaining for about 2 minutes, I can't say I've ever played it since the first day I bought it. The "3D" graphics aren't really, the accelerometer use is gimmicky at best, and over-all it really isn't that fun.
In general, I was highly disappointed in the game, and now take with a grain of salt any talk of the iPhone as a real gaming platform. The fact that I haven't paid money for another game since (the NES emulator, Quake4iPhone, and now the Sega emulator are all free) is due to the complete disillusionment that came from buying into the hype that the App Store heralded the dawn of a new PSP-killing gaming platform.
Simply put: I'm a big fan boy, but De Blog sucks, and if that's the best Apple has to demo, I think we've got a ways to go...
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