Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, Developer, iPhone, SDK, iPod touch
Two different services offering plans to developers for push, microtransactions
With iPhone OS 3.0 only having been released yesterday, two big companies are already angling to be developers' go-to for setting up push notifications and other online services for the new apps. OpenFeint was the first service we've heard about -- they have been offering social networking connections to developers for a while, but with the new firmware release, they tell us that they're also hosting options for both push notifications and microtransactions to their stable of app developers. That stable includes apps like Pocket God and Aurora Feint (Danielle Cassley of both Aurora Feint and OpenFeint told us a while back that she was very excited at the prospect of microtransactions with 3.0), and both of those games, as well as others on the service, are planning to include push notifications with "social challenges" -- you'll challenge a friend to complete a certain goal in game, and then get notified when they meet that goal. Look for those new features in an OpenFeint app near you.
And OpenFeint isn't the only service jockeying for developers' attention -- Urban Airship is also making a bid to host push notifications for iPhone game developers. They've landed one of the first push-enabled games, Tap Tap Revenge, and are looking to offer push to more devs, along with in-app purchase support as well. They don't quite have the library together that OpenFeint already does, but their service integrates, they say, in just a matter of hours, and their aim is to make it "brain dead easy" for developers.
The floodgates are open, and we're sure to see more and more companies jump in on hosting plans like this in the future. Prepare to be pushed.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris said 11:37AM on 6-18-2009
Well, this is great hopefully it will be cheaper than managing the push service yourself because that's costing alot of developers more than they are really making..causing them the need to have to se their own *pocket* money
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HazyCloud said 11:46AM on 6-18-2009
Got pushed by AP Mobile this morning. I'm excited to see what devs do with this.
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Zyber said 12:16PM on 6-18-2009
You Mean Tap Tap *Revenge*?
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Martin said 12:54PM on 6-18-2009
So how exactly does a developer setup push notifications? Do they have to be running a certain server or what? And what is the cost to the developer?
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Jay said 1:57PM on 6-18-2009
Don't forget about http://push.io/
They are also doing hosted push notifications for app developers.
Martin: All the developer info about push notifications are at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/prerelease/library/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008194-CH1-SW1
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Jay said 2:02PM on 6-18-2009
Oops thats an old link. Here is the new one.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/Introduction/Introduction.html
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