Microtransactions Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

GDC 2011: Nexon goes kart riding on the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Mar 7th, 2011)

Nexon is a South Korea-based publisher that's basically helped create and define the idea of free-to-play, microtransaction-based MMOs around the world. While microtransactions have become popular in all kinds of game genres in the last few years (including in quite a few apps on the iPhone), ...

GDC Online 2010: Limbic Software's route to App Store success

by Mike Schramm (Oct 5th, 2010)

I'm here in Austin, Texas this week for the Game Developers' Conference, and Limbic Software's Arash Keshmirian kicked off the iPhone gaming track this morning with a panel about how the company found success with their TowerMadness tower defense game. Limbic's story is similar to a lot of others ...

GDC 2010: How to develop an app with EA Mobile

by Mike Schramm (Mar 11th, 2010)

For the first panel of day two here at the 2010 Game Developers Conference's iPhone gaming track, Oliver Miao of Centerscore Studios took the stage to talk about working on Surviving High School for the iPhone as a part of Electronic Arts' Mobile division. As Miao made clear early on, he's an ...

GDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model

by Mike Schramm (Mar 10th, 2010)

We have a lot of questions for the company, and we'll be asking even more of them coming later this week. But first things first: we cornered Ngmoco producer Allen Ma here in their suite at GDC 2010 and asked him to try and tell us why Ngmoco is so insistent on "freemium," and how they feel about ...

Eliminate now available on the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Nov 3rd, 2009)

Ngmoco's Eliminate has been building up buzz ever since it was announced, and now the first-person shooter is out on the App Store to try for yourself. As you can see above, it offers some relatively basic FPS gameplay when compared to shooters on other platforms (I've been having a lot of fun ...

Rock Band on iPhone is a hit

by Mike Schramm (Oct 21st, 2009)

Disgruntled TUAW commenters, I'll save you some time: "OMG Mike of course a game powered by EA and one of the most popular franchises of all time is a hit. Try reporting some real news!" But not so fast -- Rock Band, which hit the App Store top 10 and conquered the Top Grossing list just days after ...

TUAW exclusive: Makers of Aurora Feint unveil new game, codenamed "VSL"

by Mike Schramm (Oct 20th, 2009)

Aurora Feint was one of the iPhone's first big games, way back in the early days of the App Store. Since then, the company behind that first hit has added on a few different games in the same universe, each with their own separate features and focus, but all in the same vein of puzzle-based RPG. ...

Booyah releases Booyah Society, an app/game that tracks "life achievements"

by Mike Schramm (Jul 27th, 2009)

Booyah is a company I've had my eye on for a while -- they're a couple of veterans from Blizzard Entertainment (makers of the popular Diablo and World of Warcraft games, two of my favorites) who have been teasing a big-time iPhone app. Just today, they've finally showed their cards, and have ...

TUAW interviews OpenFeint's Peter Relan, Net Jacobsson, and Jason Citron

by Mike Schramm (Jun 25th, 2009)

Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron are the folks with their names on Aurora Feint, but as Danielle told us in an interview a while ago, Peter Relan is the real mastermind behind the growing Feint empire. Not only did he put the two together in an idea lab, but he's one of the driving forces behind ...

Two different services offering plans to developers for push, microtransactions

by Mike Schramm (Jun 18th, 2009)

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 ...

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