Watchmen MMO coming out for the iPhone
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, iTunes, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
I love massively multiplayer online games, I love my iPhone, and I love Watchmen, the genre-defining graphic novel series of the late ’80s (of which, I’ll brag, I have a whole set of first edition copies) that’s very soon to be the first movie blockbuster of 2009. That’s why the news, over at our sister site Massively, that all of my loves were coming together in what’s meant to be a Watchmen-branded MMO game for the iPhone made my day.
Watchmen: Justice is Coming will have 3D environments, customizable avatars, and thousands of players interacting in the game at the same time. Massively’s got some video from G4 showing off the app, put together by the apparent newcomers Last Legion Games. Unfortunately, while the concept is lofty (they’ve got a long-term vision for improving the game based on player feedback), the gameplay itself looks like clunky adware — the kind you might expect from Warner Bros. and the iPhone deals they’ve come up with so far.
So we’re reserving judgment on this one until we can give it a try, and fortunately we won’t have to wait long — the devs say they’ve lined up the game for release later this week, right along with the movie. That timing doesn’t impress us either — usually, when a game and movie release simultaneously, one’s been hurried to make the deadline, and trust us, it usually isn’t the movie. It’s Watchmen on the iPhone, so it’s hit two of three bases with us already. But it’ll need to bring a good game, too, if Last Legion is hoping for a home run.
TUAWWatchmen MMO coming out for the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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‘MacGuard’ double-plus ungood, avoid
Filed under: Security
The fine folks at Intego sent out a warning this morning about MacGuard, a bogus piece of software that claims to clean up your system and remove adware, spyware, and trojans. It doesn’t.
According to the warning, MacGuard is simply a clone of a Windows app called WiniGuard. The company releasing the software, Innovagest 2000 SL, may be using the credit card numbers they harvest during the purchase process for “nefarious purposes.”
WiniGuard “hijacks the user’s desktop and typically displays exaggerated or false claims of spyware found to frighten the user into paying for the program,” according to Sunbelt Malware Research Labs.
While our fine readers wouldn’t get suckered into such a scheme, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles might not be so educated. If you know someone with a Mac who might fall for this, do them a favor and forward them this warning.
The MacGuard website is at macguard.net.
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iPhone is the place for adware?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Freeware, Apple, iPhone, App Store
Om Malik posted an interesting piece earlier this week about the growing market of ad-supported software on the iPhone — due to the strange economies of the App Store (which are still developing), lots of app makers have found the prices on their apps driven way down, as most buyers are pretty wallet-shy when it comes to picking up even quality apps from the store. But as Malik notes, putting ads in the software allows these devs to still get some cash out of their products (and most consumers aren’t fazed: Twitterrific, one of the most popular apps on the Store, has had ads in the free version since day one).
Unfortunately, Malik doesn’t mention the one problem that Apple didn’t think to fix in the first release of the App Store — trial versions. One of the reasons consumers are blanching at the more costly apps is that they have no options to try them out first, and when people are offered a choice of free unknown versus a paid unknown, they’ll always take the free option. If Apple could come up with a way to let users try before they buy (some developers, including iconfactory, have created two different versions of their own apps, which people can then upgrade to if they like the app), I’m guessing you’d see more people pay for the more quality apps in the store.
But even if not, Malik seems right (though even he admits we’re all flying blind here, on only a month’s worth of data and anecdotes). If the only app you can sell in the App Store is a free one, ads aren’t a bad way to make up as much of the dev costs as you can.
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iPhone is the place for adware?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Freeware, Apple, iPhone, App Store
Om Malik posted an interesting piece earlier this week about the growing market of ad-supported software on the iPhone — due to the strange economies of the App Store (which are still developing), lots of app makers have found the prices on their apps driven way down, as most buyers are pretty wallet-shy when it comes to picking up even quality apps from the store. But as Malik notes, putting ads in the software allows these devs to still get some cash out of their products (and most consumers aren’t fazed: Twitterrific, one of the most popular apps on the Store, has had ads in the free version since day one).
Unfortunately, Malik doesn’t mention the one problem that Apple didn’t think to fix in the first release of the App Store — trial versions. One of the reasons consumers are blanching at the more costly apps is that they have no options to try them out first, and when people are offered a choice of free unknown versus a paid unknown, they’ll always take the free option. If Apple could come up with a way to let users try before they buy (some developers, including iconfactory, have created two different versions of their own apps, which people can then upgrade to if they like the app), I’m guessing you’d see more people pay for the more quality apps in the store.
But even if not, Malik seems right (though even he admits we’re all flying blind here, on only a month’s worth of data and anecdotes). If the only app you can sell in the App Store is a free one, ads aren’t a bad way to make up as much of the dev costs as you can.
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