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Developer David Sjölander on his creative racing game for children

Our second Apps Pitch comes from Swedish developer David Sjölander, explaining his Build Cars with Edward and Arthur children’s app.

What’s your app called and what does it do?

Build Cars with Edward and Arthur is a creative game where kids can create thousands of fun cars and then test-drive them on the race track. Depending on what parts you use the car will behave different when driving, you’ll need better tires to splash through mud, bigger engine to go faster etc.

While playing you’ll collects stars that unlocks more car parts, and even additional race tracks with new challenges! You can also gain stars by building certain complete cars, or by building a very light car that can cross an old wooden bridge.

This game is for children 3-7 years old. While the app does contain some text, it is designed to be played by non-readers. The goal for me was to create a game that parents will enjoy playing together with their children.

What devices is it on, and what are your plans?

It’s currently available for both iPads and iPhones. I’d be happy to create versions for other platforms but those platforms are a lot more complicated with lots of different marketplaces and screen sizes.

What’s the business model and why have you chosen it?

The game cost $2, and has no advertising links, social media connections or in-app-purchases. I would probably get more money if I used in-app-purchases to unlock more car parts, but as a parent I don’t like that model in games targeted at children.

What’s innovative about the app – what sets it apart?

I’ve put a lot of work in creating a game that is both creative and fun with quite advanced car-building, while still being intuitive for small children.

I also hope that both children and parents see all the work and love I’ve put into the graphics. I tried to create something feels different from most iPhone games, and I’m very happy with how the game turned out graphically.

What’s the competition – who else is out there in this area?

There are lots of apps for children on the App Store but, only a few good ones. I’ve got very positive reviews so far so I’m confident that the game is good, but it’s still a major challenge to break through the noise in the App Store.

As a Swedish game developer you may get great reviews and sales in Sweden, but it’s extremely hard to reach parents in other countries.

Tell us more about the company behind it

While I’ve been building games for a long time, this is my first app of my own. I recently moved to the countryside on the Swedish island Gotland, and I guess the team consists of me and my two children.

The developent basically worked like this: in the morning my four-year-old gave me assigments, like which new parts he wanted etc. When coming back from kindergarten he tested the game and hopefully gave it thumbs-up. He was a very strict project manager…

What are your future plans?

If there is big demand I’m open to create more car parts for the game. In the future I’d like to create more games with Edward and Arthur and develop their personalities a bit more than I did in this game.

I originally created the characters for a children’s book and would still love to see that printed. Both me and my children have lots of ideas of other games that we want to create!

Sky Gamblers party mode, Infinity Blade Dungeons, Star Academy, Nike+ Training and more on the way to iPhone and iPad

Apple is expected to unveil the iOS 6 software at its WWDC conference in June, and while proprietary maps, Siri APIs for developers and a revamped App Store have been rumoured, the exact details won’t be known until the event.

However, Apple is showing off some of the apps that it expects to be big summer hits on its iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. The company’s senior director of iPhone product marketing, Stan Ng, sat down with The Guardian this morning for an “iOS momentum” briefing.

The choice of apps offers some clues about Apple’s priorities for its platform, and how it’s positioning iOS against competition from Android in particular.

The figures are familiar from Apple’s most recent quarterly financials call: more than 365m iOS devices shipped so far, more than 600,000 apps in its App Store, 25bn downloads so far and a current run-rate of 1bn a month.

(Google, meanwhile, said in February that 300m Android devices had been activated, while in May it reported that its Google Play Store had passed the 15bn downloads milestone, also running at around 1bn a month.)

Not-so-throwaway references to the lack of iOS malware, developers making money from paid apps, and OS fragmentation during the briefing also show where Apple is looking to pitch the battle for developer mindshare this summer. With WWDC coming just a couple of weeks before Google’s own I/O developer event, expect more barbs ahead.

Exclusivity on the rise

Ng and his colleagues showed me nine apps and one iBook during the briefing, although he had a number of meetings and the selection of apps may have varied from journalist to journalist – in other words, this isn’t the definitive list of the apps that Apple is showing off.

All of them are iOS exclusives, for now at least. This seems to be where the battleground is heading between iOS and Android, as Apple ramps up its backing for apps that aren’t available on other platforms.

See also the three exclusive apps shown at the unveiling of the company’s new iPad in March, and senior vice president of worldwide marketing Philip Schiller’s public abandonment of Instagram when it “jumped the shark” by being ported to Android.

But yes, the apps. Namco’s Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy is already out – and was one of those iPad-event demos – but its publisher is adding a party-play multiplayer mode designed to be used with iOS’ AirPlay feature and a TV.

I watched NG and two colleagues play from a mixture of iPads and iPhones, all wirelessly connected to an Apple TV set-top box, with the TV screen split between their views. Essentially the same thing that games consoles have been doing for years.

That’s important in itself, since it’s a sign that developers are already looking at Apple TV as… Well, as a stealth console. The action was pretty jerky, but the feature is apparently still in development.

I also got a closer look at Infinity Blade Dungeons from Epic Games’ Chair Entertainment studio, which was also shown at the iPad launch. The version shown off today was running on an iPhone 4S, and while the bubbling lava and blowing leaves are nice in a processor-showing-off way, I was more impressed by the developers’ decision to shun a virtual D-pad and buttons in favour of touchscreen gestures.

Independent spotlight

The third game Apple talked up was a different kettle of fish: SpellTower, a word game by independent developer Zach Gage, who recently generated some canny social media buzz with a “Holy Crap, I’m Near the Top, This is Crazy! Help an Indie Take On Rovio+Zynga!” price-cut promotion.

Singling out a game like this to show to journalists is telling, and not just because it showcases the more casual side of iOS gaming. With no shortage of games that have crashed and burned on the App Store, Apple is clearly aware of the need to keep the dream of iOS riches alive for the indie community.

Armed with its featured slots on the App Store, I’ll be interested to see if Apple turns SpellTower into the next Tiny Wings, in terms of a one-man success story.

Also interesting from the demo: Ng’s reminder of Apple’s claim that the iPod touch is the best-selling handheld games device in the world. It’s been easy to forget about the iPod touch in recent times – it hasn’t been updated since September 2010.

If it does get refreshed this summer (or more likely, Autumn), perhaps it will have even more of a focus on gaming, and a continued challenge to Sony’s PS Vita and Nintendo’s 3DS. That’s my reading, rather than anything specific said by Ng, though.

Book-apps and iBooks

Also shown this morning was a succession of reading/book apps, including two existing titles from Touch Press: Barefoot World Atlas and Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy.

There was also an iBook – George Harrison: Living in a Material World by the late Beatle’s widow Olivia – showcasing its use of photos and audio alongside the text.

I’ve heard from several book publishers lately that Apple is taking a pro-active approach when it comes to separating iBooks from iOS apps – those who are simply looking to add more photos, video and audio to a print text are being encouraged down the iBooks route, with apps left for those with grander interactive ambitions.

The George Harrison iBook is a good example of the former, but another app demonstrated today – a still-in-development book-app called Star Academy from developer Monster Costume – illustrated the latter.

No virtual page-turns here: instead it offers parallax-scrolling scenes, visuals from artist Dylan Cole (whose CV includes Avatar, Tron Legacy and Lord of the Rings) and the promise of games and puzzles.

Ng offered up panoramic-photography app TourWrist and polished city-guide Cool Cities Collection as current cutting-edge travel apps – both are already available – before donning a pair of Nike trainers to show off the sportswear firm’s upcoming Nike+ Training and Nike+ basketball apps.

The trainers contain sensors to measure the movements of their wearer, transmitting the data wirelessly to the iPhone apps for interpretation. The apps also include workouts from famous athletes, while tying into the NikeFuel community – a bit like Xbox Live with less sitting on the sofa.

The interface between apps and third-party hardware (or, indeed, leisurewear in this case) has plenty more mileage, and for now it’s an area dominated by iOS. So-called appcessories may be plentiful at WWDC, or looking further ahead, at the CES consumer electronics show in January 2013.

All eyes on WWDC

In summary, then: More developers and brands are shifting towards a dual iOS/Android publishing strategy in 2012. Grumbles about Android fragmentation and the appetite of its users for paid apps continue, but the platform’s sheer scale is counterbalancing that, especially for certain app genres like freemium games and social apps.

From today’s admittedly-small selection of apps being talked up by Apple to journalists, my takeaway is that the company’s strategy is a mixture of: doubling down on genres it’s stronger in, like console-quality games, book-apps and appcessories; reminding developers of the promotion it can put behind iOS exclusives, and also highlighting some of those Android negatives.

That said, June’s conferences will give us a much better picture of how the next generation of iOS and Android software and stores will shape up for developers.

Japanese publishers rack up £676m of combined revenues in first three months of 2012 alone

Japan’s two largest social mobile games firms, GREE and DeNA, have reported strong financial results for the first quarter of 2012, although regulatory scrutiny could rein in their growth in the months ahead.

GREE generated revenues of $560m (around £348m) during the quarter, posting a net profit of $162m (around £101m). That’s up 182% and 186% respectively year-on-year.

The company says it has 234m members worldwide for its social mobile games community, although the bulk of its revenues come from the 30m in Japan. 93% of GREE’s revenues come from in-app purchases, versus 7% for advertising.

Meanwhile, DeNA reported revenues of $529m for the first three months of 2012, up 32% year-on-year. Its operating income rose 19% to $234m in the same period. The company has so far made $640m from its Moba-coin virtual currency alone.

To put these numbers into perspective, Electronic Arts’ latest set of financial results reveal its mobile revenues were $87m in the first quarter of 2012, while its traditional Western rival Gameloft generated $58.9m.

Zynga, meanwhile, generated $321m of revenues from its entire business – web and mobile – in the same quarter.

GREE and DeNA are giants in the social mobile gaming world, then, but their revenues and profits remain rooted in their Japanese homeland. Both companies have aggressive global expansion plans though.

DeNA launched its Mobage social gaming network in the West in 2011, starting on Android before releasing a few Mobage-enabled games on iOS. Its $403m acquisition of Western firm ngmoco in October 2010 has been at the heart of this, but DeNA has also snapped up indie developers like Rough Cookie, Gameview, Atakama Labs and Astro Ape, while inking partnerships with other Western publishers.

For its part, GREE is planning to launch its social platform worldwide by the end of May 2012. It too has been acquiring – most recently paying $180m for US developer Funzio, but also ngmoco’s rival OpenFeint for $104m in April 2011.

In fact, its financial results reveal more details about Funzio’s business: the company made $12m of revenues from its Modern War and Crime City social mobile games in the first quarter of 2012, then $5m in April alone as it launched a third title, Kingdom Age.

With lucrative profits in Japan fuelling this global expansion, the cloud hanging over both GREE and DeNA is fresh regulatory scrutiny on one aspect of their domestic businesses: “Kompu Gacha” games.

These are titles where players can enter sweepstakes for prizes if they buy a certain number of virtual items. Following unrest from parents about children’s spending habits as a result of these offers – an intriguing mirror of the “bait apps” debate currently causing a rumpus in the US – the Japanese government is expected to crack down on their use.

Both companies’ share prices dived following the first reports of the likely regulation, showing investors’ confidence wobbling in their business models. GREE has already said it will stop offering the offending games at the end of May.

On one hand, global expansion will reduce GREE and DeNA’s dependence on Kompu Gacha-related revenues. On the other, those games have been the cash cow base for the expansion overseas, so if sales take a hit, their ability to move fast to build their Western businesses against competition from Zynga, EA and others may be restricted.

Finnish developer’s earnings before tax for year top £38.7m thanks to 200m monthly active users

Angry Birds has generated hundreds of millions of downloads for Finnish mobile games firm Rovio Entertainment, but the company’s financial results for 2011 reveal just how lucrative the franchise was that year.

The company has reported total revenues of €75.4m (£60.8m) for 2011, with earnings before tax of €48m (£38.7m).

30% of Rovio’s revenues for the year came from its consumer products business, which includes merchandising and licensing income.

Rovio says that the total number of Angry Birds game downloads reached 648m by the end of 2011, with 200m monthly active users across all platforms. The company grew its headcount from 28 to 224 during the year.

“The strong growth in revenue clearly demonstrates the popularity of the Angry Birds brand,” said chief executive Mikael Hed in a statement.

“The heavy investments made in 2011 to all business areas will be seen in future products. To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services.”

Hed added that Rovio is “very optimistic” about continuing its growth in 2012. The company launched the latest Angry Birds game, Angry Birds Space, in March. It proceeded to rack up 50m downloads in the next 35 days.

Rovio reaches milestone and releases new levels for iOS and Android versions of its latest game

Angry Birds Space, the latest mobile game from Finnish developer Rovio, has reached the 50m downloads mark just 35 days after its release on 22 March.

The publisher claims on its blog that this makes its tile “the fastest growing mobile game yet”, beating all previous records for the Angry Birds series.

The announcement may be a deliberate reminder to challengers like Draw Something of the scale of Angry Birds. Draw Something was released on 1 February, notched up 35m downloads in its first seven weeks – yes, a similar time period to that required for Rovio’s new milestone – and was promptly acquired by Zynga for $180m.

Draw Something passed 50m downloads in early April, while another recently-released game, Temple Run, is also past that milestone.

“While numbers like this certainly say something about the popularity of Angry Birds, for us the main goal is to keep creating fun new experiences that everybody can enjoy,” explains Rovio on its blog.

The company released updates to the iOS and Android versions of Angry Birds Space on 25 April with 10 new levels for free, as well as 20 free Space Eagles power-ups. Both may be responses to criticism from some quarters about Rovio’s greater use of in-app purchases in the new game.

“There’s only one conclusion to draw: something even bigger is on its way,” concludes the blog post. That something is likely to be a 1bn milestone for the entire Angry Birds series.

The public figure for overall downloads has remained at 700m for some time now, as the developer stopped providing updates in anticipation of cracking the 1bn mark. That can’t be far off now.

As a comparison, the original Angry Birds was released on 9 December 2009, and reached the 50m milestone exactly one year later.

These days, technological fulfillment is everything. You’ll find smartphones, laptop computers, GPS gadgets, digital cameras, portable music players, and of course, not to stay out would be the selection of video games that happen to be offered to the pleasure of video game enthusiasts. Thus, when you find yourself trying to find the best video game console to suit your needs, how will you make the appropriate choice? More info on Video Game System could be read below.

There are so many amusing gaming systems nowadays that very first time buyers are often left with more inquiries than answers when choosing the best video game console. At the same time let’s focus on the strong points of your three important 7th generation video games that dominate the current market: Sony Ps3, Xbox 360 console, and Wii.

Sony PlayStation 3 is certainly a worthy invention, an excellent advancement from its forerunners (the PS and PS2). With this particular game console, you do not only get to play your preferred games, you’ll get to enjoy DVD and Blu-ray disc viewing, video chat, digital photo viewing, and much more. It’s become a multi-tasker, it’s pretty much much like a smart phone when it comes to overall flexibility (not that it already includes a built-in cellular telephone, although almost all not even close from happening in the future). Additionally it is good to know that the PS3 is compatible even with game titles that were revealed for PS and PS2. The greater news is, a number of manufacturers continue to be creating wonderful games in this gaming system, thus expect more game playing action to take place within your living room area within the coming days. The top news is PS3′s connections, which lets you keep in touch with PS3′s network at all times.

The Xbox 360 console is Microsoft’s commendable response to the public’s very good interest on video games. You will love its Xbox Live service since it allows players to battle one another on the web. This characteristic even allows the downloading of game demos, arcade video games, your favorite TV shows, and films. Latest styles range from the Xbox 360 console Arcade and the Xbox Elite. Accessories which can be available for the Xbox 360 consist of wireless and wired controllers, headset and webcam (which come convenient for chattering), dancemats, memory cards, and hard drives of different sizes. The Xbox 360 Elite includes a vast 120GB space for storing that’s enough to keep an array of arcade games, high-def movies, tv shows, as well as popular music.

The Wii is regarded as the reasonably priced among the list of 3 video games. They have garnered the trustworthiness of becoming a “family console” because it allows more balanced and active video games which people coming from all ages can enjoy. Wii is actually simpler to navigate than other consoles. It’s so user-friendly that maybe the folks that you never expect to tinker on a game console (like your grandparents) can easily love playing with it.

An iPad app aimed at children allows vast amounts of money to be traded for virtual fruit and seeds – as we found to our cost

My seven-year-old sister Lily is scarily competent with technology; she can change my phone’s screensaver, send a text message and download apps. The flipside to this is that she is also a target for the games industry. It is easy to see why, considering she recently racked up a £200 bill feeding an imaginary animal apples and seeds on a supposedly free iPad app.

Having had his debit card blocked due to an uncharacteristic amount of spending (£200 had been spent on his iTunes account in a matter of days), my dad assumed that some kind of fraud had taken place; after numerous phone calls and emails to Apple, we found out that the money had all been charged to a game called Dream PetHouse. Once we established that my dad had not been indulging a penchant for animated companions, all eyes turned to my little sister, who promptly burst into tears.

Deciphering some sense through the sobs, we managed to work out what had happened. Lily often plays free games on my dad’s iPad, and as a busy father of five he hadn’t thought twice about downloading another free app to keep her amused. The app Dream PetHouse, is a cartoon simulation game which involves users feeding “the world’s cutest animals”, caring for them in a tree “staffed by Chipper and his group of adorable chipmunk friends”. What is not so cute, however, is that in order to progress at any meaningful rate, spending is required.

The concept is reliant on continually improving your pet in order to advance through the levels, and unless you are prepared to move at a snail’s pace, you need to spend. Prices vary, but some of the purchases are frighteningly expensive; a “ton of fruit” costs £20, while a “mountain of seeds” costs £40. All that is required to spend is for the user to enter their iTunes password; Lily had seen my dad put in his password and so thought nothing of entering it again and again when prompted by the game.

My dad was careless – he should have kept his password secure; but I feel the company behind the game have a case to answer too – not in law, but ethically. iTunes lists the game as appropriate for those over the age of four, and the cartoon animals are clearly designed to appeal to children. The tone of the customer support service demonstrates the extent to which the app is aimed at children; when I asked about the payments for “food”, I received an email addressed to “Pet Lover Harry” from a “friendly Chipmunk Nurse” named Joy.

Why, then, does a game so clearly designed for children allow such vast sums of money to be traded for virtual fruit and seeds? Small children are now incredibly skilled with technology, but they should not be encouraged to play a game where money beyond their comprehension is involved.