Apple last week hosted a press briefing in San Francisco to spotlight some of its iPhone developer partners and their upcoming mobile applications for the device. The purpose of the event was to promote the efforts of the development community in expanding the possibilities of the iPhone platform, according to Apple's senior director of iPhone product marketing Bob Borchers. Calling the work done by developers "incredibly engaging," Borchers added their contributions illustrate "what a fun end-to-end experience can look like," Macworld reports.
Mobile game developers grabbed the lion's share of attention at the Apple event: Electronic Arts, which has already introduced seven iPhone titles including Tetris, Scrabble and Spore: Origins, unveiled the forthcoming Need for Speed: Undercover, a racing game due in December. EA also previewed other upcoming games, including Monopoly and SimCity.
Rival game developers Gameloft (demonstrating its new Ferrari GT) and Ngmoco (which said it has no fewer than 14 iPhone games in the pipeline) were also on hand. Ngmoco's platform adventure game Rolando, debuting in December, looks like a hit, exploiting the iPhone accelerometer as well as player gestures and screen taps. "It's the first platform game where you can affect the [game] environment by touch," said Ngmoco head Neil Young.
Also demonstrating at the Apple event: Mobile media developer Handmark Software (touting its Zagat to Go nightlife resource), creative agency AKQA (promoting applications for clients Target and Gap) and social networking firm Loopt (the subject of a new App Store commercial).
For more on the iPhone developer event:
- read this MacWorld article
Related articles:
App Store tops 200 million download milestone
The App Store after the gold rush