@HAL9triple0: Hey don't get too down, the upshot of this is iTunes is going to be fully set up as a Games Distribution platform now! Its a long way from Steam for Macs, but its a good first step.

DaiMacculate

iPhone games...cool, sure. What about MAC games?!

*Mopes that Half-Life 2 isn't on my Mac*

HAL9triple0

As a game developer I'm going to be ALL OVER THIS.

Boo yah!

Johnzim

@gblock: YES to all of that.

James MacAulay

@James MacAulay: ...make writing an app that feels right for the system a lot easier than making one which doesn't.

Err...well, not really of course, because it's pretty darn easy to put some ugly unusable crap on screen, but you get my meaning.

James MacAulay

@celery:

If you want beautiful software, don't turn the SDK over to the unwashed masses =P.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or ironic or something...I thought you were all about making the SDK as wide-open as possible?

Sounds like Apple isn't going to be enforcing any sort of look and feel.

No, but their Cocoa Touch API will definitely make writing an app that feels right for the system a lot easier than making one which doesn't.

The iPhone is in an interesting market segment. It has some smartphone features, and a smartphone price, but it's crippled in business environments.

Did you not see anything from the first half of the event today? It was all about how the iPhone's Exchange support is going to kick all sorts of ass, and surpass Blackberries in some aspects of that area. I'm not sure what other real complaints people had about iPhones "in business environments."

James MacAulay

"If Sony had embraced homebrew do you think there would be a God of War, a Patapon or a Crisis Core? No, because unlocking the PSP also means no more UMD games, just ISOs"

Yes, there will still be those games.

I bet you if you give any homebrewer all of the tools that those devs used (and really it's not that hard to get, Maya teaching edition, Photoshop, a cheap dev kit) the vast majority will still not have that quality in their games.

It's only a tool and it's the people behind the tools that makes the games what they are.

As for the Apple SDK, this with the Android API coming from Google, and XNA from Microsoft it's a great time to jump in to make some games on "black boxes".

JohnnyLA

I just wet my pants watching that presentation.... GOD!

LightStriker

@zoesch: OpenGL is just a graphics library while when combined with OpenAL and other GPL projects... you can get a descent tool set but not as convenient as DirectX and SDL.

okenny :)

@zoesch: I didn't say GTK had anything to do with directX and it's more then a widget library... it makes casual level games with it's graphics routines. That said, my mistake :( I actually meant SDL. Sorry for the error.

okenny :)

They need to give iPod touch customers FREE updates that is what they need to do! >_>

Mike918

@ixalon:

By centralizing distribution apple is donig the greatest favor possible for developers. What is the #1 problem for software developers these days? you guessed it: piracy. opening up the distribution channel would increase piracy ten-fold and completely negate any advantages for at least %90 of developers. that's not to say that there won't still be piracy, but it will be far, far less prevalent.

labrats5

Actually the $99 is only a one time fee, not a yearly one. You might have to re-register if you create a new studio, but still, not expensive at all. All Apple needs to do is make the SDK work with a widows PC and they would really have something remarkable on their hands. Not to say that they don't already, but it would be even better.

labrats5

@celery:
I have no idea what's going on with Apple's environment since OS X

Hmm, so you're obviously well qualified to speak about developing for it then? I mean, I can see you know alot about developing software, but you've just stated you know nothing about the core OS that the iPhone runs.

So why do you care? Think you'll be forced to learn it at some point?

I'm honestly not attacking you, I'm just really curious what the point of calling something regressive is when you haven't even used it.

DaiMacculate

@James MacAulay: If you want beautiful software, don't turn the SDK over to the unwashed masses =P. Sounds like Apple isn't going to be enforcing any sort of look and feel.

I can't see anything but games and toys coming out from this--not saying that's a problem per se. The iPhone is in an interesting market segment. It has some smartphone features, and a smartphone price, but it's crippled in business environments. Its multimedia features are pretty fleshed out, so what does that leave third party devs, besides games? Fingerpainting? Accelerometer-based dowsing? Touch screen drum set? (just googled that and it's taken, too bad)

@gblock: Sure, J2ME has issues, but what part of the software industry doesn't eat its own dog food? I have no idea what's going on with Apple's environment since OS X, but for established developers, a complete retooling to reach one more device? Only Apple would be audacious enough to try this. Sure, there's a reason why they can, but it doesn't mean they should.

@ManiacFive: No one is asking Apple to drop the touchscreen or accelerometer. The point is that there was already an established system for mobile development, which could have even accomodated the touchscreen and accelerometer, but Apple decided do their own thing anyway.

You say that the homebrew scene was great for the iPhone, even with the jailbreak barrier. What if the iPhone supported third-party development right from the get-go? What if people didn't have to spend time hacking the iPhone and could get to developing applications for it using an established platform right away? Wouldn't that be even better?

I will say that the built in distribution is very nice, even fantastic, but it would be nicer if there weren't two steps back for every step forward. I know I'm just giving it a sentence at the end, but it does go a long way towards making up for the rest of the package.

celery

A sidenote to the linux fanboys: My everyday work machine is an Ubuntu box. It's a great kernel. It's got extremely low context switch overhead and is truly a great thing.

Apple's kernel is different, and yes it isn't as fast. On the other hand, it's got remote kernel debugging hooks built in, is fairly stable, and is well supported on Apple's hardware.

If we're going to have *kernel wars*, Linux will win. But this isn't about a kernel, is it? Apple does a really good job with *the whole stack*. Linux, even on ubuntu, is a piecemeal experience, and though KDE and Gnome are getting better neither is as polished and carefully thought out as Apple's UIs - whether we're talking desktops (Ubuntu/Kubuntu vs. Leopard) or phones (Linux phones do exist, after all).

That's not to say that Linux couldn't *be* the core of something like Apple's OS - after all, BSD *is*, and it's been Linux's competition since day one. But Apple didn't choose Linux.

Don't write them off just because they didn't choose _your_ kernel of choice in the beauty pageant. Darwin doesn't suck.

gblock

On the dev environment question:

Because it's all on the same OS, a single dev environment team ends up building things like the Instruments profiler to work with Mac OS X, and it more-or-less automatically works on any system running that kernel.

This is Apple's ecosystem. The last thing any mac developer wants to see Apple do is spend huge amounts of development effort competing with Microsoft's dev tools on their own platform.

Macs are well engineered, not horifically expensive, and the OS is pretty cool. The dev environment is pretty good, and the compilers are GCC. I have no doubt that, in time, someone will come up with a cross-platform compiler that involves taking the SDK bits off of a mac and building elsewhere - but it's not in Apple's interests to bother doing so. Unlike everything they've done to now, it would be effort that did *not* go back into Apple's own products.

Note that the entire Xcode environment and Instruments debugger is a part of the Leopard SDK for 10.5 - it just so happens that they've added seamless integration with the iPhone SDK, emulator, and devices. Every ounce of that work goes back into making Xcode better for all of Apple's developers.

Developing for WinMo requires Visual Studio. Developing for iPhone requires Xcode. It's just not rocket science; it's not even a surprise.

gblock

I see this as a great move, I don't have an iPhone, only a Touch, and the web apps are pretty cool, but what it really needed was the dedicated homebrew guys working on the apps the folk who didnt want to jail break their phone demanded. Now we're gonna get that, and I think that is awesome.

And all these people complaining about you could develop in java for free and run it on a bazillion Nokia phones for free. Yeah well, all those generic Nokia phones don't have built in multi-touch screens, or accelerometres, or a 480x320 display. I think all that makes for a pretty interesting gaming platform.

@johnnywashngo:
Linux Fanboy coming through! Clear the way!

@radink360:
I guess from your avatar the sorta games and apps you'd want to see on the iPhone/Touch, and now you're all bitter and thats why you'd make such an ill informed, idiotic statement?

ManiacFive

- Apple is not expecting to compete on the same level as the DS/PSP.
- Apple doesn't care about running cross-platform Java apps on their iPhone that don't look like they belong on the device. They want everything to feel like it's right at home on the iPhone.
- Apple wants Mac developers to keep making beautiful software like they've proven themselves capable of already on the desktop.
- Apple wants to have a sexy, sexy development environment that will lure other Windows and mobile developers to make stuff for the iPhone and then start writing Mac software too.

Personally, I've never written a Mac application but the announcements today have made me want to learn Objective-C just so I can make cool stuff on the iPhone. A lot of developers are feeling the exact same way right now.

James MacAulay

Anyone who thinks for a second, that what has happened before in mobile development is just being repeated by Apple isn't honestly paying attention.

- Apple's providing a distro channel at zero cost for free apps.
- The dev environment isn't the random soup of extensions that J2ME development is now - and every J2ME developer knows exactly what I'm talking about. Even basic filesystem IO is in an extension.
- It's got a great debug environment and the best profiling tools in the industry. Making *anything* not suck depends on the toolchain not sucking, and this doesn't suck.

There's not anything here that isn't absolutely fantastic for developers. Really. Honestly. As a developer, there's a lot of reasons to be happy here.

Now, there's the nightmare of needing to get continuous builds, unit test coverage, etc., in the future, but to be frank, that should be an easily solvable problem as it's all backed by command-line applications that can easily be run from existing environments and OCUnit is fairly well developed.

It's all good. Really. Now, this may not be the killer-game-development-system - but frankly, that's not the primary concern here. Not yet. Once there are ten million of the phones, sure, maybe - but the only way to get to ten million phones is to serve the userbase with the rest of the must-have bread and butter applications needed by ordinary people.

And in the meantime, there's a lot of opportunity for game developers to do some really amazing things if they're willing to go out on a limb. AudioSurf would rock.

gblock

@Kenofthedead: Mobile gaming is already big. If anything, Apple is setting it back with their proprietary environment. God knows there are enough of those in the mobile industry already. Pulling big names to work on iPhone-specific products? Great if you want to promote iPhone gaming, terrible if you want to promote mobile gaming.

Yeah, the iPhone hardware is innovative, it's more than a phone, blah blah blah. I guess this excuses their unsavory business model. Looks like it worked too, judging from the reactions in this thread.

The news is really Apple being selfish and uncooperative as usual, but slap in the word "free" anywhere, and suddenly they're the saviors of the mobile industry.

Guess what? I wanted to program a game for my phone a while back, so I downloaded the J2ME SDK, read a few pages of documentation, and a few days later, I was able to run the game on 3 different phones from two different vendors, and those were only the ones I had access to.

How much did it cost? Completely free. Was I limited a specific environment for development? No. When was this technology available? I worked on this 4 years ago, and it's been around long before that.

How is Apple's model innovative? All I see is regression.

celery

@ixalon: I see your point and I won't argue with it, I would point at Falconfire's post, Apple is in the business of moving hardware. They've also historically never catered to developers in the way you're talking about, they don't go out of their way to make it difficult to do multi-platform projects but its certainly the case that their own dev tools are designed with Mac/iDevice development in mind. Given that they're moving hardware at a pretty brisk pace at the moment precisely because of their existing software platform, I'm gonna wait before I assume this won't turn out well for me, the end user.

On the other hand, it seems to me that you can just write a program for BSD and then port it to Linux/Mac/etc *nix, I'm not going to be surprised if that rapidly extends to the iPhone as well. Here is hoping.

@Saxboy: Yeah and thats why I for one am not rushing out to buy one and getting rid of my DS...and it wouldn't affect my desire to purchase a PSP either way either. Its never going to be a dedicated games platform, but as I posted months ago the path is now open for Starcraft 2 on this device.

Blizzard might just do it, there are a bunch of Apple fans over there ;)

@GodzillaVsJapan: While I agree with Saxboy that the control interface is lacking/unproven, see the Super Monkey Ball presentation, it looks like the device has sufficient power to do some better games than most phones. I don't have either a Touch or an iPhone yet, but this bodes well for the future.

DaiMacculate

About time Apple has started this.

Hopefuly this leads to an increase in mobile gaming elsewhere as well. Japan shouldn't be the only ones with good games on them.

Kenofthedead

Thats pretty cool for apple, the best thing to come out of them this year so far, I just hope they don't figure out a way to screw it up.

matteblender

Seeing as how I love my iPhone, this is awesome news. Easy and cheap way to get into a huge market if you have a good idea.

lanion

@Aflack: Likes slushies: My cell phone cost $20, and my service is $5/month for as much as I use with no contract. I am the antithesis of an iPhone owner. Mark me down in the agreement column.

Torgen thinks AAA means “Costs $60”

I don't mean to be a negative nancy but is anyone really excited for this? What I mean is not the idea itself but the end product? I just can't see myself getting a iphone for gaming with the DS and PSP already available. This is even with the realization that it does more than just play games. I definately don't need another phone. At least not until my contract expires.

What say you Kotaku?

Aflack: Likes slushies

Wow, way to go Apple.

And if I hear this correctly, you could pay (99$/Year) to put a program there, and set it as free?

Really interesting.

QC8472

@chunks4123:
Reading is are teh hard.

Go Apple. The Spore and flight demos are absolutely amazing. And if they were made in two weeks, this is the new dream environment for indy devs.

WaterMedia

How can we compare an SDK for a mobile OS to the costs developing for a gaming console?

The only thing remarkable about this is that apple has finally gotten with the program to let the small guy develop for their platform, something which everyone else has been able to do on windows, linux, etc. since the dawn of time.

chunks4123

@boxofthegods: Very simple. Apple is a HARDWARE company. If using the SDK means that a developer is willing to buy a iMac or even a Mac Pro, then thats 1000-2000 MORE in sales Apple gets.

Apple is not in the business of making PC developers happy, its about making them switch to Mac.

Falconfire

I read "Gizmondo" on the picture.

The Dark Defender

@Seg: I totally agree with your comparisment, just tried to explain theres actually a market :)

And you are also right on the publishing details of other mobile games. You need to find a third party asks a share of the money you've earned (unless you want to publish windows mobile / symbian applications first hand)

Graywing

@radink360:

>____>
Seriously?
The regular Ipod has games
The Super Monkeyball game looks really cool.
Spore looks intense,too!
I bet 75% of IpodTouch/Iphone owners like me will buy some form of game.

CVV1

I'm confuckingfused, why is the sdk platform mac OSX only, thats cutting out a large portion of the pc market. Say what you will about windows but they are still the dominant OS and will be for some time. The only thing I can think of is because the iPhone runs on a custom version of OSX, even than I don't see why the couldn't release a windows version that requires an iPhone to test it out with.

boxofthegods

When considering the iPhone's input options, remember that it does have 3-axis accelerometers like the WiiMote or SixAxis. The SDK fully exposes this to developers, too.

guspaz

@Graywing: I was talking in comparison to developing for a gaming handled or other gaming console. I agree with you in the focus of mobile phones for development.

For distribution of software on mobile phones and publisher deals... that's a different story. You have to deal with a publisher who in turn deals with each carrier individually in order to allow an application on their network. With the iPhone, one person can publish to all iPhones for $99+30%. Mobile Windows apps being an exception, but even the Java based phones have a very restrictive barrier of publishing as you deal with the carrier.

Course, this is a deep well of debate in an area I'm not too informed in.

Seg

@johnnywashngo: Oh really? How fast does After Effects run on your linux laptop? Or indeed any of the Adobe Suite? Or indeed anything of use to a creative professional (the target market of the Macbook Pros)?

PlayingKarrde

I like how people are talking negatively about something that can only be good.

I personally dislike the "i" line of products. I think they're overpriced. But to each his own, and if iPhone owners dished out $500 to be part of a fad, then they deserve this functionality.

Providence

the statement makes sense, and i get what they meant to say, but it should've been " you dont need to pitch like you do to Sony" or something to that effect. Right now the sentence makes it seem like the topic of the article is Sony, not Apple.

pandafresh

@dexterr: I would rather put my linux notebook next to an apple notebook and compare speeds. Hell even with compiz eye candy, my linux box would romp all over the equivilent apple machine.

As far as the apple sdk goes... its going to be interesting to see what people come up with. I don't own the hardware myself, or even an apple machine, but would love to see what i could come up with on that touchscreen device. Sadly the cost of entry is too high for me. Plus I have no real desire to own an overpriced apple desktop or notebook :(

johnnywashngo

I'm more intrigued by the no-buttons-to-game-with platform that we're talking about here. Can't wait to see what they do with that hi-res multitouch screen along with that tilt sensor. There's also wifi in there, so why not online multiplayer? You've also got some hefty storage avaialble, so we could be looking at >100 MB games in the future. This is going to be pretty sweet. People are going to innovate.

Somewhere down the line I just might buy an iPhone.

el_gordo

@Fonzy: Sorry, I know it hurts fanboy feelings but it's true. Sure you'll get some nifty homebrew games, but big devs aren't going to flock to this. It's niche market, just like the mac. Big game devs go where the big user bases are.

radink360

@GodzillaVsJapan: Almost all games on mobile phones suck with a very few exceptions (imho). But since people are willing to pay for them its still interesting to develop on this platform (yes, I know its hard to imagine, but people actually buy those crappy phone games)

Graywing

@DaiMacculate: it definitely IS on the level of other phone "games" I don't even consider this gaming really. I don't consider it on the level on handhelds(ala DS and PsP) by any stretch of the imagination. Phone games are a joke. I don't even know why devs would even consider designing for this "platform". Phone games reached their prime with snake.

GodzillaVsJapan

This model would be decent for a gaming console, but terrible for a phone. Which one is the iPhone? Here's a hint, check the name of the product.

celery

@Mark Wilson: this has nothing to do with iTunes, thats a completely differnt platform, which will still be as closed as it is now. theres a new webstore for apps. it may be based on iTunes, but its still a seperate platform.

Secondly, this is massivly differnt to xna. Consoles are a traditionaly closed platforms, cell phones arnt. your trying to say that i cant compair the iphone to other cellphones? why not? it is after all a normal cell phone.

cubed2D

@DaiMacculate: I would actually say the iPhone makes it worse than the gaming on other phones, not better, unless the iPhone suddenly got buttons and a stylus or some way to do more than just muck up its touchscreen.

Saxboy

@Seg: I beg to differ, developping a windows mobile application or mobile java application is loads cheaper. Get a $400 laptop and you are done. No license fee, no publication fee and you don't have to give 30% to your so called publisher. Cheap is a different word.

(And before anybody thinks I hate apple, I've got a G4 Mini and a Macbook pro.. I only hate it when people think over and over again that Apple has invented the wheel, put some glossy wax on it and sold it as if it was golden)

Graywing

@DaiMacculate: Yeah, there's lots of rubbish, but there are a few gems. And I'm sure the same will happen with the iPhone. I'm not talking about just games though, I'm talking about development in general (so that includes productivity applications, utilities, etc.)

That doesn't change the fact that Apple have once again chosen not to support industry standards, which means if you want to support the iPhone, you need to make a serious investment in supporting their platform. For example mobile development companies who currently use JavaME will need to hire or train up objective-c programmers or outsource projects for porting to the iPhone.

It's a clever business move by Apple (if you make that investment, you're less likely to stop developing for their platform) but it's still an unnecessary annoyance and cost to developers, and if any other company had tried it, everybody would be angry about yet more proprietary technology.

ixalon

@okenny :): GTK has nothing to do with DirectX, the most available and open graphics API for 3D is OpenGL (As well as the oldest) followed by DirectX. GTK is a Widget library.

zoesch

Yeah too bad apple is fucking ipod touch owners like me in the ass again by giving us the option to download the update that allows apps, except that option cost money unless you own an iphone or buy your touch after june. They charged 20 dollars for 5 apps to be unlocked, lets see how much they charge for this little number.

snakepliskin

@dexterr: plz keep your overgeneralized statements to a minimum

pcgecko85

@dexterr: Wow, you're gonna get burned on that one bub. I know what you're talking about, agreement or not, but this is a gaming forum, and now you're gonna get an avalanche of "Its not faster for Game X, so there!" type comments ;)

DaiMacculate

First, a few points of clarification. Not that the post is wrong, but a few facts missing or slightly misunderstood.

You need an Intel Mac to develop with the SDK. The PowerPC computers won't run the SDK. So for the likes of me with a PowerBook G4, it's time for me to get a new lappy.

The 'Enterprise' license ($299) is for a company to develop an application ONLY for internal distribution. For example, a company that uses a special client tracking software that would only be used by your employees. You don't want anyone to use your app, just your employees. Then it's $299 to have a license to distribute to a select few. If you're going to make applications for public distribution (free or fee), the $99 is all you need.

So for game development, you're looking at a total development cost of:
$599 (base Mac Mini)
$99 (Publishing Fee)
30% of each sale goes to Apple; 70% to the Publisher.

Obviously not taking into account of labor, your own marketing, and other things. But as far as fees to the console manufacture for development and distribution, that's pretty damn cheep.

Seg

@ixalon: Yeah, all those cell phone games you mentioned that were developed on those free dev kits, those were really high quality, well received games, right? I mean, its not like Kotaku and other gaming news outlets frequently mock Mobile Phone games, right?

I don't think iPhone gaming is equivalent to gaming on other Phones. Its somewhere between a normal phone gaming platform and a DS.

DaiMacculate

apple is powerful and a lot faster. put your windows pc next to an apple and see which one runs faster.

dexterr

Bullshit. Apple is far from the first cell phone manufacturer to open their devkit, let alone the first company in general. And to be honest, they probably wouldn't have opened their platform at all if it weren't for continuous pressure from the hacking community and the looming threat of Google's android platform. Despite their image and rhetoric, Apple is the antithesis of choice and freedom. In their ideal world, nobody would use anything but Apple software on Apple hardware bought from Apple stores. Please stop fellating Apple, they are not what you think, and they don't deserve it.

On, and before anyone calls me a hater, I am (slowly) typing this post on my iPhone.

Doomstalk

I think some of you are missing a key point here. The iphone or itouch costs what? 399-499 dollars? That is a lot of money for just an mp3 player that can't play games as well as a DS or PSP that run almost half the price. As for the iphone, it makes calls and you can surf the net but its not available everywhere and its only on one carrier. I'd say that xbox live and XNA would make more sense to a small time game dev. because you can offer it to more people who are already gamers

robokasey

Open SDKs for open platforms and closed SDKs for closed platforms. People are seriously misusing the term "open" here.

The most available graphics SDK today is DirectX (for the PC) and the most open would be GTK for Linux and win32. These is followed by things like Microsoft's XNA initiative since it lets you deliver games to Windows platforms and Xbox 360 platforms. What apple has done is similar to XNA but let's not start dissing people who are actually pioneering this sector: PC game development has always had a zero-cost of entry. Apple just got it (, I didn't know they were giving away prizes for being slow).

okenny :)

Psyched to see what comes of this...

JohnnytheFuture

Seriously? This post makes it sound like Apple has liberated all programmers and yet they are just doing what they have always done. Try to lock people down so they are trapped in the world of Apple. Look at it seriously, you have to use an Apple OS to code the thing (why can't you just cross compile from another OS?) and you have to distribute it through Apple so that it can run on an Apple device.

This is a dream come true for them, they get developers trapped in their system who are either making free content which will entice more people to buy the Apple phone, or they are selling it and giving part of the revenue to Apple.

From a developers perspective this sucks, code for one platform which isn't standard and isn't dominant in the marketplace, distribute through one channel, and you have to pay just to do real world testing.

Overall it's good Apple finally released an SDK, but it's still the typical tactic that companies like Apple and Microsoft have employed. It's far from open and liberating.

baru

@zoesch: Yeah, it's good for the end user, but for the developer it's a right pain. If we want to build something that works for iPhone users and other users we've got to develop and maintain two completely seperate applications (in a different language) with the only thing likely to be shared between them being resources (graphics, sounds, string tables, etc.) At least with JavaME we could have the core code common to all handsets.

*shakes a fist at Apple* Next time, please adopt industry standards! If you want additional functionality, you're more than welcome to develop and submit new JSRs. There already exists support for everything from GPS (JSR179)to Accelerometers (JSR256), so there's probably not much that isn't covered. You can still have your native SDK for those who want to support only the iPhone, but what about the rest of us?

ixalon

@Patient: Do you even understand what is going on? Microsoft and Sony are protecting their developers and the money they put in them. If Sony had embraced homebrew do you think there would be a God of War, a Patapon or a Crisis Core? No, because unlocking the PSP also means no more UMD games, just ISOs. And homebrew devs can only put out so many games. Besides, who started by making their machine Linux compatible or by developing XNA? Apple? Homebrew, yes. But when it endangers the life of your product, no. On Linux, with XNA and with this, Sony, MS and Apple can still make sure that full-fledged games sell. With the PSP, it's much more complicated.

slomo788

With all the awesome apps that have come out prior to SDK (installer/jailbreak), I see good things coming to the iPhone. Can't wait for Spore!

Cuban__B

@Patient: Please, do your research before shouting company names + a over the top price. Microsoft's windows mobile SDKs are free and don't require a $99 subscription to publish your applications via a closed application like iTunes.

Plus if you want game development on a Zune you can get a XNA subscription in the near future for the stagering same ammount of $99 a year, with the free bonus to publish games on Xbox-live.

Its great that they actually release a method to create games on the iPhone, but imho a mobile device or desktop operating system has to come with a free SDK in the first place.

Graywing

@pandafresh: At the beginning of the PS2 and PS3 launches devkits were a scarce commodity so developers had to justify to Sony why they wanted/needed one, showing game assests, art, etc.

The intention was to prevent a developer from hogging all the tools and negatively impacting the availability of software from other developers, but some people took it as a sign of "arrogance".

zoesch

@cubed2D: @cubed2D: It's a conspiracy!

Look, Apple is practically giving devs the keys to iTunes, the most successful digital media distribution store on the planet. That's worth something.

And taking the credit from Apple by comparing iPhones to open cellphones is the equivalent to taking credit from Microsoft by comparing Xbox 360/XNA to PCs.

The bottom line is that any platform is closed because it can be. This is a great development within one highly prized - and closed - platform.

Mark Wilson

@ixalon: Yep, that's the great thing about choice and some consumers will be happy with the free offerings on other platforms, others will be happy with free offerings on a jailbroken iPod/iPhone and others will be happy with the store offerings.

As a developer is up to you which market segment to tackle.

I wish Sony would take a similar approach to the PSN games but as far as I know and understand the devkits are the same for any type of developers so that's your entry barrier right there. Likewise for WiiWare and XBLA on a lesser degree.

zoesch

"You don't need to pitch Sony on why you're worthy for a dev kit during times of shortages."

does this sentence make sense? i mean it does, but not in context to this article. i think they're might either be one word wrong or a few words missing

pandafresh

I can't wait. I have tons of homebrew on my 1.1.2'd iPhone. I could not for the life of me become bored with it on a 4 hour plane trip last week.

It is really nice to see Apple extending it's hands out to those that want to develop on the iPhone without charging ridiculous licensing fees etc.

It's quite refreshing to see Apple do this with so many greedy companies out there that surly would have turned away anyone that wanted to even make the iPhone say "Hello World" without taking out a second mortgage on their home (*cough Microsoft* *cough Sony*.)

Patient

I'm not as impressed by this as others. It costs $99 if you want to be able to test your software on an iPhone itself (and not just on the emulator) and if you want to submit software to Apple's store for approval. The distribution model is nice, I give it that - but you have no choice with the iPhone SDK, there will be no other way to get your apps onto phones.

You've been able to develop games for other mobile handsets using Java or Flash for free for many years. Plus if you develop your game for the iPhone, if you want to support other handsets you'll need to rewrite it from scratch. With JavaME you only realy need to tweak your graphics and input code between difference handsets. As for distribution, there are no end of options.

ixalon

@radink360: Dude, checkout Wired's liveblog of the presentation. I had my doubts at one time too, but not anymore.

_MARVKO_

No, not really. what they have done is release a sdk for a cell phone/mp3 player and have announced that the only way you can share your apps with other people without giving them the source is to use there new web store on the device.

Anyone could download the java jdk and build a game for there nokia phone, or grab visual c# express and the pocket pc sdk, make a free account on handango and publish there game, or even self publish.

so, really they have just democratized a closed platform in a sector that's normal really open. This is nothing like what Microsoft are doing with xna, which is what your really trying to get at.

cubed2D

@radink360: what a completely shortsighted, ignorant, retarded comment.

Fonzy

I don't think they've accurately estimated how many people are wanting to get the SDK, their link on the main page is down. = \

ncsbert

Ohh yes, I can see it now.
Program games on your Iphone, just use the two buttons, 1 and 0.

Gigith

@radink360: Why exactly?

slomo788

This looks really interesting. They also demoed Super Monkey Ball and Spore running on the iphone.

_MARVKO_

I'm really impressed by this. Whatever the problems that might arise (buggy/broken/inappropriate content) Apple seems determined to muddle through, come up with solutions, and make it work.

It's very tempting to dive into this but I'm still trying to stick with my XNA project for the time being. Still, great move Apple.

the-hypnotoad

Another attempt at trying to be a gaming platform that will fail.

radink360

Cool, way to go Apple!

JeffPaine

Bravo!

-EDGE-