Yet Again We Anticipate An Apple TV App Store

Here we are once more, talking about the possibility of Apple unveiling an Apple TV that finally incorporates an app store. I’ve blogged about this and other people have talked about it like some kind of doomsday scenario for TV entertainment since iOS and the Apple TV have been around.

This new recent story out of 9to5Mac suggests gaming will be a big focus of the new Apple TV. That in itself suggests a lot of different possibilities. People have doubted Apple’s potential success with TV gaming for a long time but at the same time I think this article may be overestimating what may or may not happen.

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What Is Happening To Portable Fighting Games

The current fighting game climate and a sale have me trying to do something I thought I’d never do: play fighting games on a mobile device.

It’s just about over as of this writing, but SNK is having a pretty good sale for its iOS games so I decided to grab a couple: The King of Fighters-i 2012 so I could maybe have a good mobile practice tool for King of Fighters XIII, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves because for some reason the mobile version is the only port that exists in the west outside the Dreamcast and Xbox 360. People keep telling me how accurate the mobile ports of so many of these old console and arcade games are, including Soul Calibur, but I still can’t understand people speaking so highly of touchscreen controls.

Mighty Switch Force! Hose It Down!, Summer, Slide Puzzles, And Me

I couldn’t come up with anything to write about directly related to the United States or Independence Day. The best I could think of is a recent event that’s vaguely related to summer weather. Maybe big gaming publications have already covered this, but the mobile version of Mighty Switch Force! Hose It Down! has made the switch to being a free, ad-supported game with a couple other changes. It’s one of a relative handful of “actually good” mobile games I’ve managed to pick up recently and subsequently neglect in favor of my 3DS, but I have played it enough to see what it’s about and recommend it for people who haven’t played it yet and can get it for free now.

What The iOS Game Removals Say About The Entire Store

Apple’s overreaction in the midst of the recent retail push against depictions of the Confederate flag has already generated some good articles before I had the chance to write or pitch anything. I seriously suggest you read the one by Mike Williams at USGamer. It get’s to part of what I see as the heart of the matter in regards to Apple — that it still doesn’t really care about video games. We’ve gotten this feeling for a while in regards to art and serious issues, but I think this is just another sign of what’s possibly the source of all the problems with the iOS game market.

What An Android-Based Nintendo Platform Actually Implies

Edit: Well here’s the straight-up denial I expected Nintend to hand down. This rumor didn’t even last a day.

I haven’t looked around much for reactions to this, but I imagine the recent rumors from a Nikkei source (usually reliable) suggesting Nintendo’s project NX — its next platform, will be based on Android have gotten some explosive reactions. Many of the reactions I have seen though have grossly overreacted based on a huge misunderstanding about what Android actually is and what this all might mean for Nintendo’s next platform if Nikkei is right.

The word “Android” of course brings up visions of mobile games and possibly all the different Android TV boxes that have come and gone. Based on what Android is mostly used for it’s easy to imagine this as another step towards mobile gaming or underpowered hardware for Nintendo. The Nikkei story however has nothing to do with the hardware of project NX. An operating system doesn’t actually have any bearing on hardware. Let me go ahead and put this in bold and on the front page so no one who reads this get’s confused: Android is an operating system, nothing more. Different companies can and have customized it to their own purposes.

Can iOS Finally Change The Set-Top Box Market?

I don’t remember if I caught this when the rumors first came out a few weeks ago, but the thing we were all afraid Apple would make finally seems to be about to appear at WWDC this June.

I’m pretty sure more than once on this blog, the last time two years ago, I talked about the possible effects of Apple eventually bringing the totality of iOS and its app store to the living room. Since then others have tried essentially the same thing with other operating systems but I still think Apple’s play could be different, and significantly change things.

How Much Will Mobile Really Help Nintendo?

 At the time of this writing I’ve had around 12 hours to digest the latest Nintendo megaton, which I was only awake for at the time of announcement because I couldn’t sleep last night. Overall, I think its mobile deal with DeNA foreshadows some potentially good and bad things for the future of Nintendo and its platforms. It’s way too early to tell which outweights the others.

However, I think we do need to look at this in terms of how it tackles what remain Nintendo’s biggest problems.

Why Steam’s Shovelware Probably Deserves To Be There

 I imagine most people don’t, but ever since Steam opened its floodgates and later added the discoverability update, I’ve continued to sift through the que of games it presents me daily (sometimes twice daily). This means I have to trek through all the shovelware people have complained about on Steam lately. Honestly, I really don’t mind that it’s there.

I’ve heard talk of some developers going so far as to abandon Steam because their game might get buried under that shovelware, just as it may have on other digital platforms in the past. It’s like they’re all trying to find a final escape from the shovelware, one that might not exist.

The Apple Watch’s Usefulness And Why I Still Wear A Watch

I didn’t actually watch Apple’s keynote but I just spent the last few minutes pouring over the official feature page for the Apple Watch. I gotta be straight here: I really can imagine a dimension where I own one and it has a tangible effect on my life. This is coming from someone who actually still wears a watch however.

Maybe this might start to highlight some differences between myself and a lot of other people I see use portable tech. I have to go into why I even still wear watches (it isn’t as jewelry). For starters, Apple seems to have nailed what iOS functions I would want to have on my wrist.

What might universal Xbox One apps actually mean?

A bit of news that’s going around right now is The Verge’s report on Microsoft opening up the SDK for “universal” apps on Xbox One to basically everyone, along with turning the retail console into a dev kit. I personally think that’s a pretty big deal, for reasons I may have already gone over some time ago. In a way it’s a step forward for game consoles in general that could only have come from Microsoft (out of the current big three players).