Taking a Bite of the Apple: Local Video Game Publisher Involved in Strategic Technology Development
Jason Green, quality assurance for Publisher X, tests out an unreleased game called “Billy Frontier” on an Apple iPhone.
Story and Photo By Thomas Atkins
The new Apple iPhone phenomenon is taking the world by storm. Not only because of its state of the art features but because of the cutting edge video games offered for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. It is the recently added video game features that have allowed a local company to take a bite out of the Apple and play a critical role in its technological revolution.
Publisher X, a Twain Harte based video game developing company, has already seen success with the games they have launched with Apple last month, and they are excited to see what the future has to offer.
“Anytime that Apple approaches you to work on a project or look at a project, you get excited and you want to take a look at it really quickly,” said Doug Kennedy, co-founder of Publisher X. “When we took a look at what Apple was doing we wanted to get on board.”
Publisher X, which is the brainchild of Flashman Studios Inc. based out of San Francisco and Reverb Communications Inc. based out of Twain Harte, is becoming a growing global publisher of digitally downloadable interactive software. The company recently partnered with four international game developers: ZEN Studios (Hungary), Capybara Games (Canada), Phantom EFX (Iowa) and War Drum Studios (Florida).
“Flashman is a video game management company that manages developers and publishers and various IPs (Intellectual Properties) and is a partner of Reverb, which manages sales, marketing and public relations,” explained Kennedy. “And so as we were working together we came up with the idea with working much closer so that we could build a publisher and actually launch video game titles through video digital distributed needs such as X-Box Live Arcade, Playstation, Nintendo Wii, PC and then obviously the Apple iPhone applications.”
The plan was to initially launch the company sometime this fall on the X-Box Live Arcade platform, but when Apple approached Reverb and Flashman, they decided to speed up the process. Soon Publisher X marked the spot for several of Apple’s iPhone and iTune Touch games.
“When we met with the folks from Apple they started talking to us about how they were going to be doing games for iPhones and their plans for building up a video game section as big as they built up the iTunes section for music,” said Kennedy. “So Publisher X got really excited about that and took a look at the group of video game developers that we had working for us.”
Because Publisher X has 10 to 15 game developers worldwide developing games for them on a variety of platforms, they were able to look at the various games that they could get ready in time for the App Store launch (an application for iPhones and iPod touch allowing users to browse and download applications).
“After talking to our developers we took a look at the various games that they could get ready for the Apple App Store launch and decided to launch with six titles,” said Kennedy. “We were just trying to reach the launch date so we, and other publishers and developers, had to scramble pretty quickly for the initial launch. We only had a six to eight week window to develop the games and go live by Apple’s July launch date. Normally this process takes months upon months, so the initial round of games that we launched are games that have been ported over from other platforms.”
These recently released games for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch include Critter Crunch, ZEN Pinball: Rollercoaster, Reel Deal Slots, Reel Deal Blackjack, Reel Deal Texas Hold ‘Em and Reel Deal Video Poker. To check out these games, all one has to do is download them from the Apple App Store. Games of numerous genres can be downloaded from the App Store for as low as $.99.
“It’s really simple to download the games,” said Kennedy. “It’s just like downloading music from iTunes. Apple has really taken the lead in the way they distribute content to the consumers.”
These hand held games have already become an instant hit for those looking to kill time while waiting in an airport or a dentist office.
“I play them all,” said Kennedy. “Critter Crunch and ZEN Pinball: Rollercoaster are two of my favorites. We obviously have the casino titles which are great games but when you take a look at what we’ve done with Rollercoaster pinball it really gives you that experience like your playing on a pinball machine. The whole screen is the pinball table and when you play the game the touch screen acts as the flippers. Plus, a great aspect that comes to the game from the Apple iPhone is the tilt sensor so when the ball is coming down and you want to move it you can tap the side of the screen and actually move the table a little bit, just like you would in a real pinball game.”
It is safe to say that these games are definitely a step up from previous cell phone games.
“In years past people thought of the games on cell phones as being as something really small – something kind of cheesy that really wasn’t like playing a real video game,” explained Kennedy. “But as the handheld market started to take off you saw the Playstation portable, Nintendo DS and various handheld platforms start to bring much richer and bigger games over to those platforms. So the bar was set much higher for various hand held devices like the Apple iPhone, and I think the iPhone has really taken the step into another direction to say look, we might be a communication device like a phone, but you can still have the quality of game play that you would get from these other platforms from Nintendo and Playstation.
Yet this is just the start, and iPhone, iPod touch and other hand held devices are definitely the way of the future. According to the IDC’s Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast, users will access the Internet through more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide in 2008, including PCs, mobile phones, and online videogame consoles. By 2012, the number of devices accessing the Internet will double to more than 3 billion, half of which will be mobile devices.
“We are already in development for another five to ten titles,” said Kennedy. “It’s just amazing that there are two companies based in Twain Harte, Reverb Communications and Publisher X, that are doing such grand things with the Apple iPhone, X-Box Live Arcade, Playstation network and things like that.”
For more information on Publisher X and its new releases visit www.publisherx.com.
