Archive for April, 2010
Roger Ebert Is Right
Put down your pitchforks. You’ve been suckered into reading this article because the title has given rise to an emotional response that we, as gamers, are always quick to express, either in forums, comments or online.
And this is precisely the point I want to make.
I don’t agree with Ebert’s assessment that “video games can never be art“, but then again I don’t care if they are or are not considered to be art. It’s not something that is important to me. I think maybe they can be, or could have been had it not been for the Dot Com era mentality that corporations need to jump on top of any avenue that garners a modicum of interest and hollow it out like a mountain-top coal mining operation. Gaming has become the business of video gaming, which is both good — allowing for big budget titles with high production values — and also bad — Activision.
What’s really causing the stir, though, is illuminated by one sentence in Ebert’s column:
“Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?”
It’s not that the majority of those who comment at Joystiq or Kotaku really give a damn about art. Ask them which they’d prefer: a NASCAR race or a visit to a local art gallery, and I’d bet the beer-hats and foam fingers would appear. Why should we care? Does accepting games as art change the way we as gamers feel about them? I know I wouldn’t feel any differently. No, Ebert either purposefully or accidentally stepped into an arena and did the one thing that really pisses of gamers: he challenged them, and that’s where this “concern” stems from.
Anyone who’s played on XBL or PSN against other people, or have done any kind of PvP knows that gamers are a competitive lot, sometimes violently so. There’s probably a whole Wikipedia’s worth of examples of people slinging foul mouthed challenges at one another (or their mothers) that would make Ebert’s argument seem like tea time between two old ladies. Gamers are defensive, about themselves, their skills, and their past-time. Ebert, being someone who has admitted that he’s basically talking out his ass by not personally experiencing the subject which he’s expounding upon, is the worst kind of target to be when inflaming the gaming community: an outsider, a non-gamer, and a public figure with name recognition outside of gaming circles. There’s no way in hell most gamers are going to sit quietly while he writes some admittedly decent articles on the subject. All in all, gamers are just taking pot-shots at Ebert because it’s what they do best when not gaming. They do it to one another, and they do it to anyone who wanders into their back yard, and gawd help them if they come looking for a fight, because they’ll certainly get one from the gaming community.
Now game developers and designers: I respect you to hell and back. I enjoy and appreciate the products of your hard work and flashes of inspiration. I’m not siding with Ebert on the spirit of the article because as a developer, I know that sometimes you get that “ah ha!” moment when everything comes together, and it can be a very emotional experience — the kind that Ebert claims cannot be had in the cold world of code and pixels. Don’t get me wrong when I say, then, that I don’t think that aiming for a target set by someone who has no stake in the industry is a challenge worth taking, because those who set such targets will never see the worth of any valiant attempts.
Gamers, same thing: getting riled up by someone who comes out of nowhere, who knows nothing aside from hearsay, and who admits to not wanting to risk the chance of being proven wrong will never be proven wrong. It would be too much for his ego to take should he find even one exception that flouts his rule. Even if he did, it’s guaranteed that he wouldn’t admit to it. Ranting and posting scads of paragraphs rebutting his assertion is falling on deaf ears, and more importantly, is prolonging his time in the spotlight. We learned this with Jack Thompson: incessant debate with a brick wall only makes that wall far more relevant then it deserves to be.
The Value of Celestial Steed
0Let me first say that I don’t actually find the Celestial Steed appealing, but in the process of reviewing the material of my fellow opinion makers on the web I couldn’t help but notice a trend: everyone hated the idea of a twenty five dollar mount. I was one of them and found myself spouting off on Twitter in unison with the rest of the community.
What seems to have enraged the community further was that so many World of Warcraft players were lining up to purchase this new mount. A baffling fact considering that this is a digital construct of polygons that has not impact on a user’s ability to affect how successful they are in the game. It is purely a vanity.
The apparent problem in all of this is that no one is taking up the sword of defense in order to see that this Activsion-Blizzard offering has a fair trial. While I agree that this seems indefensible at first glance I found that I was seeing some things in a new light as I worked out the math.
To have a balanced view of what I was dealing with I decide that I needed to look at Blizzard’s new toy from a top-down perspective. I had to look at the scope of World of Warcraft and ask myself if twenty five dollars was justified. The obvious reasoning that comes with the price of ‘sparkle horse’ is that it is exactly half the projected cost of the forthcoming Cataclysm expansion. In those terms it seems blasphemous to ask for that dollar value, but in the end I came away wonder if the cost of living is these virtual worlds was too inexpensive.
I know, it’s a wholly inflametory conclusion to draw and I probably sound like a publisher’s lackey, but think about it for a moment. How far have we come from the days of MUDs? Some might say that from a game play standpoint, not far. However, the virutualization of of these MUDs has not been a simple feat and because the progression has happened slowly over the course of decades we might not have noticed that we are spending incredible amounts of time inside these intricate designer spaces.
Let’s look at this from another angle. You decided to take your significant other out to dinner and follow it up with a movie. The dinner cost fourty dollars and the movie ran you another twenty for a grand total of sixty dollars. You left at six in the evening and returned later that night at eleven. So for sixty dollars you were entertained for five hours. Analyzing this basic example of lateral recreation, the economics for purchasing and using World of Warcraft, including its expanions, show us some very interesting results.
The game was released on November 23, 2004 in the U.S. and since then there have been only two expansions (Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King). For those in the U.S. the game has been active for two hundred and sixty four months. If you’ve been playing from the beginning and purchased all retail releases at fifty dollars each it cost you $1.76 per month to own them. If we couple this with the monthly fee of $14.95 we get a total of $16.71.
If we take this a step further and estimate that the average WoW user is playing five hours per week (the same number we used in our dinner and movie example) we get an entertainment cost of $4.18 per person or $8.36 for a couple. I found the economics of playing World of Warcraft stunning. The cost of enjoying a night playing World of Warcraft was less than 1/5 that of dinner and a movie.
There are a number of ways to recalculate the cost. Maybe you just started playing World of Warcraft or you play far more often than five hours per week. In the case of being a new player you’ll find that the cost of the original game and its expansions have dropped in cost, so your monthly value may go down somewhat, but should remain healthy. If you’re playing more than the average that I used to illustrate this you’re undoubtedly getting even higher value out of your purchase compared to our dinner and movie example.
In the end I wondered if dinner and a movie was too expensive and should come down in cost or if I was getting great value for my time and my dollar with WoW. In the end I found myself looking at MMOs in a new way. I still think that ‘sparkle horse’ is too expensive for its intention, but my foray into MMO gaming is a steal given the current state of things.
Part of this new view will be dependent on the frequency that we see new vanity items announced and whether or not the old ones come down in cost over time. Depreciation seems obvious given that the value of these mounts is directly related to their rarity, but if we can continue to use the math referenced above I’ll be satisfied with the result.
When Greed Knows No Bounds
Sometimes, we make jokes that at the time seem totally absurd, but then encounter situations that make those jokes look completely trite by comparison. Case in point: ActiBlizzard’s latest foray into the world of “microtransactions”.
Now, I put that in quotes because AB’s definition of “micro” seems to be a bit skewed. When we talk micro — as in microtransactions — we’re usually talking about $0.99 here, or $1.99 there. AB seems to be speaking a different language because as you will recall, they started their ball rolling with a $10 USD vanity pet for World of Warcraft. There was a lot of hemming and hawing, but apparently a lot of people bought it. Some bought it because it was a cute novelty. Some people bought it because AB claimed that a portion of the sales would go to disaster relief in Haiti and those folks figured they might as well get something out of it for themselves.
Today, AB announced that they were adding some items to their store: Another vanity pet, and a pretty cool Celestial Steed, which is a fully functional mount for your character. I thought this was a good idea: the v-item was actually useful in the game, and not just a pretty ball-and-chain. Then the price was announced: $25 USD. As some people have pointed out, that’s one half the price of a brand new game, and probably one half of what AB will charge for the Cataclysm expansion.
Nathan and I were discussing this very topic the other night, including the subject of AB’s first venture into the sale of v-items. I recall mentioning that had AB offered a mount or something useful, then the $10 price might be easier to swallow, and what do they do the very next day? Release a mount, at one and a half times the price of the vanity pet.
OK, so this is actually the little picture. According to incGamers, AB’s March financials are set to exceed expectations, so this v-item isn’t an attempt to keep the company afloat. It’s no wonder that their bottom line is expanding, when there are more then 17,000 people lined up to buy a $25 virtual item! (Update: According to WoW.com, the queue exceeded 80,000 people, with rumors of 130,000 at some point).
But wait! Let’s not forget the other reason why AB is doing so well: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. These profit forecasts are made all the more unpalatable when we factor in the ongoing saga of Activision vs. Infinity Ward.
Let’s call the spade a spade. Yes, corporations exist to make money, but there’s making money, and there’s making money. AB is clearly pulling out all the stops — and by stops, we mean common sense and good taste — to grow their revenue by leaps and bounds. They kill one of the geese that lays the golden eggs (Infinity Ward), while padding the bra of Blizzard by tossing out $25 v-items. Now, AB is clearly not alone in blame. When people line up to continue to give monthly fees to AB, and then knock each other over to get obscenely priced v-items, the community needs to take their place on the Wall of Shame.
As a counterpoint, look at the recent actions of Turbine over their DDO “Offer Wall” scenario. It was an obvious attempt to pull in some extra revenue for the F2P title, but the reaction to the method was apparently overwhelmingly negative that Turbine rethought their decision and tore down that wall. Some people still took Turbine to task for even offering it in the first place, but comparing Turbine to AB at this point is a study in dichotomy. One company made a play for extra bucks, and reversed it’s decision — sacrificing a potential revenue stream — at the desire of their community, while the other has no shame in throwing out overpriced virtual items in a totally transparent money grab. And there are thousands of suckers that are falling for it.
I’m wondering were the tipping point is, when people will start taking AB to task for such obvious gouging and absolute disregard for their employees. EA went through this kind of shakedown with the “EASpouse” debacle, but so far AB seems to be getting a free ride.
Impressions: Warpgate for iPhone
If you’ve followed my GameDev blog, then you might know that I’m a fan of the BBS door game TradeWars. In TW, your sole mission is to make your fortune in a commerce driven universe by buying low and selling high, taking on pirates and even terraforming and owning planets. For you young’ns out there, TW was text based with ASCII art, so there was a lot of imagination involved. Other games have adopted various parts of the TW formula (EVE Online comes the closest to the spirit of TW), but there hasn’t been a graphical commercial version of TradeWars since…well…ever. Enter Warpgate and Warpgate HD for the iPhone and iPad respectively.
Warpgate is a story driven sandbox game in which you travel through the universe, first in your beat-up cargo ship and later in ever sleeker star ships, trading goods and battling pirates and rival factions. There’s a fairly comprehensive series of tutorials to get you started, which segue nicely into the main game where you find yourself conscripted into a campaign against pirates hired by a religious cult engaged in an inter-faction cold war with government forces. The story continues your education in the game to include combat, buying and selling, and mining for a steady cash-flow.
The UI is minimal, and works surprisingly well on the smaller iPhone screen. Clicking anywhere on the screen sends your ship to that location, while swiping will send your ship on a nonstop course in that direction. Thankfully, navigational aids in the form of icons float around the periphery of the screen. Taping one of those icons will direct your ship to that feature in the system: planets, warpgates or mission objectives. The touch controls are very responsive, allowing you to rotate your camera using two fingers in a circular motion, while the familiar pinch and expand gestures zoom the camera.
I’ve been able to move through the game, both gameplay wise and UI wise, with relative ease, which isn’t to say that the game has been easy. I’ve just been lucky. I’ve consistently been knocked down to a sliver of hull integrity in my encounters, and have so far relied on the employment of my factional benefactors for income (with some mining on the side). It wasn’t long into the game, however, that I was sent out to purchase a new ship, so the beatings were a good learning experience.
There is a cash shop element to the game. Currently, they’re selling two bundles of credits: 100,000 ($2.99) and 10,000 ($0.99), and a Mjolnir Battle Cruiser ($1.99). Amusingly enough, the image on the 10,000 credits states that it’s “A small price to pay for victory”.
I haven’t had an opportunity to try Warpgate HD because, we’ll, I don’t have an iPad, but I expect the gameplay to be similar. In either case — iPhone or iPad — if sandbox space-flight trading and combat games are your cup of tea, then Warpgate or Warpgate HD will certainly fit the bill. It’s also a nice addition to the App Store in general, because it seems that most titles available are platformers or puzzle titles. Having something with more depth in a wider world makes me hope we see more titles like this in the future.
Big Changes of a Cataclysmic Nature
With the ol’ adage, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, you see developers adding onto their existing IP to see new things and branch people off the old content. This time round, it looks like our old 400lb gorilla, Blizzard, is going back to the mold.
We already know Blizzard is going over the old world and giving it a make over due to Deathwing’s arrival with new quests, new monsters, and two new races. They were not done yet though as they decided to change the overall mechanics on the stats and skills of the existing class structures. Gone are the days of things like Armor Penetration and Mana per Second. Those stats will be rolled into the class through their talent makeups.
The list of changes is too long for this report, but some examples we can start with like the Warrior class (Yeah I play a warrior, cart blanch for the writer). Again this is just one example of the many things that will be made to the classes of the game. Text below has been ripped from “Blues” postings, with my comments outside of the quotes.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
Heroic Strike will no longer be an “on next swing” attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can’t afford the Rage, you don’t push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.
Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight’s Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.
Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.
Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.
As you can see, some big changes to a main staple for warrior tanks with the sunder, and Blizzard is throwing out “Next Swing” attack abilities. On reference to the sunders, looks like that ability isn’t going to be that one main play for ‘us’ anymore. While somethings chance, they still like to show off the new toys.
New Warrior Abilities
Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won’t need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don’t want warriors to feel like they’re supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we’ll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.
Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.
Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.
Well, Look what is back.. Leaping! This feature was pulled out before Wrath went live, and now it looks like they refined it for Prot warriors looking to “Get Dirty”. Might also help with PVPing with that stun effect. With that talk of PVPing, the Gushing wounds looks to be a nice method to keep those kiters at bay a smidge. Nothing worse than being a warrior with no way to lock down some mages. While I can see a lot of people crying over this, I can not imagine it will really still hurt the opposition. Inner rage is a nice way to burn that extra rage warriors sometime get during their raid runs. With Heroic strike changes, this is the new Rage dump. I am liking this feature for it will save my fingers that extra clicking. (What? I don’t do macros. )
While Blizzard’s Bornakk states, “At the moment, we’re focused on making fun abilities. As the beta progresses, we’ll worry more about the tuning.” So take everything right now as the direction they wish to move in, but things can (and probably will) change.
The final of the big changes are a part of the new talent tree called Mastery. These are passive bonus extras one will get when one of the three talent pools is greater than the remaining two.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Arms
Melee Damage
Armor Penetration
Bonus Swing
Fury
Melee Damage
Melee Haste
Enrage Intensity
Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Critical Block ChanceBonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 50% damage.
Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.
Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing’s damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing’s damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.
Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won’t see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.
As you can deduce each tree has its extra little unique buff to give that boost to the playstyle you have chosen. The bonus swing, I believe, could be their answer to the removal of Next Swing attacks being removed. Already on the forums, there are plenty of opinions and people discussions about their respective favorite class. So what are your thoughts? Discuss below your main class, and the one thing you like and dislike. We still have a few classes they are waiting still to hear about their changes, so you Pallies (April 15th info release) feel free to give your two cents.
The Pillars of Creation
0Welcome to Quirks and Comets. Your probably wondering what could possibly be behind a column with a name like this and I have to admit I paused before I officially used it, but when you’re trying to cover the odd, and sometimes stellar, world of Indepent game development it quickly occurs to you that Quirks and Comets is actually a great way to capture what’s happening in that space.
One of the most appealing aspects of independently created games is their commitment to vision. In spite of limited funding, with team sizes that tend to number in the single digits, the indie game developer has to claw out a future filled with relative uncertainty. In the process of doing so they have churned out some of the most persuasive ways of playing that we’ve experienced. Braid has given us intricate spatial puzzles and the ability to defy the constraints of time, while Shatter has pushed the classic ‘Break-out’ type foward a full lightyear.
Games like Machinarium offer us something that most big budget games can’t: artistic expession. Indie games can take chances that their counterparts can’t and for prices that range from free to around twenty dollars. Because Indie developers lack the firm guiding hand of a publisher and have the advancement of better tools, it is no stretch to say that they are poised to push gaming further forward than their big budget brethern.
Everyone loves an underdog and for us as gamers there is no clearer representative. Hopefully you’ve personally found that indie games are an inspiring aversion to what’s available with mainstream titles. If not, I think you’ll still find this weekly ponderance enjoyable with its healthy dose of attention for the under privledged. I’ll also be turning you on to new trends in indie develop and spotlighting games that you should absolutely be playing. Till next week, when talk about the strange draw of indie platformers!
Nitpicking
Video games can be serious business to some – and we’re not just talking about the people who create them either. On occasion, someone will comment on very specific aspects of a game, like how an avatar runs, or how a particular piece of artwork looks.
I’m really at a loss for an explanation about why this matters. I’ve seen people exclaim utter disgust with aspects of a game because of aspects which have absolutely no bearing on the operation of the title in the least. I can understand if there are matters d’art that interfere with the operation or perception of the game such as floating NPCs or the terrible “Falling Through The Earth”, but the revulsion that some people exhibit in some cases confounds me.
In my mind, the reason for playing the game is to play the game. If an avatar has a seemingly non-natural stride, does that really affect game play, or are people just picking nits?
iPad – If These Are Launch Titles…
This past weekend’s launch of the iPad certainly didn’t suffer from a lack of applications dedicated to the device. Some existing apps were updated for the larger screen, and other apps which targeted the spectrum of Apple’s mobile lineup saw the iPad versions actually released before versions for the iPhone/iTouch in an obvious effort to capture the zeitgeist of the launch event.
The iPad versions of two games in particular have really struck a chord: one for bringing a neglected and admittedly difficult genre to the devices , and the other for breaking out of the platform-and-physics-puzzle rut that seemed to have plagued the App Store games up to this point.
A World In Your Pocket
Pocket Legends from Spacetime Studios is an action-based MMO for the iDevice lineup. Traditionally, MMOs on platforms other then desktop systems have been more miss then hit, landing more on the side of Mafia Wars then they do on the side of World of Warcraft.
Pocket Legends is free to play to a point, at which time the player will need to purchase various expansions to continue to play. This model seems to suit the iDevices, assuming the expansions are reasonably priced. You don’t have to download several gigabytes of data up front, and can buy only what you’re going to use.
Having an MMO on an iDevice is a big deal, both for Apple and for gamers. If the iDevice lineup – especially the iPad – can handle this and other persistent online game worlds, it could be the “go to” platform for non-desktop MMOs, something the Xbox and PlayStation brands haven’t been able (or willing) to do. The only downside is the hurdle of getting the device in to the hands of those who might not associate the iDevices with traditional-style online gaming.
Interstellar Commerce in Your Lap
The other title that bears mentioning is Warpgate HD from Freeverse. In this game, you pilot a 3D starship from system to system, taking on missions, blowing stuff up and trading commodities as you grow your financial empire. It’s a little more on the arcade side, but it’s also a sandbox title which is a genre we haven’t really seen on an iDevice.
The iDevice linup needs more titles like Warpgate HD: games which have depth, and that provide large worlds which free-range players can explore on their own terms. Warpgate HD brings iDevice gaming that much closer to what we’ve enjoyed on consoles for so many years.
Gearing Up
If neither of these titles excite you, that’s OK. Their importance doesn’t necessarily lie in their execution so much as it does in the fact that they exist at all. The games we’ve seen so far on the iPhone/iTouch have been somewhat limited. A few breakouts like Ravensword and Broken Sword (totally unrelated) have pushed the bounds of what people can expect from the iDevices, and Pocket Legends and Warpgate HD are poised to continue to expand the realm of what’s possible on the platform.
Hopefully, both Pocket Legends and Warpgate HD will be successful thanks to the more powerful and larger iPad, because whether you like Apple or not, the devices themselves are pretty slick and are finally moving towards earning their place amongst the other mobile gaming devices.
Ten Miles Back
The iPad App Store is now officially live, and as a surprise to no one, the prices of the apps therein are significantly higher then the same apps in the iPhone/iPod App Store. The good news is that apps which work on the iPhone/iPod will work on the iPad, but since the screen sizes differ, that’ll do in a pinch, but it’ll be the new apps which are specifically designed for the new form factor that will be the biggest draw.
The bad news may be that if you own an iPhone/iPod, you’ll see fewer apps available for you, as developers shift their efforts towards the more lucrative iPad platform. It remains to be seen if developers can successfully bridge the gap between the large iPad and the smaller iPhone/iPods to create apps which run well on all devices, at prices reflecting the historical norm.
The big worry used to be that the 3G iPhone would be left behind after the release of the 3GS, which hasn’t officially happened, but there are apps which are bordering on painfully slow when run on the 3G. In that case, the technical limitations were something that had to be worked around. Now that we’re talking not only about a totally different class of device, but extra revenue, I’d find it hard to believe that developers wouldn’t want to target the iPad first, and then the smaller, older devices if time and budget allowed.
I hope I’m wrong…at least until November when I can drop kick Apple’s tightly controlled platform in favor of a WinMo7 phone.
