Firemint bringing Flight Control and more to iPad

Company
Firemint

Apple's newly revealed iPad tablet was announced this morning, and it came with a lot of interest from game developers, including Melbourne based game developer, Firemint. The SDK was released today shortly after the announcement, and it looks like Firemint are diving straight into the new platform.

Firemint have said to be "working on some incredibly fun and exciting games that will look amazing on iPad and take full advantage of its features, as well as working brilliantly on iPhone and iPod touch". They're also bringing an optimised version of their massively successful game, Flight Control, to the iPad as well.

From Firemint...

This morning, Apple revealed a magical and revolutionary device. We're delighted that we can now make our own announcement: we will bring an optimised and re-imagined version of Flight Control to iPad. Like almost 140,000 other apps on the App Store, Flight Control will work perfectly on iPad without any changes from us, but we want to ensure a delightful experience on iPad that feels just right.

We started developing Real Racing before the iPhone 3G was announced. Similarly, we are already building our next generation of games for higher definition, more powerful devices than are available today. We like to imagine what the devices of tomorrow will be capable of, and invest in bringing our games to the next generation of hardware. The iPad announcement and Apple's A4 chip have come at a fantastic time for us. We are working on some incredibly fun and exciting games that will look amazing on iPad and take full advantage of its features, as well as working brilliantly on iPhone and iPod touch.

Knowing Firemint's enthusiasm for pushing hardware and gaming boundaries, it will be something worth looking out for.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/01/10 - 11:59 AMPermalink

And given their success on the iPhone and Flight Control, why wouldn't you jump onto the apple bandwagon asap?

Looking forward to more success this year from you Firemint.

Submitted by souri on Thu, 28/01/10 - 12:44 PMPermalink

Does anyone else have doubts on whether the iPad will really take off? I was expecting something a lot more revolutionary than what was announced. I was pretty impressed with Microsoft's Courier, however.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/01/10 - 1:01 PMPermalink

I'm definitely not impressed with the iPad personally. I too have my doubts that it'll take off like the iPhone has. It's not really the revolutionary piece of technology Apple were claiming, and seems overly large for what it's trying to do.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 01/02/10 - 10:23 AMPermalink

Apple keeping a closed mouth can sometimes bite them in the ass. They never claimed anything. Nothing! Never! Ever! People assume certain things and then get disappointed when they don't pan out that way. Be disappointed, but Apple definitely didn't make any such claims.

Personally, I suspect I'll be waiting for V2.

Submitted by Bittman on Thu, 28/01/10 - 1:11 PMPermalink

Apparantly it doesn't multitask.

So it's halfway between a computer, and an iPhone. But useless for business applications, and really an oversized handheld gaming device.

I'll hold the jury off for the moment, because when the iPhone came out I just thought it was a phone bred with an iPod, and look how well it's gone.

But first impressions, not fascinating me.

Apparantly (from the twitter comments I read), HP have a nice tablet.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 01/02/10 - 8:37 AMPermalink

I am also less than impressed with the ipad .. will stick with my iphone.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 01/02/10 - 3:19 PMPermalink

Bylines should read "Apple makes play for th' livingroom". While the iPad falls short in functionality compared to say an iPhone the main revelation here is that Apple is committing to a future scenario where web browsing / game playing is done away from the paradigm of the desktop or laptop. Its not to say that these experiences need to be dumbed down, but rather they now exist on networked devices and in time slices more compatible with typically time-poor / media rich lifestyles.

It was a shame they omitted the twin cameras from iPad 1.0 for video conferencing as that would have made it a killer business tablet, however they did go for a populist pricepoint in order to take the fight straight to the living room couch. Expect that future revisions will add essential functionality like this in a staggered roll-out a la iPhone. Methinks the main point for Apple is to get the device out and establish an e-Books market while its still open and before potential content creators like newspaper + magazine publishing industries die a quiet death.

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So while the announcement is a bit of a disappointment on the surface, perhaps game developers can look at the kinds of play that the iPad can engender in its unique social space and also catch some of the HTML5 wave which is about to break on Adobe's heads. It'll be interesting to see if a tablet can achieve the same kind of mass market presence as the Nintendo DS / Sony PSP in Asia and establish itself as the Western equivalent of the kind of portable, persistent gaming environment that is so successful for Dragon Quest + Monster Hunter over there ..

-- Chuan