Apple Racks Up the Gaming Patents 245
An anonymous reader writes "Evidence has been growing that Apple is developing a new gaming console. Now, there are some possible details about how a combined media/game console might work, based on patent applications filed by Apple in late 2007 and early 2008. Here is some of what we can look for: having your personal music integrated into a title, a 'natural' gesture multitouch interface, and a single online store that sells games, media, and video."
Re:Xbox 361 (Score:2, Informative)
Obviously, you haven't coded for the iPhone...
You can use C++! The user-interface must be programmed with Objective C.
Assuming that you just want an OpenGL view where you can throw in your game graphics, you just need to set up an App delegate, a view controller and a view. One of the standard templates gives you everything you need on the objective C side.
So if you want to do OpenGL and C++ on the iPhone just start!
Community Games on Xbox 360 (Score:5, Informative)
Something seems incredibly interesting about the prospect of a game console with an iPhone like app/game store. I could definitely see myself buying one if they do come out, especially if I could easily program my own games for it.
Given that the app store for the iPod Touch uses almost the same business model as the "Community Games" store for the Xbox 360, I'd recommend that you buy an Xbox 360. Like the iPod Touch, the Xbox 360 needs a specific host operating system (Windows) to run the developer tools, and running your code on the console requires a $100/year developer certificate.
Model, view, and controller (Score:3, Informative)
And they want all games ported to Objective-C. For fuck's sake Apple, let us use C++ on the iPhone like a good computer company.
First, separate your game into model, view, and controller components [wikipedia.org]. Physics, AI, and map decoding go in the model so that they're identical across platforms, and anything specific to the iPod Touch goes in the view or controller. There exist bindings between Objective-C and C++ [wikipedia.org], and as an AC pointed out [slashdot.org], only part of the view and controller need to be written in Objective-C.
XNA on Xbox 360, on the other hand, needs games to be ported to the CLR. At first glance, this would be a deeper rewrite, as I've read that a lot of C++ code doesn't map cleanly onto verifiably type-safe C++/CLI constructs.
Re:Games != Windows :-D (Score:2, Informative)
Being able to play a game on an iPhone or Apple game console isn't exactly the same thing as sitting down in front of my computer and playing the games I want to play.
It doesn't matter if I can play specific games on Apple hardware, what matters is if I can play the games I want to play. Right now I'm into things like Team Fortress 2 and Far Cry 2, and hopefully Empire: Total War once they get the bugs out. If I can't play TF2 or whatever else I specifically want to play, then it doesn't matter what other games they have available.
Macs have always had games available, they just haven't been the games I want to play. I'm not looking for the next Marathon or Oregon Trail sequel, I'm looking for the games I know I want to play.
Also, for the record, my "excuse" for using Windows instead of anything with an Apple logo on it is because I actually *prefer* Windows to Mac, and frankly, within the past year or two I actually have gotten a better opinion of Microsoft over Apple (or, more specifically, my opinion of Apple as a company has shot way, way down). It's not like a Mac is some obviously superior piece of equipment, where the only reason I would possibly use anything else is because the Mac doesn't support what I'm looking for. The reason I don't use Macs is because I prefer Windows XP, bottom line, XP has done everything I need an OS to do for the past 8 years, and at this point it's extremely stable. I've also built all of my own computers for the past 10 years, if I can't build my own Mac then I can stop looking right there. I know what hardware I want, I don't need Apple to tell me. The same goes for Linux machines I build myself, I just happen to prefer XP over most distros I've seen also.
Re:Xbox 361 (Score:3, Informative)
Obj-C, btw, isn't too hard to pick up. It only adds one major syntactical feature to C, for calling methods on objects. Lack of automatic garbage collection can be annoying, but learning Apple's frameworks is really the hardest part. Seems to be a good way to make some money on the side these days.
Re:You'd be wrong (Score:3, Informative)
I was wanting to use a mac mini, as a front end to my MythTV system, but, from what I understand, they aren't powerful enough to play full HD content?
I can play 1080p content on my original Intel Mac mini - using a faster external HD is the key (as is using VLC for playback).
The newer mac minis are more than fast enough, even just using Quicktime (and I think the internal drive is faster now, but still just a laptop drive so an external FW800 drive would make a good addition)..
Re:You'd be wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple does not say it is good, say it is mandat (Score:3, Informative)
"When asked during the EMI conference call about the potential of lifting DRM from video, Jobs said: "Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."
http://pcworld.about.com/od/copyright/Jobs-unlikely-to-push-for-lift.htm [about.com]
So he did not say it is"good" for movies, but this quote is almost certainly what the GP is thinking of.