Xmas Sales.

Hey Ho.I'm just sat in a class right now, waiting while my students run through a mock exam (theyre sitting the real ones next week).

Looks like we might be able to ship our first game in the next 4 weeks. Although thats not really saying much, because this is our first *highly experimental* mobile game!

I say experimental not in game design, but more in testing the waters of mobile development. I'll post a screenshot once we have some final artwork, suffice to say with a 64k limit we arent going to be pushing any boundaries of the art of game making :)

The game itself is a relatively simple breakout game. Although we're looking at a few twists that might make it more interesting.

Breakout is a great testbed for other games though, because its relatively simple and has most of the elements you need (plus the left/right control system is good for phones). Next up for the mobiles will be some slightly more "out there" projects that might take a week or two to complete.All of the mobile work is being done by Mark (the other programmer of scaryhead), so it doesnt take me away from the AI pack development at all.

I seriously doubt that mobile games are an avenue that will hold much revenue for us, as with the normal retail industry, mobiles are all about license titles and sequels. Strange isnt it, anything thats supposed to appeal to the "mass market" has to be dumbed down to licenses and sequels it seems.

Out of interest, if you'd seen the data for Xmas sales on consoles, you'd be not very amazed to see that out of the top 10 titles, both us and uk, the ONLY "original" game in the list was "Killzone".

All the remainder were licenses or sequels. With EA unsurprisingly taking 5 of the top 10 games in each list. Man, things are strange in developer land right now. NewsCorp buying Activision? EA buying the rights to ESPN for 15 years?

Bleh. Give me something original.