By Eagle-eyed Dave – someone who keeps his nose close to the Android gaming scene – was browsing through GameLoft’s catalog one random Thursday and discovered something odd: new titles. Among them were Real Golf 2011 HD, Fishing Kings HD, GT Racing: Motor Academy HD and Guitar Rock Tour 2 HD. Naturally, we’d think “yay, new games!” But going to purchase them shows that they don’t exist. Odd. So we may see these games sometime soon, but at the same time, it could’ve just been an odd mistake: these could just be iOS titles. We’ll hope for the best and keep on the lookout for their reemergence. [via Droid Gamers]
David Ko from Zynga – throughout his enthusiastic attempt to enlighten us on the future of social gaming at the LeWeb conference in Paris today – let loose that Mafia Wars would be seeing an Android release before the end of this year. Ko’s dedicating to bring popular Zynga games like Mafia Wars to Android was just a natural move he wanted to take when he started there as senior vice president of mobile, he notes. Zynga’s already rumored to be bringing Farmville out for the platform, but perhaps now that Ko is behind the wheel we should see that before too long, as well.
During a press conference which Rovio streamed live today, they announced “Bad Piggy Bank”, their in-game payment system for titles (such as Angry Birds) which will allow you to do things such as removing the ads on Angry Birds or buy the “Mighty Eagle” update that is on its way. The platform won’t just be exclusive: they’re looking to offer it to any developer who needs an in-app payment solution on Android. (A void Google has failed to fill.)
Bad Piggy Bank allows users to pay for content through the advent of carrier billing, something we hope to see for the Android market someday. “I think that the payment method up to now has been less than perfect,” says Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka. Don’t say it with hesitation, Pete (Can I call you Pete?): we wholly agree.
We won’t see it much outside of Finland for the time being, but as Rovio inks deals with carriers around the world, you can expect it to be out in as many markets as one can imagine. Angry Birds has now been downloaded on Android over 10 million times. [via TechCrunch]
PS: Awesome hoodie, Pete.
$10 million correction
I guess I’m one of the only ones who doesn’t like carrier billing.
@TheDrizzle I was thinking the same thing so apparently, it’s just the two of us.
Make that 3
I love the current billing system in Android. I can purchase an app once and carry that purchase with me to any androis device that I am signed into with my Google account. This gives me some comfort knowing that when I upgrade to a new phone, I can keep my previous purchases. However, I would imagine that in app purchasing would not work this way and would instead tie that purchase to a device, which means that whenever I upgrade I would need to repurchase. In that case, I would stop purchasing any app via this mechanism. The same goes with alternate Market apps.
Doesn’t T-Mobile already have carrier billing for US apps? At least mine does. :)
The other problem with carrier billing, is when you get your phone replaced (with either the same model or a different one). I don’t want to have to pay for all the games all over again.
@kevin I am also able to purchase apps through the market by billing to my T-Mobile account. But it appears they are creating their own proprietary purchasing service within their app that does not utilize the existing Google Market app purchasing methods. Therefore to gain access to bill to a phone account via methods other than those already approved and available, I would assume they would need buy in by each respective carrier.
T-Mobile is the only carrier in the US that has carrier everyone else haas to use google checkout
I thought when you utilize Google’s Android market you became restricted to the terms they have set forth. This would make not using Google’s method of payment a violation of those terms. Of course for the Angry Birds developers they might just bend over again. After all, Google lied in saying they would no longer accept any new apps for using their mobile ads, but I see Rovio was an exception. Must be nice.