Ten Years Ago, Epic Helped To Legitimize iOS as a Gaming Platform With a Small Demo (theverge.com) 46
An anonymous reader shares a report: On September 1st, 2010, Epic Games released its Citadel tech demo in the Apple App Store. It was a boring thing to actually play -- you simply walked around a medieval town in first-person perspective, taking in the sights with no objectives -- but this calm debut marked a big moment for iOS, the App Store, and Epic Games. It proved that developers could fit gigantic, richly detailed set pieces running on a smartphone and do it while utilizing Unreal Engine 3, the same engine that powered some of the most popular games in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era of consoles. The devices of choice, if you wanted to get access to mobile games with impressive graphics, were suddenly just the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The Citadel demo didn't come to Android until almost two and a half years later in 2013.
The Citadel demo was groundbreaking at the time, and it possibly helped to kickstart the trend of bringing console-like experiences to the nascent mobile gaming platform. When I first saw it, I remember feeling like I immediately needed to throw my HTC Droid Eris out the window and buy an iPhone instead. I eventually got to try it out on an iPad at the gadget store where I was employed at the time, and it was stunning to see high-fidelity textures that had dimension and lighting that dynamically shifted when you walked into a building. There were even reflections at a certain point. I had played better-looking games on PC at that point, but something about the experience of being packed into a tiny device made for a magical proof of concept that left an impact on me, even as the fun of walking around Citadel lost its appeal. Ten years later, things are very different. Right now, Epic Games and Apple are in the midst of a high-profile legal battle that will likely have a serious impact on their relationship moving forward.
The Citadel demo was groundbreaking at the time, and it possibly helped to kickstart the trend of bringing console-like experiences to the nascent mobile gaming platform. When I first saw it, I remember feeling like I immediately needed to throw my HTC Droid Eris out the window and buy an iPhone instead. I eventually got to try it out on an iPad at the gadget store where I was employed at the time, and it was stunning to see high-fidelity textures that had dimension and lighting that dynamically shifted when you walked into a building. There were even reflections at a certain point. I had played better-looking games on PC at that point, but something about the experience of being packed into a tiny device made for a magical proof of concept that left an impact on me, even as the fun of walking around Citadel lost its appeal. Ten years later, things are very different. Right now, Epic Games and Apple are in the midst of a high-profile legal battle that will likely have a serious impact on their relationship moving forward.
Posted by I-love-epic department (Score:4, Funny)
We need your help in greedy corp fight against other greedy corp. I swear that greedy corp are good guys. They donated to donald duck saving charity recently.
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Heads up (Score:1)
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We put children in ours.
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Indeed. How many more contrived posts are we going to have about this "Epic" fight?
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We often equate businesses with human personalities. Despite Mitt Romney Businesses are not human. They are run and operated by people (Which I think was Romney's point) however a business is more than the CEO or the combined aspects of all its people. It is an entity designed to maximize profits. Some are really good at it, other are not. Some play the short term and do what it takes to make the most money fastest, while other take a long approach where after they have invested into the public needs, th
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So what? (Score:3)
Aside from doing something that was already technologically possible, why is this relevant beyond Apple v. Epic?
Who cares....let them duke it out in court (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't want to follow the rules in Apple's walled garden? Great, then don't. Create your own garden. How many more slashdot stories are there going to be about two thuggish companies fighting over the size of their vig. It's only a fucking video game.
Wake me up when it's over.
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Don't want to follow the rules in Apple's walled garden? Great, then don't. Create your own garden.
But Apple is being mean by not letting Epic build their own walled garden inside Apple's.
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Apple would let Epic build a walled garden inside, as long as they got their cut.
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Don't want to follow the rules in Apple's walled garden? Great, then don't. Create your own garden. How many more slashdot stories are there going to be about two thuggish companies fighting over the size of their vig. It's only a fucking video game.
Wake me up when it's over.
Ah yes!. Just start competing with Apple and Google's monopsonies. Why didn't anyone ever think of that! You genius you
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Epic chose this path. It was easier to leverage someone else's pre-made garden. Now they've painted themselves into a corner.
Color me unsympathetic....especially given Epic's own corporate behavior in the past.
Re: Who cares....let them duke it out in court (Score:1)
It's only a fucking video game. Wake me up when it's over.
This isn't about video games; it's about control. Apple's "rights" notwithstanding (after all, it's their sandbox), unless owners of these devices are provided a way to run third-party apps (even if it means, say, temporarily losing "walled garden protection" until a system reset, etc), a valid argument exists that not only has Apple deliberately crippled its products (a 'defect in materials and workmanship' if ever there was one), their reasons for doing so clearly constitute an abuse of their monopoly.
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The App Store makes up 40% of Apple's profits. Apple is worth $2 trillion. 40% of $2 trillion is $800 billion. The App Store is worth more than all but like 5 companies in the world. It's literally half the value of Amazon's entire company. That's why this is important.
Epic and Apple? (Score:5, Interesting)
No mention of Google? Valve? Epic seems to be doing their damndest to piss off the entire industry all because they want to get into the 30% pie without actually putting in the effort to build a market.
Hell even their Epically crap Store is so devoid of features and functionality that all they can do is cry on Twitter that developers still voluntarily choose Steam's 30% cut over their 12%, and at the same time throw stupid amounts of Fortnite money at securing 3rd party exclusives.
Hey Epic, how about you actually build something people *want* to use.
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Apple doesn't need to do anything. That's how closed systems work. No one owes you a customer base. Microsoft and Android don't have that luxury, at best they can block you from Pixel and Surface devices. Feel free to not pay the entry fee that everyone else is paying.
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Your point? Apple don't own Epic a customer base. I suppose next they'll sue Tesla because you can't run Fortnite on the car's infotainment system? Android is not closed ecosystem, comparing Android to iPhone's is asinine. Whinging that you have to pay access to someone else's system and their users is the most childish of entitlement.
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Have we forgotten history already?
That's what Epic did - they ran their own app store and put Fortnite on it. They apparently didn't get much out of it because in a few months they put Fortnite in the Play Store.
And there was plenty of security researchers pointing out that the Epic Games Store on Android was a huge security hazard, and not in the "Poss
i have done business with apple and google (Score:1)
one should count the steps required to produce the product between paywalls.
one should add up the development costs of producing the product between paywalls.
the cheaper solution will greatly assist the project by generating a revenue stream first
Wrong way around (Score:5, Insightful)
10 years ago, Apple made a phone so powerful, it helped legitimize Unreal Engine as a valid choice for mobile game development.
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Is the lowest iPhone (the new SE) still more powerful than the flagship Android models?
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There are more important things than raw speed. Like an ecosystem that allows real functionality - if I want my own mail client to be default (coming in iOS 14!) or to have actual browser choice instead of skins, WiFi analysis tools. And even, worst case, being able to sideload an APK.
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No - more like it's so irrelevant that I don't actually know the answer. I would estimate that Apple's chips are faster just based on what I know.
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No - more like it's so irrelevant that I don't actually know the answer.
Thats funny, because not knowing stuff has never stopped you from acting like an expert before... NOT EVEN IN THIS THREAD
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It was Candy Crush (Score:3)
and the slew of other time wasting games that got people used to playing games on their phones.
Whoy even bother posting pro epic stuff (Score:2)
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> Instead, Cook has happily ceded control to Apple for anything resembling serious mobile gaming.
Well, has the company EVER really supported gaming? They do some gaming stuff once in a while and then promptly ignore it again.
Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Epic games, 40% owned by Tencent, goes after Apple which is moving its factories out of China.
in Epics defence (Score:2)
That was yesterday (Score:2)
What have you done today? Have some cheese with your whine.
"It was a boring thing to actually play" (Score:2)
Well, yeah. It was a demo - intended to show off their engine. I don't think anyone expected it to have gameplay elements, except Cameron Faulkner. That's sort of like complaining that a diorama made of cardboard cutouts is lacking in action.
Angry Birds (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago, Angry Birds showed you could make millions on mobile games, and legitimized iOS as a money-making platform.
FTFY
There were already Unity games like Ravensword... (Score:2)
When this demo came out it was pretty sweet (Score:1)