Airplay SDK can take developers all the way to the big (flat) screen.
Mobile games developers can increasingly look to take their games to other consumer electronics devices, says Tim Closs of Ideaworks3D.
The company announced last week that its Airplay native gaming technology now supports Creative’s new Zii Egg multimedia player. That means developers using the Airplay SDK can easily port their mobile games to run on the device.
“We’re seeing quite a lot of interest in people using Airplay in consumer electronics devices outside mobile phones,” says Closs. “A lot of the OEMs in that area have learned from the guys making high-end smartphones, and are bringing those learnings to other kinds of devices.
Personal media players like the Zii Egg are one area, but Closs points out that even televisions are shipping nowadays with ARM processors inside and IP connectivity.
“They’re still quite low-powered when you compare them to a top-of-the-range smartphone, particularly when it comes to graphics acceleration,” he says. “You can’t run things like OpenGL ES on them, but you can do some decent gaming stuff.”
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Ideaworks3D is actively looking to work with these consumer electronics firms to support their devices with Airplay.
“We’re looking to break this vicious circle where these companies want to go out to the development community to get games, but are being told to come back when they have a million users,” says Closs. “If people can use Airplay and just hit a button to deploy to these new devices, they’re much more likely to support them.”
Closs admits there are other barriers, such as controls on devices not designed for gaming. He says developers are also wary of taking their games to unproven new platforms.
“A lot of developers are pretty risk-averse when it comes to this stuff,” he says.
“People have crashed and burned in the past. Part of the argument is taking the risk away. If you can press a button and deploy to a new platform for free, why wouldn’t you? We’re actively going out and trying to forge new distribution channels for people.”
