I’ve got a PlayBook and played Finish It! for the first time on it. What a lovely platform for games. The game plays well on it, looks and sounds good too.
I can’t wait to do the next revision, but I need the tools to be a bit better first. Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 is a bit of a bodge right now. Looks like I will have to wait until June.
Finally, the game can be seen if you search App World for PlayBook and filter for games.
Today I saw that the number of games in the PlayBook section has increased from 36 to 63. Although Finish It! still doesn’t feature, at least this is a sign that games are getting through. Perhaps RIM is busy with the backlog of games that were ready some time ago.
I’ll keep you posted.
The App World is not very well organised. There appear ls to be no dedicated section for PlayBook apps. The games section you see after you search for PlayBook apps has only 36 entries.
Apparently, it can take some time to list new entries. In the meantime, please use the direct link in an earlier message.
I still have no information on when v1.0 of Finish It! will be released sadly, despite trying to engage with BlackBerry on Twitter. No emails, nothing.
I’m sure it will come out soon, perhaps they’re managing the releases, but they should advise the publishers and developers.
Still no news from BlackBerry, they don’t respond to email or Twitter. It’s getting a little frustrating.
Thought you might like to see this exchange from earlier today, to which I’ve had no response.the upshot is that I have yet to hear anything on when Finish It! will be released and the worst thing about this process is that I don’t feel like working on the update that will make the first version a lot better to play.
It probably isn’t much better with anyone else, but I do wish they’d be a little more responsive. I don’t think it’s too much to ask when they’re planning on releasing my game, especially given that it really ought to be under my control and not RIM’s.
The BlackBerry PlayBook launch doesn’t seem to have gone too well. There has been very little news about it and the Apple blogs have been linking to some pretty horrible reviews.
Although I have a game that was ready for launch, my interaction with RIM has been minimal. From my side there have been enquiring emails and submissions and from their side, infrequent, automatic emails offering no insight, human or otherwise on how far along approval was or when Finish It! might come out on the App Portal.
There have been no indications as to why there were over 50 games in the Portal before launch and why this number seemed to drop to 16 (or sometimes less) post launch. Perhaps they’re managing release windows, in which case publishers have a right to know or perhaps they’re having technical problems, in which case publishers also have a right to know.
Dealing with the traditional console manufacturers can be interesting at times, but at least you get to deal with human beings and you will get human responses. This is something I’m sure RIM will learn.
Something I’ve noticed is the poor quality of discussion coming from the “development community” on the public RIM sites. Some of it so childish as to make you wonder what RIM were thinking of when they decided to allow AIR as a platform, but then there are a few very supportive individuals who know their stuff, happily sharing knowledge on the internal forums. Needless to say, if RIM had not supported AIR, I wouldn’t have a finished app on their portal.
I’m not happy about the lack of information on how to purchase PlayBook games either. If I’ve just got myself a PlayBook, how do I go about searching for apps for it?
Here’s where I currently go and at the time of writing, still only 16 games available. And mine isn’t there. I know they had a lot of crap submitted, but 16 games, and none of them is Madden (bet EA is happy about that!) and worse, no information on why.
Now I’m a fan of the PlayBook (though I’ve yet to see a device). I’m a fan because I think RIM made some really smart moves. Apple did their Apple thing and got a load of the market, and those who were surprised at their success must have been in a coma for several years, but RIM has made a number of smart decisions.
The purchase of QNX was a masterstroke. I’ve read about this real time operating system since I started in this business, which was a very, very long time ago. I’ve always wanted to use it and now I can. It’s the kind of real time OS you’d use in military applications, so it’s robust, it’s responsive and it’s lightweight. I can’t think of a better foundation for a tablet that will be used by ordinary consumers.
The opening up of the platform to multiple technologies from the get-go was wise. There is an implicit recognition that an opening of the gates at multiple paths is the answer to content. That makes sense. The Apple crowd (of which I am part) would moan about the lack of vision, of purity, but long-term that won’t be an issue. Style guides are always up-in-the-air at launch anyway. These things get ironed out. What you want as a consumer from the outset is content. Now whether that’s worked for RIM or not, given the beta state of the firmware, and I’m talking about lack of basics like email here, remains to be seen, but it has allowed a lot of different developer types to approach the platform.
Finally, the 7” form-factor is an excellent move because nobody owns that space and it doesn’t seem as if Apple will make a play for it either. The closest we have there is Kindle, but Kindle only does books and doesn’t do colour. The form-factor might be the single-biggest advantage RIM has over Apple.
I’m not too concerned about the launch. Perhaps it suits RIM that there has not been too much fanfare. Perhaps their processes have not been as smooth as they could have been, but really, it was not so difficult. If an old fart like me can make a game for the PlayBook and jump through all the hoops necessary in whatever spare time I had outside of my demanding full-time job, pretty much any developer could. The firmware will improve. The apps will come. Native SDK will be there. And the platform will still have that 7” form-factor, powerful guts and QNX as its beating heart. If RIM can ride some of the bad reviews, I still think they have a solid contender in the tablet wars and I wish them the very best.
It’s an exciting time. If you have any feedback on the game, please let me know at s1fr.s0fr@gmail.com or here if tumblr lets you.
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