Mobile game developer Joymaster Inc (極致行動科技) introduced its mahjong game “Joymaster” on Wednesday, marking yet another attempt by a Taiwanese firm to pursue the booming iPhone’s App Store market.
“The mahjong game has been in the development works for a year and is the result of the teamwork of some 15 developers,” company vice president Sky Lin (林亮宇) said.
Users can download the game through iPhone’s App Stores for free, then log into the application with their Facebook account.
They can then kick off their mahjong game by joining a table with three other online players.
Players will know who their opponents are through Facebook IDs and Facebook photos on the screen.
Each player will be given 3,200 virtual dollars a day to indulge in the adrenaline rush of mahjong — a popular gambling game that involves skills, luck and strategy, and uses a set of tiles.
If players are running out of credits, they can purchase more online.
Joymaster has over 10 iPhone games under its belt, spanning from mahjong to puzzles and poker game titles. Some of them are available for free, while some carry price tags from US$0.99 to US$4.99, Lin said.
“We have been keeping an eye on the iPhone craze since late 2008, and finally we launched our first game for the iPhone in March last year when we thought the time was ripe,” he said.
Currently, iPhone games account for 10 percent of Joymaster’s total gaming revenues, with the rest derived from titles for feature phones — or general phones that don’t support smartphone features.
The iPhone contribution could double by the end of the year, Lin said, foreseeing some momentum from Google Inc’s Android platform, as Joymaster has some Android games currently under development.
Joymaster is not the only mobile developer that is after App Store’s business opportunities, as Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), Taiwan’s leading online game developer and publisher, intends to come up with titles for iPhone as well.
“We are in the development phase for these games, but we have yet to launch one, as we have scrapped some games whose performance didn’t match the requirements,” said a company official who asked not to be named.
If everything goes smoothly, one of its major online game titles this year — Hero 108— could be its first mobile title supporting the iPhone platform and could be launched by the end of the year, she said.
Hero 108 is a joint animation production from Gamania, the Cartoon Network in the UK and Moon Scoop in France. The cartoon will be aired locally starting next month. Gamania developed a same-titled online game whose closed beta testing commenced last month in the US.
While many developers are channeling resources into apps development for Apple’s App Store, many are also showing interests in the new rising contender — Android.
According to a survey released by the US-based Appcelerator Inc on Wednesday, 90 percent of developers polled said they were very interested in developing applications for the iPhone while 81 percent were very interested in developing for Android phones.
Thirty-four percent were interested in the BlackBerry and 27 percent in Windows phones, according to the survey, which polled more than 2,700 developers among its 51,000 mobile developer community.
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