As some of you may have already heard, there has been another hugely exciting announcement from the Unity3D guys. They announced that they will add the ability to export projects to Flash’s 3D API Molehill.

This is excellent news for Flash developers as the Unity tool is a fantastic environment for building games. Using the Unity tool you will be able to program in either ActionScript 3 or using one Unity’s existing languages such as C#, Boo, or JavaScript.

Flash’s new 3D API, codenamed Molehill, “exposes a very low-level shader-based interface to the graphics hardware. Adobe has decided to focus on that low-level part, and do that really well. The molehill pre-release will not be shipping with a 3D engine, scene building tools, model and animation importers / exporters, physics, lighting or lightmap creation tools, etc.”

The latest information released stated that Unity will be keeping the Unity Player and it will be up to the developer to decide when to target Flash or Unity Players or other platforms like desktop, mobile that are currently available and use the rendering platforms that work best with each (DirectX/OpenGL/OpenGL ES/Molehill… maybe WebGL in the future).

If this works out, it will help to break down the barriers some Unity3D developers may have encountered when it came to getting users to break away from the Flash plugin player and download the Unity Webplayer. I’m sure many of us who have published a Unity3D game to be released via the web have hit this issue. But with the option to utilise the already widely accepted Flash player, it opens up all the Flash portals for Unity developers (and hopefully over time, the Unity Web Player itself will continue to gain more acceptance on the web). It also means Unity can now truly say they are a complete cross-platform developing package. Exciting times…

If you want to read more about this, you can see what the Unity guys themselves had to say. As usual, they have been very open about future developments and have published a useful Q and A here.

GameIndustry.biz posted an interesting article which highlighted the UK game industry’s contribution to games created for Microsoft and Sony’s motion controllers.

“Figures from GfK Chart Track reveal that some 42 per cent of UK sales for all Xbox 360 Kinect titles and 30 per cent of PlayStation Move games to date where made in Britain.” (read the full article here)

That’s certainly an encouraging statistic for all aspiring game developers in the UK. Especially since a certain large games company has threatened to pull out of the UK when it came to game development (you can read about it here and here).

Anyway, it’s nice to know that talent in Britain is still valued when it comes to game development for the latest hardware. So isn’t it about time we got that tax break everyone’s been gunning for? We had enough of an IT brain drain” to the US in the 1980′s and 90′s – you’d have thought we’d have learned our lesson by now.

I guess Matmi could always relocate across the pond – but it seems slightly ridiculous when we live in cyberspace, and someone’s got to get the UK out of debt. I think we may lend our support to The Independent Game Developers Association (TIGA) – and you can too.

Game on! Jeff.

Apple has announced that downloads from its App Store have now passed ten billion. No, you didn’t just mis-read that. It DOES say 10 BILLION! That’s almost 3 billion more App downloads than there are people currently alive. What an incredible statistic. And they are not done. The company continues to grow, as do their profits.

30% of the revenue made from those 10 Billion apps go directly to Apple. If you add that to all the profits they make from their hardware sales, then you can pretty much say they have an un-limited amount of funds. No wonder they considered buying Facebook.

Here’s some more stats to boggle the mind:

“The iPhone firm revealed that around seven billion of those downloads had occured during the last year – following a record quarter in which Apple claimed $6 billion in profit.

“The ten billionth App was downloaded on Saturday 22 January, with UK citizen Gail Davis from Kent being awarded a $10,000 iTunes gift card for being the downloader in question. Her app of choice was Paper Glider.” (gameindustry.biz)

And this is where we’d like to say a well-deserved “Congratulations mate!” to Oli Christie at Neon Play. Oli – I remember the discussion we had when you were setting Neon up (and I hope some of what I had to say was useful…!) I’m a little green (maybe more than a little…) but it’s great to see your news – I’ll race ya for the 20th billionth download!

Which will probably only take until Christmas…

And well done to Apple too. Love them or hate them, you have to admire their success.

Enjoy, Jeff.

Damian Blackden, President of the Omnicom Media Group, has warned that traditional creative ad agencies must quickly learn to adapt to the digitial age or risk becoming obsolete.

Speaking at the MediaGuardian Changing Advertising Summit , Blackden said that traditional agencies had missed an opportunity by not investing in data capabilities, and that those who had, and had thereby gained an advantage, were unlikely to be caught up to in a hurry.

“No one has got it right yet, developed a perfect agency model. The Darwinian conditions are pretty painful for the industry but I am optimistic,” he said, blaming a changing media landscape, exacerbated by the recession for the troubles that the industry is facing.

As a digital media agency oursleves, we’ve seen the process first hand and plenty of traditional agencies have partnered with Matmi because we are better equipped to navigate the new waters of online advertising.  Darwin might never have said it himself, but “Survival of the Fittest” seems pretty apt right now.

Source: The Guardian

Wow, what a week it’s been for Matmi!  Our game, Monster Pinball, has been nominated for not one, but TWO awards!

First one is the brand spanking new Roses Design Games Awards organised by Drum Magazine in Nottingham, where Monster Pinball has been nominated for Best Handheld/Mobile Game award.

The second one is the British Interactive Media Awards, pretty much the Oscars for us game makers, in London.  Monster Pinball has been nominated in the Mobile Games category.

So, Nottingham and London then?  Only need somewhere like Newcastle and we’ve got the whole country wrapped up!  Not bad for our first iPhone game, and we’ve got plenty more where that came from!

We’ll find out if we’ve won the New Rose award on Friday and the BIMA results in a month’s time. Keep watching this space!