Just a quick round-up of stories this week as I'm short on time. Just started another two-week stint on the Official PlayStation Magazine (I wrote the features on game AI and Killzone in the latest issue) so I'm squeezing in blogs where I can.
Anyway, EA Mobile has announced a few new projects. The company is bringing its ubiquitous Sims brand to iPod, courtesy of The Sims DJ, a sort of rhythm action game which lets you use the click wheel as a turntable. There's also a four-person pass-n-play mode. Meanwhile, C&C Tiberium Wars and Road Rash are coming to mobile phones.
Nokia has provided access to its Widsets development tools. Widsets are a mobile phone version of widgets - Java-based downloadable desktop applications with a huge variety of possible functions, including games of course. Nokia reckons they'll make entertainment apps much more accessible to phone users (around 300 handsets are compatible apparently). You can check out what's available here.
Disney Mobile is launching a new entry to the getting-quite-crowded-now mobile brain training sector. It's got a pretty good license though - yep, Einstein's Brain Game will feature everyone's favourite theoretical physicist, presenting a series of mini-puzzles. From the press release:
The game features 20 brain training exercises which take you on a journey through Einstein's theories of relativity and ideas about the solar system. It features 4 categories - maths, memory, logic and visual coordination, as well as a bonus Sudoku puzzle game, to give the brain a thorough work-out.
Albert Einstein, the renowned Nobel Prize-winning physicist is virtually on hand throughout the game to offer advice and comments on your progress - so you can "learn" directly from the great genius himself!
The Einstein's Brain Game online community portal will feature a competition that will allow gamers to compete with other players across Europe to determine who has the biggest brain. Further, the portal will feature a free bonus quiz that test the players general trivia knowledge.
What next - an Isaac Newton platformer (You can forget double jumps for a start)?
And finally, Pocket Gamer has a great feature on motion-sensing mobile games - iPhone is bagging most of the publicity in this area, of course, but both LG and Sony Ericsson have handsets with Wii-mote-style movement controls. Will this be the feature that finally gets more than 5% of phone owners to start downloading games? Yeah sure, why not?
