New freebies roundup (6 games)

As usual, some of these are free for a limited period only, so don’t hang about.

Numeric Paranoia

The picture pretty much explains what’s going on. It’s a path-finding/line-drawing puzzle game related to Polarium on the GBA and DS, and like Polarium comes with Arcade and Puzzle modes. From simple 4×5 grids with four numbers, up to scary 10-number 8×6 levels, there’s loads to keep you amused here, and it’s very slickly executed.

A tiny bit more on App Store piracy

Something else occurred to me this morning after reading over yesterday’s lead story again. According to 24/7WallSt’s largely-invented figures, just 4% of iPhone/iPod owners use their device for piracy, yet have been responsible for actual real losses of over $450m in revenue that would have been spent were piracy not possible.

Logically, this means that the other 96% of owners must be spending the same sort of amount, (since the figure was arrived at via an allegedly-conservative notional conversion rate of 10% of pirated copies being genuinely lost sales, rather than just stuff the pirates wouldn’t have bothered downloading if they had to pay for it). Which means that the App Store must have generated an impressive $11.48bn of revenue in the last 18 months.

Since Apple have revealed that there have been a total of 3 billion downloads, which includes both paid and free apps, that would make the average price per download just short of $4. But since the 247WS figures were based on just an estimated 17% of downloads being paid apps, that bumps the average per-paid-app price up to a little over $23.50 (compared to 247WS’s claimed average of $3).  If other analysts’ estimates of the proportion of paid apps to free ones is more accurate, the average price of each paid-for download could be as high as $160.

Doesn’t seem awfully likely, does it?

The most spurious piracy figures ever?

The content industry has a long and shameful history of spurious figures when it comes to the subject of intellectual-property piracy. This much we already knew. But the most recent set of “statistics” on the economic cost of piracy – which have, of course, been seized on and repeated unquestioningly by the press – may have set some sort of record.

One-day freebies roundup

Get a move on, because most of these are free for today only.

World Of Tunes

Pretty Ouendan-style rhythm action game with high production values – if slightly dubious beat synchronisation – and inventive boss battles. Gets wildly polarised reviews at £1.79, so grab it today at no risk.

An infinite distance left to run

The App Store is a strange and capricious place. Once an app reaches a certain level of market awareness, success becomes a self-perpetuating phenomenon, regardless of any characteristics of the app itself. There’s no other way to explain, for example, the continued existence of the extraordinarily terrible Beautiful Boobs near the top of the free-app charts. Despite thousands of one-star ratings (the app’s overall score is an extremely generous 1.5) and the presence of countless superior free lady-ogling apps (which is to say, all of them), the mere fact that it’s in the top 10 causes more and more people to download it, keeping it there and shutting out more worthwhile titles.

The same problem also afflicts the paid-app charts, which is why Doodle Jump has been the No.1 paid game for about the last 50 years despite not being particularly great and there being an army of similar titles that are better (eg PapiJump+) and/or free. And such extended systemic bed-blocking sometimes causes very obviously brilliant apps to inexplicably fail to reach the heights they richly deserve.

Apple tablet officially confirmed

Not by Apple, admittedly. But Stephane Richard, the incoming CEO (and current vice-president) of mobile phone company Orange (one of Apple’s European network partners) appears to have inadvertently let the much-rumoured cat out of the bag. In an interview with French TV station Europe 1, the following exchange (translated) takes place:

Interviewer: According to [French magazine] Le Point, your partner Apple will be launching a tablet
Stéphane Richard: Yes.
Interviewer: … equipped with a webcam.
Stéphane Richard: Yes.
Interviewer: Will Orange customers also be able to enjoy it?
Stéphane Richard: Of course!, they will actually particularly enjoy it because the webcam will allow live video streaming. It’s a new take on mobile video-conferencing.

My schoolboy French seems to back up the internet translation, but you can check the interview out for yourself here if yours is better:

L’interview politique de Jean-Pierre Elkabbach

(Skip to 6.12 or so.)

Just down past the gasworks

WoSblog’s favourite free iPod game got an update this morning, increasing the size of its main mode by a whopping 67% and making it an even more unmissable bargain than the unmissable bargain it already was. Donut Games’ cute and loveable Rat On The Run is actually three games in one – and even the throwaway “Rat On A Scooter” minigame is so good that it’s now spawned its own spinoff game (the splendid Rat On A Scooter XL) – but the main Challenge mode has now been expanded from 15 levels to 25.

It’s a lovely one-button game full of replay value (because beating a level with one star is for the feeble), and you really ought to be snapping it up before DG come to their senses and start charging for it again.

(If you want to get a feel for the game without an iPod, you can also play the full 8-level Arcade mode here for free.)

One-day freebie

Popular and slick physics puzzler Finger Physics, free today only:

Remember, if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch yet with which to enjoy the now-est gaming of the modern zeitgeist, you can still grab the games anyway with iTunes while they’re free, and be ready if you get one in the future. And if you’re ready to join in the fun, you can do it at a giveaway price by subscribing to WoS, where subscribers learn how to pick up a brand-new 32GB 3rd-gen iPod Touch for just £6 – no strings, no contracts, no getting other people do do anything, just a fun bit of exploiting capitalism for half-an-hour’s effort.

Let’s get a game for nothing

Really nice golf game in the vein of Everybody’s Golf, free for today only. Hurry!

The person I most want to kill today

Is Peter Hirschberg, so that I can steal his life and more particularly his astonishingly beautiful home arcade, Luna City. But until I can afford the airfare and the shotgun I’ll have to settle for playing his rather fine Battlezone clone for the iPod, Vector Tanks, which has gone free for today (previously £1.79). It’s a pretty straight version of the 1980 Atari classic, except with the speed pumped up and a few powerups scattered around, and apart from stupidly only having one highscore to cover all three difficulty levels it’s a very slick piece of work that’s well worth no pence.

Anyone got a shotgun they want rid of, then?