Mike Capps, president of Epic Games, has grave doubts about the games industry as we know it--specifically, he's worried that the ubiquity and popularity of cheap iOS apps are making it impossible to sell big-budget games (like the next Unreal): "If there’s anything that’s killing us it’s dollar apps,” he said. “How do you sell someone a $60 game that’s really worth it? They’re used to 99¢. As I said, it's an uncertain time in the industry. But it's an exciting time for whoever picks the right path and wins." My take on it? Boo f**** hoo.

One of Nolan Bushnell's favorite diatribes is about the people he calls "jackals," those scrupulous copycats that, in his view, ripped off his ideas time and time again. Despite the fact that some accuse him of doing the same thing to Ralph Baer (especially Mr. Baer), it's hard not to sympathize with hard-working creators who see their profits annihilated by shameless clones and rip-offs. There's a nice example of it at Ars Technica, which documents a flagrant "The Blocks Cometh" knock-off (including art and name!) on the iPhone. According to the article, victims have few options other than to hire lawyers, which as well all know is well beyond the means of most indies.

I'm not sure what the remedy is here, though. The other extreme would be just as bad, with existing owners claiming that even the remotest derivative was a clone. What exactly is the line between a derivative and a clone, though?

It's so bad!We're back again with a month's worth of audio content for retrogaming fans of all makes and models. Clocking in at two and a half hours, this episode features exclusive content from Bill Loguidice, Rob Daviau, Chris Kennedy, Matt Barton, Nathan Tolbert, Andre Faucher, Rebecca Tolbert, Max Shelton, and special guest Chip Hageman.

Download the episode here (128 K format).

Segments and approximate times below:

Game Developers using Visual Studio are able to create games that can be made cross compatible between Windows (Microsoft) Operating Systems, including Windows Phone 7 and the Xbox 360. 90% of the generated code is the same between the various target platforms, leaving about 10% for platform specific stuff. Perhaps one could look at it as some sort of SDL-layer?

In this article, Microsoft demos a cross-platform game that can be run on a computer with Windows 7, a mobile phone 7, and the Xbox 360 console. A video shows how a Microsoft employee starts the game on one device, continues it and finishes it on others. The progress made within the game is automatically transferred from one platform to the other - probably by use of the Windows Live platform.

Windows Phone 7 development is mostly done with Silverlight and XNA.

Cross platform gaming between PC and Xbox 360 was possible before, just take a look at the game Shadowrun.