Amazon Launches Game Center Competitor for Kindle Fire, Testing 4-5 Inch Smartphone Displays

[trunten]

I don't know the excuse or reason for it, but I can tell you the advantage: I can say you all stink, Apple products are overpriced copies of others' ideas (well-made, albeit), and that Steve Jobs was SO overrated as a tech-guru or genius or as an innovator, and my ego won't be affected by those downvotes...

-100

 

[McCaffers]

I've got to agree with previous posts. Apple need to allow developers to store game scores in the icloud. Its laborious to implement your own set-up and preserve if the user deletes the app, especially with UDID going out the window.

 

[drewyboy]

If anything Amazon are copying Samsung.

Samsung has GameHub, Amazon has GameCircle.

Apple didn't exactly break out the creativity with the GameCenter name. Even WalMart uses it. Not to mention the NHL has used the name for a long, long time.

I know apple didn't do anything original, but the naming for NHL and Walmart are for different services. What Amazon is offering is the exact same service as apple's game center... that's the issue.

 

[tigres]

The future will be ecosystems owned top to bottom.

Android phones, Apple phones, and Microsoft phones will serve up media in their own stores. Few will take the time to seek out an Android app and those that do will be constrained by the rules the phone-maker puts on them. (Look at how you can't buy books within Amazon's iOS app.)

Amazon will find they have fewer and fewer customers over time unless they build their own phones.

In the future a company will either own a complete phone ecosystem or they will just own an app that does a specific thing. There is no in-between...no content provider that serves up all types of media but is not in control of everything.

Amazon wants to be an all-content provider, not just an app like, say, Netflix or the NY Times. They want more than that and the only way to get more is to make your own phone.

(This is also why you should bet money on a Facebook phone sometime soon.)

Well put, and this in turn does indeed clear my curiosity.

thx whitecar

 

[mjtomlin]

The tone here is humorous.

Where do you think GameCenter comes from? Have a look at Steam, Xbox Live, PSN.

Gaming networks have been around a long time, even before the Internet became popular. Be it local clubs/groups, mailing lists, bulletin boards, chat rooms, etc... It's natural to want to share and compete when playing games, that's one of the major "turn-ons" of it.

GameCenter doesn't come from Xbox Live or PSN, they ALL come from a social desire to compete with one another, to better ourselves at whatever it is.

The tone here is that it feels a little weird for Amazon to start getting into all of this. But more power to them and their users. Personally I don't understand why this was even posted on MacRumors?

 

[Blakjack]

I don't know the excuse or reason for it, but I can tell you the advantage: I can say you all stink, Apple products are overpriced copies of others' ideas (well-made, albeit), and that Steve Jobs was SO overrated as a tech-guru or genius or as an innovator, and my ego won't be affected by those downvotes...

Hahahaha. I can just see the 200 down votes in my head right now.

 

[kurosov]

isnt that OpenFeint though? dont think GameCenter is capable of this

i said iCloud. Neither game centre or open feint.

The ability to save game save data over iCloud for syncing is no different than pages saving a document via iCloud.

Few game devs have bothered to implement it and in the case of gameloft they used their own system based on the crappy gameloft live service instead.

There is no need for apple to add the feature to game centre when it would be functionally identical to using iCloud. Games that also have a mac version could even tie into the iCloud save files too.

I've got to agree with previous posts. Apple need to allow developers to store game scores in the icloud. Its laborious to implement your own set-up and preserve if the user deletes the app, especially with UDID going out the window.

As i said, they do. The feature has been available since iCloud was launched. If you really wan't the feature then start pestering the developers of the games you play to actually add the feature and maybe they'll take notice.

 

[faroZ06]

They're launching a service that competes with Apple's second-biggest recent failure? Game Center is the most annoying thing I have ever experienced on iOS!

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Laughable. Bring it on. I've played with a Kindle Fire before. It's terrible.

I've played with Game Center before. It didn't take long for me to decide to kill it with parental controls.

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Where's down voting? I want a legitimate excuse for getting rid of down voting.

People spam the down-vote too much I guess. It's also annoying when I see a perfectly sensible comment that gets downvoted to the max because people misread it or because fanboys just get mad about Apple criticism.

 

[nia820]

I think amazon just needs to stay at what there are best at being a retailer. Next thing we know eBay will release a OS.

People said the same thing when apple announced they were making a phone.

 

[risc]

Why does Amazon what to be in the phone business?
I just find this curious.

Remember when Apple just made computers and software.

 

[Yvan256]

We are still waiting, after over a year, for custom screen savers for the latest e-ink Kindle.

If that's the kind of support we can expect from Amazon, I'll pass on their other hardware, thank you very much.

 

[0098386]

Gaming networks have been around a long time, even before the Internet became popular. Be it local clubs/groups, mailing lists, bulletin boards, chat rooms, etc... It's natural to want to share and compete when playing games, that's one of the major "turn-ons" of it.

GameCenter doesn't come from Xbox Live or PSN, they ALL come from a social desire to compete with one another, to better ourselves at whatever it is.

The tone here is that it feels a little weird for Amazon to start getting into all of this. But more power to them and their users. Personally I don't understand why this was even posted on MacRumors?

No no no.

Xbox live introduced us to Achievements in games. Sure some games had their own built-in award system (earliest I can recall was in 2002's Smash Bros Melee but there are doubtlessly others) but it wasn't unified until them. Everyone else followed MS after Xbox Live's system. Gamecenter has Achievements, the same pop-up notification system, a unified scoreboard system... but so has Steam and PSN.

They all share the purpose of fulfilling the desire to compete, to get public goals etc. But they're all built like Microsoft's system.

It's an automated system. That's what made it special and why others follow - and rightly so. You can't say this was around for years when it there was no automation, possibility of falsifying, no unified network to directly compete.

It's like comparing messaging pigeons to SMS text messages... that are sent out automatically. To everyone.

 

[mjtomlin]

They're launching a service that competes with Apple's second-biggest recent failure? Game Center is the most annoying thing I have ever experienced on iOS!

That it is annoying to you, is your opinion.

That it is a failure, you couldn't be more wrong. At WWDC they announced more than 130 million active users. Hardly a failure.

 

[kdarling]

I know apple didn't do anything original, but the naming for NHL and Walmart are for different services.

Right, "Game Center" is a name that's been around for at least a decade, and probably longer if I go dig back through some CIS, AOL or Genie references.

Amazon's "GameCircle" is at least a bit different.

What Amazon is offering is the exact same service as apple's game center... that's the issue.

Exact same service? Not yet, anyway.

Amazon's service isn't nearly as full featured as others, because it seems to lack social features such as non-global leaderboards.

Everything else is pretty common stuff.

 

[Jessica Lares]

What?

Isn't the entire point of putting scores and achievements online so that it's "social?"

If it wasn't then why not just keep it all inside the game? There's no reason to build a system that puts it all online if no one else is going to see it.

Well, I can tell you that I personally HATE Game Center and have it disabled on my iPhone. When Mountain Lion comes out, I'll enable it on there, but no way will I ever put it back on my iPhone or even an iPad (when I do get one).

And I'll tell you why... It's because the way Game Center is social is like Facebook's "People You May Know" feature, but even worse. When you get a top score, EVERYONE wants to be your friend. When I got into the top 5 in one of the games I had, I had like 50 friend requests from random teenagers and tweens. It was annoying and I had to turn my phone off to stop them from draining my battery.

There are too many games out there that tell you to make friends that are playing the same game as you in order to gain benefit. When you're playing a racing or fighting game, the two player option is awesome, and it's really cool that you can do that. However, Game Center doesn't work like that, and it's more about sending your friends annoying messages to make them beat your score, and not the same kind of 2-player action you can do on an Xbox 360 or Wii.

The achievements are pretty cool though, and that's what I use it for.

 

[Pakaku]

I think amazon just needs to stay at what there are best at being a retailer. Next thing we know eBay will release a OS.

Oh just admit it: iOS is targeted mainly at consumers, not producers. It makes perfect sense for Amazon to have their own competing OS.

 

[Icaras]

Whats your point? Amazon didnt either...

Game Center...Game Circle? Are you getting the comparisons now?

 

[faroZ06]

That it is annoying to you, is your opinion.

That it is a failure, you couldn't be more wrong. At WWDC they announced more than 130 million active users. Hardly a failure.

Sure they have a lot of users because it nags you over and over to sign in. I signed in and never used it again.

 

[slimbek]

I'm sure I'll cop some hate -

...but its interfaces like this that make me thankful that Apple is at least making an effort to bring colour, shape and unique design to their Apps...

Sure, sometimes they take it a bit too far(!!) but just imagine if your Calendar, Notes, Mail, Safari, Music, Stores, GameCenter, NewsStand, Settings, Weather, Photos, Clock, Maps, Video apps all looked exactly the same.


/braces for fury

 

[unlinked]

guess well just have to quote the things we don't like and just write down vote until we get out button back?? wth did they get rid of that for?? we gotta make it so messy they bring it back... REBEL!!!

I think my inability to find the post you are quoting indicates the likely response to rebellion.

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Remember when Amazon just sold stuff online, Google just handled search, Apple and Microsoft handled hardware and OS, and nobody really got into anyone's business (except, of course, MS and Apple)?

Why does everyone and their grandmother feel the need to make a tablet and smartphone? I mean, just making the damn thing doesn't mean it will sell - take a look at those poor Android tablets and how sales of Kindle Fire dropped off a cliff after the initial buzz wore off. It seems like Google, Amazon and Samsung are throwing darts all over the place, hoping something sticks. I'm glad these corporations have so much money to throw around on experiments that will eventually fail.

Isn't it funny how there would be no Kindle Fire or Android if there was no iOS, iPhone and iPad to precede those products? Google and Amazon would never have had the creativity and balls to do what Apple did, yet now they think they can compete simply by making a product that looks and acts similar, but without anything compelling about the rest of their ecosystems?

 

[anutharoundu]

So apple wants to make a bigger version of the iphone screen and amazon wants to make a smaller version of the kindle. Interesting...

 

[macsmurf]

The tone here is that it feels a little weird for Amazon to start getting into all of this. But more power to them and their users. Personally I don't understand why this was even posted on MacRumors?

There is essentially one thread on macrumors. It's the one where a legion of uninformed Apple fans make hit-and-run post claiming that <insert company here> suck and are just copying Apple. Then they disappear and more reasonable posters take over (except for a few fanatics). Then the thread slowly dies down.

Anything anybody do that can be construed as having an iOS counterpart gets posted to MacRumors as a result. The beast needs to be fed.

 

[576316]

I went into a phone shop yesterday to have a look at a working Galaxy S3 model. I was impressed with the size of the screen and its satisfying quality, but it's a shame Samsung persistently make their phones out of cheap plastic. You could see the joins and it was practically falling apart. I'm really hoping the next iPhone has AT LEAST a 4 inch screen. Apple are falling behind in the screen department.



Haha, this comment is in no way relevant to the current thread other than its minor reference to screen sizes.

 

[rmwebs]

Game Center...Game Circle? Are you getting the comparisons now?

How pathetic can people get? What should they have called it then? Amazon Circle?

Game = Games - you know the thing its intended for
Circle = Group - as in a group of people

GameCircle = an app to share your game scores with your group of friends.

Grow the heck up, we could just as easily say that GameCenter was a rip off of GameSpy, or is a rip off of the GameStation shops...it's a really pointless argument to make.

If they had called it something like 'GamingCenter' or 'GameCentral' then yes, I could see your point, but its nothing like it.

 

[juannacho]

It's like comparing messaging pigeons to SMS text messages... that are sent out automatically. To everyone.

That would require a phenomenal amount of pigeons. The cost in seeds & grain alone would be crippling.

PMS.

Haha.