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Apple Hires Nintendo Specialist From IGN to Manage App Store Gaming Content

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Good move Apple! :D
 
As someone who has been a member of IGN.com for 10 years I find this to be pretty funny. Here we have a guy (Matt) who in the past year or two has had this vendetta against casual gaming on the Wii, absolute hatred for it, and now his job will focus around the management of tons and tons and tons of casual games.

Doubt he cares though, awesome job to have and he is a big apple fan.
 
considering the state of IGN the past few years i am not sure this is a noteworthy accomplishment. I admit i have only read the PS3/Xbox 360 spaces, but for the most part those have become identical and they (IGN) have become lazy and basically ad's for hire. they are a far cry from their early days when each platform had their own reviews and they featured actual reviews. With that being said, hopefully from a gaming stand point they can bring some credibility however with him being an apple employee you have to take his "reviews" with a grain of salt.
 
Jaro65 said:
Isn't it well on its way there already?
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Apple's already a player in the game market. I don't know about you, but I play a ton of iPhone games - and spend more time doing so than playing any "console" games.

Whether or not Nintendo and Sony want to admit it, Apple is a big player in the portable gaming space. Microsoft has to be aware also - with XBL launching to some degree on WP7 devices later this year.
 
I remember listening to his podcasts on IGN. He is one of the biggest Apple fanboys. :D Actually, I remember the first podcast after the iPhone came out and he was playing with it the entire time. :D
 
shervieux said:
None one said it specifically, but if you take a look a the sentence in the article; one could read between the lines that there may come a time when the focus will only be on gaming.
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Highly unlikely. There's another platform that has been seriously (and successfully) pushed for both gaming and productivity simultaneously: the Windows PC.

There's no reason to believe Apple is going for gaming at the expense of everything else. Particularly when they've been so indifferent to gaming for years. I think Apple simply wants to be the Windows PC of pocket computing. It's the new tech frontier, and Apple is in the driver's seat (for now).
 
this is good news, can't wait for UK iPad release and hopefully this will boost the games even more!
 
how can anyone rate this as negative?

He's well respected in the gaming community. What could possibly be so horrible.

I guess one could be sad he'll be leaving IGN, but this is Macrumors.com, no?
 
This is great news!

I have been reading Matt for a number of years (since the Nintendo 64 days)... I love his reviews and articles. I think Apple made a great move hiring him. I'm really excited about this!

Congratulations and good luck on your new role at Apple, Matt.
 
"the games content you see will be handpicked and organized by me and my team"

I hope that means recommendations will be given priority in ranking, and that it is based on merit rather than marketing spend.

I hope it doesn't mean he gets to choose if a game gets approved based on if his team likes it or not.

At the very least, I'm expecting more prominence to the recommendations section on the App Store based on the fact that they expect them to be more accurate.
 
LagunaSol said:
There's no reason to believe Apple is going for gaming at the expense of everything else. Particularly when they've been so indifferent to gaming for years. I think Apple simply wants to be the Windows PC of pocket computing. It's the new tech frontier, and Apple is in the driver's seat (for now).
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In addition to what you said, Apple seems to be more nimble at reading what users are doing with their products and adjusting their marketing and products to enhance sales and user experience than they have in the past.

While there is still a lot of "my way, or the highway" attitude at Apple, their "highway" is becoming a better match to what the users want.
 
xIGmanIx said:
considering the state of IGN the past few years i am not sure this is a noteworthy accomplishment. I admit i have only read the PS3/Xbox 360 spaces, but for the most part those have become identical and they (IGN) have become lazy and basically ad's for hire. they are a far cry from their early days when each platform had their own reviews and they featured actual reviews. With that being said, hopefully from a gaming stand point they can bring some credibility however with him being an apple employee you have to take his "reviews" with a grain of salt.
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That's why I only read the Nintendo section. Matt's always retained that style.

Matt's departure will probably kill off IGN Wii, at least in my eyes.
 
shervieux said:
This way if I am looking for something specifically designed for the ipad, I do not have to wade through all the iphone apps. I understand that iphone apps will run on the ipad - however when looking for something ipad specific, it is too easy to be mislead. many people have commented on this.
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You can toggle between iPhone and iPad at the top of the main AppStore page in iTunes.
 
NorrisKillsKids said:
As someone who has been a member of IGN.com for 10 years I find this to be pretty funny. Here we have a guy (Matt) who in the past year or two has had this vendetta against casual gaming on the Wii, absolute hatred for it, and now his job will focus around the management of tons and tons and tons of casual games.

Doubt he cares though, awesome job to have and he is a big apple fan.
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Yeah I thought the same thing.
 
etoiles said:
You can toggle between iPhone and iPad at the top of the main AppStore page in iTunes.
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Nevermind, I see that they fixed this.. thanks... Just have to make sure I go to the main page first. I am just so used to mousing over App Store and clicking the down triangle to go to the category. Guess I will have to actually click on app store to go to the main page, and then use the down triangle to go to the category I want. Usually don't do that step as when I click Itunes Store, most of the time it brings me to the homepage to browse music, then I just move my mouse to the app store and click the down arrow.

*Edit - just noticed a new category. "highly addictive games" :-O Wish I would not have seen that. I am not much into gaming, but the few I do have, I find playing very often when killing time (but do not have enough time to actually do something productive - ie only a minute or two). Funny Sneezies is not on there. my wife and I play that one a lot.
 
I've been reading Matt's work at IGN for years. I'm glad something great like this has happened for him (as if his fortunes at IGN haven't already been great enough), but in particular I'm happy he's moving away from Nintendo.

Nintendo has been screwing hard-core gamers for years since the Wii was released, and of course the Gamecube certainly wasn't a trailblazing success. Looking back, hard to believe, but the N64, derided for being a wimpy follow-up to the SNES, can be looked upon as Nintendo's last true console success for "real" gamers.

Quite frankly, Nintendo no longer deserves the great publicity a respected gaming journalist like Matt can provide.

It doesn't matter that Galaxy 2 (and maybe Zelda for the holidays) is being released soon.

That's like pouring a drop of boiling water into a bathtub of ice water and saying: Come on in. The water's fine.

Nintendo is a complete and utter joke.

I wish Matt the best of luck, however. Good luck Matt!
 
NorrisKillsKids said:
As someone who has been a member of IGN.com for 10 years I find this to be pretty funny. Here we have a guy (Matt) who in the past year or two has had this vendetta against casual gaming on the Wii, absolute hatred for it, and now his job will focus around the management of tons and tons and tons of casual games.

Doubt he cares though, awesome job to have and he is a big apple fan.
Click to expand...

I have been a IGN.com reader for about 10 years too (reading articles, listening to Nintendo Voicechat etc.) and I never felt that Matt hated Nintendo or the Wii. More like he was frustrated by the lower amount of third party quality titles on the platform. I mean there was over a year period where hardly any good third party games came out for Wii, while the competition had good games almost every month.

If anything, Matt is a Nintendo evangelist. He always pointed out how good Wii controls are for things like first person shooters while other sites mocked them and highlighted the few decent third party titles out there such as Zack & Wiki, Medal of Honor Heroes 2, The Conduit, MadWorld, Muramasa etc. His main complaints about the Wii are not that it has last gen graphics or is underpowered but that it is behind in online community features. This seems a pretty fair criticism IMO.

He will be a great asset for Apple in that he can highlight truly great software like Peggle, Space Invaders Infinity, iBlast Moki etc. in their "recommended" sections so that the iplatform gets a better reputation than just another shovelware platform.
 
NikeTalk said:
I'm sorry I just don't see iPads/iPhones/iPods as being a serious platform for games. There just isn't enough BANG there, such as graphics, controls, power, etc. But maybe it's just the type of games i'm into.
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Sold my PSP over the weekend. It was a great little device but since we got the Touch and then the iPhone it just collects dust. I just don't have time to play that kind of mobile game anymore. Quick load and put down games on the Touch are perfect for mobile devices. I sacrifice something in controls and a little in graphics, but the price and features make up for it. As a PSP owner I bought about 10 games over 4 years. As an Apple mobile gamer I have bought about 20 in 1.5 years.

I would never got back to having a gaming device and a phone and never a dedicated game machine and MP3 player.
 
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