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Netflix, Farmville, and Guitar Hero Coming to iPhone

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Apr 12, 2001
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At today's WWDC keynote event, multiple new major apps for the iPhone were announced. First, Steve Jobs announced that the popular Netflix application, currently available for iPad users only, will be released for the iPhone this summer. In addition, Zynga's popular Farmville online game and Activision's Guitar Hero will also be coming to the iPhone.

Reed Hastings, Netflix's CEO, came on stage to demonstrate how the app works. It contains the same functionality as the iPad version, allowing users to search for movies, add items to the Instant Queue, and more. The app will also allow streaming over 3G cellular data networks.

Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, also took the stage at the keynote to talk about Farmville, noting that the application has over 70 million active users. The iPhone app will offer push notifications to let users know about withering crops and other events, and will also offer in-app purchases for the game's marketplace. Farmville for iPhone will be released by the end of June.

Activision's Senior VP, Karthik Bala, announced the immediate availability of the Guitar Hero app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app will include classic rock songs by Queen and the Rolling Stones as well as newer artists. The app costs $2.99.

Article Link: Netflix, Farmville, and Guitar Hero Coming to iPhone
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/07/netflix-farmville-and-guitar-hero-coming-to-iphone/
Push notifications for withering crops, ha. :eek:

What I do actually hope is that they notify when one of your Facebook friends has an animal available for adoption.
 
Funny one talked about Flash. But yeah. I think maybe 60% of the use of Flash today is Farmville. That's a pretty scary announcement. Considering the large brand of casuals for which Farmville was their reason for using Flash. I do like that this one connects with the exact same server(s) the Facebook app does. Not all of their iPhone clients do, so this was a nice bit of information.
 
More like, who doesn't. That's probably the easier question. You and I haven't really participated using the app yet. But pretty much everybody else does. I'm thinking of seriously trying it out, because like everybody and my cousin's aunt's sister's niece's babysitter's favorite store clerk plays that freakin' addiction with the Farmville name. It's seriously easier to count the small number of Facebook users that don't play it.
 
what a waste...

I'm sorry.

This app stuff means absolutely nothing if ATT's going to limit bandwidth. Sure, I know, there's wifi, but it's not the same thing.

Jobs should've put his foot down w/ATT and demanded better terms. With all these new apps (especially netflix), iPad users will very quickly blow past the 2 gb limit, and ATT'll kill them on fees...
 
Hey. There are people that hate World of Warcraft too. But when it has such a massive userbase, you just have to accept that it's an important announcement. There are plenty of people that don't care about Starcraft, as well. I mean, if they said WoW is going on iPhone/iPad, as much as I'd have mixed feelings about that, I have to accept that it's huge enough to mention.

Netflix is the main thing I feel people will argue against AT&T's limitations. But on the other hand, I can see how people will get around it. Likely the place they'll use the Netflix, the most, is at some wi-fi location. Thank goodness most hotels offer free wi-fi when you stay there. The real question is whether people will just pre-load non-Netflix movies and stuff for vehicle trips, just in the big way to avoid using Netflix over cellular. (I bet people will ask Netflix to add some sort of option switch to disable cellular use).

Now if Netflix sees any business effects from the limitations, based on behavior patterns, I wonder if they'll knock on AT&Ts door. We've already heard about possible ways this can affect 3rd-party apps. I think the next several months should be interesting.
 
Farmville on iPhone / iPad! Seriously, I know 6 people who refused to buy and iPad / iPhone solely because they couldn't use FarmVille thanks to lack of Flash.

Thats 6 more sales they have there now! :apple:FTW!

May not sound like a biggy to people who don't play it (me) but for people who use FarmVille, all 70 million of them, this is huge for them!!
 
This seems big

Not sure about anyone else, but this one seems almost bigger than any of the other announcements. On the Zynga website (in the forums) they have said they have no plans to develop anything for the iOS (as it's now called).

If one of the biggest Flash sites moves to a non-Flash version, doesn't this indicate that we don't really need Flash and the move to non-Flash content has made a giant leap forward?

No matter which side of the Flash fence you sit on, I think this indicates big movement. What do you think?
 
My thoughts is that it will definitely send ripples. Far from unseating Flash, per se, but I can say it's an earthquake tremor. However, there are some things that need to happen before Flash can really worry about stuff.

1. Much faster HTML5 canvas processing. When you need to do specific graphics like games and such, you need better performance to handle that stuff. As of right now, the only part of it, that has fairly impressive speed, is web-kit. Particularly the transformations run pretty nice on lesser hardware specs. So if you design an interface or game on those, great. But that leaves out lots of games. For all the stuff that isn't web-kit transforms and stuff, Flash does faster.

2. More sound options for HTML5. Right now, if you want a nice speedy app with sound triggers, on iOS, you have to crack open Xcode, learn some objective C, and make an app. Flash, as a non-hardware dependant platform, has this exclusively. Can't even make a game with sound with HTML5/CSS3 now.

Those two things, from a developer's point of view, are needed before we can start talking about a technology waning.
 
Netflix streaming on the iPhone definitely makes it worth keeping my Unlimited Data plan on my 3GS. Plus they said that it'll be a full Netflix application with queue management build in which will be sweet... All the free third party Netflix queue management apps are worse than using the Netflix site in mobile Safari.
 
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