We’ve mentioned plenty before about Glu’s Mobile releases, and have even laid out what was coming in Q108. Well, time passes, and AppScout has been kind enough to pick out three of Glu’s newest crop of games that should amuse us during our idle down-time:

DiRT – 3D racing game, which implicitly asks the ephemeral question “how do you replicate steering on a Mobile device keypad” – we are assured that in fact the steering is very good.

Transformers: G1 Awakening – a fighting game where you battle the decepticons as one of 23 autobots. Worth buying just for the “transforming noise” (assuming they have inlcuded it in the game!)

Deer Hunter 3 – Not really politically correct, but, apparently a faithful re-imagining of the PC game – there’s a PC game?!

There are also some other games during the year:

• Family Feud (September)
• The Price is Right (November)
• Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rescue (December)
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (October)

If you want more of the detail, then you can visit Glu Mobile’s site here.

[Via: AppScout]

Following on neatly from my last story about Hands-On Mobile having worked on GH3M, I wanted to pick up on a point that was raised by The Inquirer – namely that GH3M is not available in the UK or Europe currently – the classic “coming soon” is I am sure applicable, but given it’s success (in the US at least), it’s a shame we don’t yet have it. Therefore, to whet your appetite for this guitar-shredding thrash-a-long of a game, here is some info about it:

• Rock out anytime, anywhere with this rhythm-based, three button game that stays true to the original.
• Open with 15 jamming tracks, all taken from the Guitar Hero console series
• Grow your set list with 3 new songs monthly
• Play through 3 venues each with 4 set songs and an encore
• Shred as your favorite characters on four authentic Gibson guitars, in three killer venues
• Unlock guitars, earn achievements and break records
• Hit the right notes to drive the crowd wild with star power!

Pretty cool right? So check out set list, some classic monsters of rock in there:

(1) Santana – Black Magic Woman
(2) Wolfmother – Woman
(3) AFI – Miss Murder
(4) Red Hot Chili Peppers – Suck My Kiss
(5) Alice Cooper – School’s Out
(6) Pat Benatar – Hit Me with Your Best Shot
(7) Van Halen – You Really Got Me
(8) KISS – Strutter
(9) Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock
(10) Stone Temple Pilots – Trippin on A Hole
(11) Matchbook Romance – Monsters
(12) Motley Crue – Shout at the Devil
(13) Black Sabbath – Paranoid
(14) The Allman Brothers Band – Jessica
(15) Scorpions – Rock You Like A Hurricane

If you want to see some more screens, and a trailer, you can go to the Guitar Hero Mobile website here.

 According to The Inquirer, it’s quite possible that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Corps (that’s the Beatles’ record company, not the Steve Jobs Computer company) will be creating a video game based on the Beatles music catalogue. The Inquirer also believes that because of this, we could get Mobile versions too!

The FT is quoted as saying that the two most likely candidates are MTV Games and Activision. The theory goes that as Hands-On Mobile worked with Activision on the hugely-popular “Guitar Hero 3 Mobile edition”, then they could be in the frame here too. Of course this is largely conjecture, but with a good degree of logic behind it I think.

[Via: The Inquirer]

Another Expansys exclusive it would seem, but the Slingbox Classic is now being sold for £59.95 on their UK site – a bit of a bargain for a piece of kit that has some very nice video streaming features.

I was responsible for testing this piece of kit for a certain UK operator, when they wanted to see how it could be used to output the video stream for an STB (Set-top box) to a mobile device (in this case it was a Windows Mobile device) – suffice to say after a bit of a fiddle setting it up, I got some nice quality streaming from my STB, out over my broadband connection, across the net, in to my mobile operator’s 3G network, and to the device.

Probably the beauty of the system is not just being able to watch TV remotely, but also to be able to control the STB remotely – that’s right, because there was a Slingbox client running on the Mobile device, it meant return signals could be sent back to Slingbox, which had it’s own IR sender, to control the box!

In addition, because Slingbox have also created PC clients, it means that the Slingbox could effectively encode the output of the STB, and broadcast it to any client registered to that particular Sling unit.

Slingbox were first to mass-market with their Sling concept, which is another way of saying place-shifting your viewing – a good part of the trend towards Convergence no less…

Anyhoo, there is the “classic” box, which is now obviously slightly older – but also there are newer models which are slightly smaller, and have other features. So if you want to check out the classic go here, else go to Sling Media site here and check out the new models.

My favourite independent Mobile kit retailer, Expansys, mailed me the other day to let me know about this cheeky new bit of kit from NDrive. In a neat development, the G800 is a Sat Nav unit that is able to utilise Sat imaging, rather than the crude vector graphics we are used to normally.

Apparently 29 major cities are mapped currently, and I’m sure this will improve over time – and from the looks of things, you can decide your perspective on the viewing angle, much as you can zoom in/out with most Sat Nav units.

There are some neat other features too, highlights below:

• Choose between 4 diagonal perspectives, plus a vertical perspective to navigate in photo mapping
• Voice prompts/Dynamic Routing/Auto re-routing
• Routing Options – Shortest/Fastest/Car Mode/Pedestrian Mode/Tolls/Speed
• Multimedia features – plays music, videos, watch photos and read e-books
• FM transmitter – put your favorite songs in the G800 memory and listen to them on your car audio
• Bluetooth receiver – turn your NDrive G800 into a loudspeaker of your phone calls
• Games
• Calculator

If this whets your appetite, then I’d invite you to mosey on over to the Expansys site and take a look.

I mentioned the other day that Motorola sent out an email communication regarding the position of MOTODEV (their Developer programme) in relation to the Symbian Foundation announcement – well they have followed that up with a message dedicated to the availbility of MOTODEV Studio for UIQ Beta. As Moto neatly explains:

MOTODEV Studio for UIQ supports both the UIQ 3.1 and the UIQ 3.3 beta SDKs, and offers emulated debugging, a package creation wizard, sample applications that you can leverage and much more.

Java developers can take advantage of key new features and APIs with MOTODEV Studio for Java ME v1.4. It incorporates all previous updates and adds support for the full Mobile Service Architecture and the SIP API for J2ME (JSR 180), as well as support for additional handsets.

You must have MOTODEV Studio for Java ME already installed before downloading version 1.4 with the built-in update system.

If you are a budding developer for UIQ, or perhaps even an old hand, you can find out more here at the MOTODEV Studio homepage.

Much as Motorola were the other day, now Samsung are busy mailshotting me, to let me know about the Tocco (F480). I got a lovely email inviting me to check out the website, which I duly did. On arrival, I landed on a very busy homescreen, but on clicking through to the Tocco, found a message (see above) asking me to “imagine customizing my touchscreen“… I’d invite readers to close their eyes and have a go, it really is quite a magical experience!

Anyhoo, if you want to actually buy the phone from the Samsung mobile shop, it’s £315 – but right now it’s out of stock. Alternatively, you can peruse your friendly network operator, or independent shop.

Check out the Tocco at the Samsung site here.

Crumbs, it’s a busy day on email today – and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) seems to be the cause of it. This time it’s MOTODEV (the developer forum for Moto) firing out a mail to clarify their position on the Symbian Foundation Announcement. Luckily it seems to be business as usual, you can read the full text of the mail below:

If you want to go check out the MOTODEV site, you can go here.

We’ve mentioned the Motorokr E8 several times before on IntoMobile, but the bods at Moto were nice enough to send me an email yesterday telling me where I could buy it in the UK – and basically that boils down to Orange shops, O2 (NYSE: TEF) stores, and also the Carephone Warehouse stores.

Just to remind ourselves, key specs are:

• Switch from phone to music to camera mode with a single touch of a button
• Quick and easy navigation with the Fastscroll™ wheel
• Transfer an album in under one minute with USB 2.0 with 2GB onboard & up to 4GB external memory
• With Windows Media Player® 11, there is no need to download additional software

If you are hot for this device, then you can find out more info here.

 Well they are, according to Gartner at least!

I am just going to pull some very brief highlights here:

• Mobile game revenues will reach $6.3 billion in 2011
• North America will pull ahead of Western Europe over the next few years and be a larger market as Americans adopt more data services in general
• Asia is big opportunity: The Asia/Pacific region, including Japan, is the largest market for mobile gaming. Some emerging markets see mobile games as an imperfect substitute for PC or console games. India is expected to lead among Asian countries going forward.
• Low-end and high-end: Mobile operators and other game providers can increase usage if they offer offer games based on the type of user. For instance, operators should target smartphone users with sophisticated games, and low-income people with discounted or ad-subsidized games, or an offering such as ‘pay per game.’

All quite interesting points, save for perhaps the last one – I thought this was called basic user segmentation – sell people what they want, so that they’ll buy it…?!

[Via: Washington Post.com]