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Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar: Set for Spring Release on iOS
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The team behind Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar has announced that the game will be released for iOS devices "this Spring". To celebrate the somewhat nebulous announcement, the team also released a new trailer. Check it out!
The team has clarified the iOS release on the official Facebook page:
There have been a lot of questions regarding platform support and we would like to clarify our intentions. We had been planning a simultaneous launch on both PC/mobile and went into Alpha on both systems. Mobile scored higher in testing and so we doubled our efforts on iOS to expedite release. After the iOS launch, we will focus our efforts on bringing the game to other platforms. We will confirm exact dates for Android and other platform releases later this year.
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It is about right for Ultima IV. The problem of course is besides a handful of us old farts how many even know what Ultima IV even is?
As far as the cross-platforming, I'm not sure that really counts here. It's an Android/IOS game, having that on your PC is... well I don't know what that is. It would be like taking your 2k gaming rig and playing angry birds.
It also breaks my heart a bit to see EA having Mythic work on an Android/IOS game.
I just have no idea how to take all of this lol. I feel like I should be offended by this game. Then part of me wants to laugh, while another part wants to cry. I may still look into it but... I don't think thats very likely.
ive converted some android minecraft clones to my laptop and i can tell you it doesnt look good at all . They port it to pc they will have to do a lot more work on it just to resize textures alone and make a anti touch interface. My main issue with this is graphics even for android and ipad , these look terrible =/ and you make a awesome point of not many knowing ultima IV. Mythic is a small team now so I cannot really give them grief but for one of my old favorite studios man its just so pathetic to see them releasing this instead of mmo's =/
The more I think about it, the more curious I am about how this will play out, whether it will find an audience.
Many of us hanging around these boards think UO when we hear Ultima, but UO suffers from being remembered differently by everyone who has played or still plays it and many of us have rather rigid and mutually contradictory views. One of the things EA needs to do is to reclaim the heart and soul of the brand from its slightly overzealous fans - and by making a game that deliberately is *not* a successor to UO, this game might do that.
Interesting to see that they've opted for launching on the mobile OS with the smallest market share. According to the latest Gartner figures, iOS had 20% of the mobile space last year, with Android claiming 60%. That includes smartphones of course.
Perhaps they're hoping Apple users have higher disposable income ? Or perhaps the logic is: If you're willing to pay a premium for your hardware, perhaps you'd also be willing to pay a premium for your software ?
Why not? Remember that UO came out in 1997 and ran fine on a 166Mhz machine with 32Megs of RAM and a 1or 2 Meg video card. It was also designed to work over a 28.8 connection. It took up about 500-600Megs for a full install.
My Acer Iconia A500, which is far from top of the line is a Dual Core 1Ghz CPU with 1Gig of RAM and a 300Mhz GPU.
I don't know squat about the iPad/iPad2 specs, but it's got to be up there with my Acer, if not well past it.
Because of the size and how relatively new tablets are, we have very low expectations of what they can do. If we didn't, we wouldn't buy half the crap games that we do.
It seems like these tablets could handle a lot more than what devs have thrown at them so far.
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I had a strong feeling this wasn't going to be very good when I saw the announcement page last year and characters looked all cartoony but man I did not expect it to be this bad, and mobile...
With all the things they could have done with the Ultima series they chose this? Its a damn shame imo.
You people here slamming the graphics:
Are you kidding? Have you learned nothing yet? That graphics doesn't matter, but gameplay does? Hasn't the host of pretty clones shown that to you?
You can flame the platform rightfully IMO, not because of graphics, but instead of the simplification of gameplay, that it imposes on games.
Btw, I thought the game looked fine graphically.
If a game is good, you will not notice the graphics anymore 30-60 seconds in.
True that. Unfortunately gameplay seems to take the back seat in addition to having bad graphics when talking mobile gaming. I more often see good graphics on mobile games than good gameplay in fact. I still need to convinced that this whole mobile gaming thing is to be taken serious from a gamers perspective. I know they make a lot of money right now, but from a gaming perspective nearly all games I play on mobile platforms are "meh!".
I'm VERY skeptical about the game and the commercial model behind it, given EA's involvement. Look no further than the recent announcement (and confirmed limitations by players in NZ already) of IAP in Real Racing 3. EA is all about building up big name mobile franchise games that allow them to bleed consumers dry over time instead of offering the possibility of a one-time (and therefore controlled) purchase.
I would rather deal with a fixed subscription than have IAP pay-walls appear. Nothing EA releases is truly "free" - nor do I expect a high quality gaming experience to be free. I do, however, expect the ability to understand my "cost to play" clearly and simply without having to figure it out the hard way through artificial pay walls.