Apple"s App Store has been a great cultivator for indie games, providing many lone developers stardom in the developing world, but one complaint that people have is that everything is rather isolated. The most interaction you can get between games (generally) is suggesting them to others, or perhaps the odd game of multiplayer. There"s no way to track what others are playing and suggest games, sort of like, I don"t know, Xbox Live does. Well, beginning the same day as iPhone OS 3.0 is released, the game company ngmoco will be releasing their Plus+ service, to address all these mentioned issues.
You will be able to create your own Plus+ profile, and that will keep tabs on things such as profile, records, friends game histories, and challenges across supporting games. Down the road, it"ll have Facebook and Twitter integration, too. Of course, the first games that will support it are ngmoco ones such as Star Defense and the soon-to-be-released Rolando 2, but as you can imagine, the service is open to others too.
This is no half-baked effort by the company to get this happening; they have hired the former president and COO of Sega America, Simon Jeffery, to help along with it. He said, "I am delighted to join ngmoco. It"s a very exciting time to be shaping a new games landscape with a super-talented team. With Plus+ Publishing, we are going to be able to create a system for great developers to plug directly into an incredible, proven publishing framework and network technology to help accelerate their games," according to PocketGamer. Joe Keene, ngmoco founder and COO, stated, "We have a long-term vision for Plus+ Network to grow to become the definitive service for iPhone and iPod touch gamers to discover games and friends, play against each other and ultimately gain success, bragging rights and rewards in the community."
Keep an eye out tomorrow as this article is updated with a review of the service, tested in Star Defense, providing all goes well.