One of my favorite thing about the iOS world is how many AAA industry veterans are returning to their roots of indie development, potentially bringing decades of experience with them. This is the case with Glenn Corpes, whose 20+ years in video games has had his hands in Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and a ton of other great games. On the App Store, he's released Ground Effect [$2.99] and is hard at work on Topia: Age of Creation.

Anyway, in a recent interview with PocketGamer.biz Glenn explains that even though the iPhone 4S looks identical to the iPhone 4 on the outside, the internals represent an even bigger leap than the one between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. Corpes calls A4 devices "irritating," as they had tons of potential utilizing shaders, but were ultimately too slow at processing the actual pixels. Things were only made worst by the Retina Display, as App Store customers quickly became disinterested in anything that didn't push all 614,400 pixels.

He explains that some of the cool shaders we've seen in Infinity Blade 2 could be done at a lower resolution, but you just can't release games like that. A5 devices, on the other hand, are powerful enough to use shaders that would have only been useful on PC's and current-generation consoles before. While fully utilizing the 3GS required code rewrites, developers can take advantage of the 4S by simply using better shaders. Even more spare horsepower can be utilized with anti-aliasing, post processing effects, and other things A4 devices weren't capable of.

I imagine just like the 3GS, it'll take some time for developers to actually start taking advantage of all the new capabilities iPhone 4S. I can't wait.

[via PocketGamer.biz]

A survey was distributed amongst 1,000 video game industry professionals that are attending the upcoming London Games Festival, respondents were asked to compose their own list of the top five people and hardware in the video game industry and, both Apple and Steve jobs ranked in first amongst both categories:

Products

• iPhone: 17%
• Wii: 7%
• Xbox Live: 3%
• PlayStation One: 3%
• Steam: 2%

People

• Steve Jobs 26%
• Gabe Newell 16%
• Shigeru Miyamoto 7%
• Tim Berners-Lee 4%
• Mark Zuckerberg 3%

Curiously enough, amongst all the people who responded, the iPhone was somewhere in 53% of the voters' top fives. Similarly, Steve Jobs made it into 46% of all the top fives. Like most surveys, you can read into them a variety of different ways. If the London Games Conference is like most US video game conferences, it could be nearly taken over by iOS developers, who'd naturally respond the iPhone and Steve Jobs. Alternatively, Steve Jobs is likely still fresh in everyone's memory. Either way, I feel like Shigeru Miyamoto should have gotten way more than 7%.

[Eurogamer via The Escapist]

Yesterday, RedLynx announced via a press release posted in their forums that it had been picked up by French publishing giant Ubisoft. Most gamers came to know RedLynx as the creators of the massively popular and critically acclaimed Trials HD on the Xbox Live Arcade, but the Finnish developer has also trekked into the iOS App Store with Monster Trucks Nitro 1 [99�] and 2 [$2.99], the unique line-drawing racers DrawRace [$2.99] and DrawRace 2 [99�/HD], and the new-level-a-day platformer Thousand Heroes [99�/HD].

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot had this to say about the acquisition of RedLynx:

The team at RedLynx has developed exceptionally strong digital brands that stand out for their high replay value, their long tail sales and their multiplatform positioning. We are delighted to welcome RedLynx to the Ubisoft family. Their expertise in asynchronous online games and physics-based game mechanics provides us with a great opportunity to bring their powerful brands, most notably Trials, to an even broader range of fast-growing digital platforms.

Did you catch that? He states how interested Ubisoft is in bringing RedLynx's powerful brands to fast-growing digital platforms. Hey, the App Store is a fast-growing digital platform! And he specifically mentions Trials, the company's most notorious and beloved brand. Could this mean there is intent to bring a Trials game to the App Store? Motorcycle physics games have been quite a popular genre on iOS already, like the awesome recently released Bike Baron [99�], among others. But it would be impossible to deny that despite how good some of those similar games are, in my heart I'd really love to be playing the actual Trials HD on my iOS device.

Time will tell if the App Store will finally get its Trials day in the sun or not, but this latest acquisition by Ubisoft makes it seem like there's a strong possibility. A Trials HD successor, Trials Evolution, is set to debut in the coming months, and if it's bound for the App Store in any way then you can be sure we'll let you know.

[Via Joystiq]