Well not for long. Yesterday at the Game Developers%26rsquo; Conference in San Francisco, Unity Technologies (the boffins behind the fabled multi-platform Unity engine) and Bigpoint (a German game publisher you%26rsquo;ve probably never heard of until now) unveiled a master plan to put that right.
Thanks to a new version of Unity%26rsquo;s browser-based tech, your iPhone will soon be a portable gaming predator, a mercenary multiplayer platform capable of hooking up with games wherever (and on whatever) you may find them. There%26rsquo;s probably a brain-breaking amount of techy terms and overly-long numbers involved, but what it all boils down to is the iPhone being able to connect to multiplayer PC games for cross-platform play on the fly. And if you eventually get sick of owning your eyesight and neck along with the world%26rsquo;s various noobs, it%26rsquo;ll be possible to start a game on your iPhone and then transfer and continue it on another platform.
Above:Justin's Doodle Jump obsessionwill explode if he ever takes it to the PC
Connectivity with the PC has been demoed so far, with an iPad version of the system in the works too. And further down the line, iPhone connectivity for the PS3 and Wii are planned.
The upshot of all this? iPhone gaming is about to become an even bigger deal. With indie iPhone devs able to set up multiplayer games over multiple formats, their audiences and visibilityare potentially going to skyrocket. And home console snobs had better beware. There could be a whole army of touch-screen wizards invading their games and putting them to shame pretty soon indeed.
