ingress

Have you looked? That appears to be just an augmented reality game. There are plenty of those: http://techsplurge.com/2130/10-awesome-augmented-reality-games-iphone/

You have to remember there is no innovation in the Android camp. Like Linux itself, everything they do is just a cheap copy of the real thing,

So, go ahead and do one better.

What's stopping you?

I'm not a gamer and have utterly no interest in them at all. It seems very unusual for a start to to market a great game like that only on Android. They are probably just a start up funded exclusively by Google. There may be similar iOS games. You are the one that need to go look for such things because I really don't care.

Its not a massive loss. It's just a data-mining excersize by Google. I am sure it is fun and all, but at the end of the day they are just doing it to gain massive ammounts of data at a very low cost. Turn by turn pedestrian maps, photos of all the tourist spots.

Nobody ever said Google wasn't clever.

this thread is awful. ingress is a fantastic effort by google to create a worldwide augmented reality game which currently hosts millions of registered smartphone users even in closed beta. what do you gain by putting down innovative google success stories? this is the next big thing in gaming and we (iOS users) are unfortunately going to miss it.

The OP asked for comments and got them.

Awful?

You don't know the start of it.

Besides, discussions such as these are akin to speculatiing which is a no-no per the TOU.

locknchase wrote:

this thread is awful. ingress is a fantastic effort by google to create a worldwide augmented reality game which currently hosts millions of registered smartphone users even in closed beta. what do you gain by putting down innovative google success stories? this is the next big thing in gaming and we (iOS users) are unfortunately going to miss it.

And why is that? Because Ingress is only available for Android. What makes it a "success story"? Why would a free, augmented reality game funded and marketed by an international, billion-dollar corporation not be successful?

The problem here is that Apple's privacy controls are too strict for Google. The players of the game are the product that Google is selling to advertisers. Because Apple restricts what personal information that Google or any 3rd party developer can access, iOS players wouldn't be profitable for Google.

Apple and Google have fundamentally different business models. Apple sells products to customers and protects those customers. Google sells personal information to business customers and protects those customers. You cannot be anything other than an iOS customer. You cannot be anything other than a Google product.

i'm sorry, did you also create a game that millions of people want to play? did you also create a compelling storyline that is getting people to interact with their surroundings in a new and intricate way which had never been done before at this scale? is google stealing your thunder?

am i being pretentious?

how does it feel?

locknchase wrote:

i'm sorry, did you also create a game that millions of people want to play? did you also create a compelling storyline that is getting people to interact with their surroundings in a new and intricate way which had never been done before at this scale? is google stealing your thunder?

am i being pretentious?

No. You are simply regurgitating ad copy on behalf of Google.

how does it feel?

How does what feel? Are you trying to make me feel bad because I haven't made some kind of augmented reality game? I'm familiar with the game market enough to know I want no part of it. There are few industry segments that are riskier, more stressful, and less fun. I would rather write software that I would enjoy developing and using.

When I'm not writing software, I do pretty much the same as you - go on internet forums to praise my affiliated brand and diss the competition. The difference is that I can use Apple's brand network to market and sell my own software and earn money. There is no way for you to earn money by posting ads for Google. Or am I way off base on that assumption? 🙂

is that a legitimate branding strategy? putting down other companies' innovations because it is an unaffiliated product to the one you bought into/develop on? seems obnoxious.

according to my friend's galaxy phone ingress has about 51.5 million players signed up. i guess nobody read how uninterested you are in it. maybe you should tell more people about how it isn't a success story?

Google is not in the game business. Google is in the advertising business. And yes, Google is highly innovative in that business.

Thanks for the good laughs everyone. Top-notch comedy with a soupçon of FUD.