Coconut Island Studio has introduced a new game called Finger Balance. This application has taken the lead in many rankings and is now ready to please everyone. Finger Balance received the title of “New and interesting” and “What’s New” in the world of Apple App Store. To celebrate the success of the application and show gratitude to all the users who appreciate it, Coconut Island Studio decided to present a free iPhone 4 and, as a bonus, give a classic game iDragPaper this weekend.

Everyone can take part in the raffle. To do this, just buy Finger Balance and pass levels 4-N, N 7-and 10-N. Then, at each level you will see a button. Click on it, enter your email address, confirm it, and you are registered in the raffle! Now Coconut Island Studio will give a winner 10 iTunes gift certificates at $ 15 each.

Raffle ends at midnight on August 22, 2010. The winners will be contacted by e-mail. So do not waste time, play!

As you may know, iOS4 has new features that allow parents or even companies to limit an access to the system for their children or employees respectively.  Currently an access to Safari, YouTube, camera controls, location services and iTunes content including music, TV, movies, software and podcasts (that satisfy given rating threshold) may be blocked.

But the latest developer builds of iOS 4.1, which in turn must appear in a couple of months, include new restrictions related to the Game Center. The latter will allow players to find other players or teams for group play and track their game scores and in-game achievements, but new restrictions will make it possible for parents to prohibit their children from playing against any other user without supervision.

Screenshots that reveal these options are posted above.

Here is a video ‘Shaping Digital Gaming’ about the evolution of Gameloft company which is celebrating their 10th anniversary:

It ’s a really great video. It starts with Nokia black and white, you see Java apps, than it goes to Palm Pre, iPhone and iPad. The graphical improvements are evident. We wish Gameloft other 10 years and more.

Recently UK Times published a report about Nintendo’s current situation. The company’s president Satoru Iwata said that he had already won the war with Sony and now it is Apple’s turn. Satoru called it Nintendo’s “enemy of the future”.

The war with Sony was ended after last holiday season, when Wii had outsold Sony Playstation by almost double, though this year the sales of Nintendo’s device in the first quarter were down 21% in compare to the first quarter of 2009.

So now the competition is held between Nintendo DS and Apple’s iPod touch and iPhone platform. The latter has advantage of relatively low prices for games (moreover, some of them are even free). There are also studies, that reveal that people who like to play would rather carry an iPhone than a DS.

This app would not be mentioned on iPhoneroot if not a video found recently. Gigaputt for iPhone ($1.99) is created by Gigantic Mechanic and allows playing golf just anywhere. At first sight Gigaputt users look pretty foolish, though the app seems to be pretty interesting and fascinating. It supports Openfeint and Twitter/Facebook integration.

You can download it here.

There are 30,000 games on the iPhone and this number is growing. People pay for games, but exactly how much do they pay? A new report from mobile app analytics company Flurry gives some impressive numbers. Flurry estimates that users spent $500 million on games in the US AppStore during 2009. This is up from $115 million in 2008. Compared to the overall U.S. console and portable video game market, the iPhone/iPod Touch now represents 5% of total video game sales. In just the portable videogame market, the numbers are even more exciting – Apple has 19% of portable games revenue.

The numbers are especially painful for Sony who had four times as much revenue as Apple in 2008 which dropped to just over half of Apple’s revenue in 2009. With the iPad coming soon the iPhone OS will grab even more of that Portable Gaming revenue.

According to Wall Street Journal, Sony is planning to launch a line of products, potential competitors of Apple devices. With the smartphone from Sony a user will be able to download and play Playstation games. Underway are the plans for another device, which will combine e-reader, PSP and netbook. Sony is also planning to create Online Service to distribute television shows, movies, games and music to the devices.

Hopefully, devices from Sony will become a due rival for iPad and other Apple devices. When companies are constantly improving their products this is user who will win in the end.

Gameloft has finally released Brothers In Arms 2: Global Front game for iPod Touch and iPhone.

In this game you can challenge up to five friends to multiplayer battles. Connection needs to be established via Bluetooth or Wi-fi.

Key features:

• 5 locations and 13 levels in detailed 3D-world
• 3 different game mods (Free For All, Team DeathMatch, Domination)
• 3 different vehicles
• wide variety of historically accurate weapons

You can purchase Brothers in Arms 2: Global Front for 7.99$ here.

As we wrote before, Apple started to delete apps with sexual-content in App Store two days ago. That was explained by changing their moderating guidelines. Yesterday Apple representatives commented on this situation:

“Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them. If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple.”

But since the Frasier Spears filed the radar bugs in order to filter the inappropriate content at his school and blogged about it, the problem seems to be solved. Obviously, it will be better for Apple to implement soft porn filters that prohibit access to apps with dubious content rather than change their policy.

TellTale Games finally released Tales of Monkey Island for Mac. One married couple creates armpockets with its own hands. From now on you can create and order your own customized case for iPhone. Location browser for urban discoveries is called Flook. To know more read the rest of the post.

TellTale Games released a Mac version of Tales of Monkey Island! The latter is a 3D adventure game that was released for PC and WiiWare in 2009. The game is available for purchase for $34.95 or you can download a free demo.

Telltale Games also announced the next games to release on Mac will be Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures, Sam & Max, and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.

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Gameloft has just released the new exciting video podcast (February). This month is particularly interesting, because we can see the spectacular graphics of Brothers in Arms 2, online multiplayer mode in NOVA, news about Pocket Chef, and much more. Let’s watch:

Hell has returned! Prepare yourself for DOOM II RPG for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the sequel to id Software’s hit mobile game Doom RPG. The forces of Hell have invaded our dimension once again, and you’re the one to stop them from conquering the Earth! Read the rest of this entry »

19 percent of all game developers are writing for the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a new study from Game Developer Research. It is more than twice as high as for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS and results in 3/4 of all mobile game developers writing for Apple’s gadgets.

Developers claim their choices of platform dictated by the level of market influence and ease of writing code. The cost of development and the ability to port code are important too.

The transition to the iPhone is evident through the number of ports. While many companies are producing original titles, games like Civilization Revolution and Assassin’s Creed series are actually Nintendo DS versions modified to use the touchscreen and the better performance of Apple’s devices.

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SlideToPlay published several interesting videos where popular games are shown on the iPad in action. You can see games like Need for Speed Shift, Super Monkey Ball 2 and NOVA played on the big screen. Some of them are optimized for the bigger resolution, others are just a 2x bigger rendering of the exact same iPhone game you can buy now.

The titles of the first movie are Assassin’s Creed, Sims 3, Tetris, and Paper Toss:

Here’s the video of NOVA:

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Telltale Games is a famous company that brought us new forms of retro games such as Sam & Max and Secret of Monkey Island. The rumors about Mac versions of their games are confirmed – they will release the whole catalog for OS X next month, just before the Macworld Expo. We may even see iPhone and iPad versions since most of the games use the same platform. This was expected as there are many Mac fans both in the customer base and in the team.

Telltale’s games are already available on other platforms (PC and consoles), but the company is known for putting fans first, so we can even expect some extra goodies to come.