Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition has finally hit iPads running iOS 6, exactly a week after the game released on PC.
Originally, Baldur's Gate: EE Beamdog intended for the game to blitz PC, Mac, Android, and iOS all on the November 30th release window. Unfortunately, Beamdog ran into issues galore and then ran into the stumbling block of the Mac and iOS approval process.
Unfortunately, the iOS version is not without its issues. Original iPad owners will find Enhanced Edition missing from the App Store. Beamdog founder Trent Oster stated in response to a fan who wondered about Baldur's Gate's iOS 5 release, "We tried every fix we could think up for iPad1, so we need a new approach. This isn't going to be an overnight fix."
Anxious Android users are going to have to wait just a little longer. Oster hopes to have the Android version released by Christmas, though there's been little word to its status since Oster's original statements in regards to the game's delay.
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition can be purchased in the App Store for $9.99, which is significantly cheaper than the $19.99 price point for the PC version.
I played every bit of BG back in the day, including all the add-ons, and this 'EE' version just doesn't seem to be adding much. The critical area where some extra work could have paid off handsomely - the graphics and UI in general - is a mess. According to the forums, this is beacause the 'PC' version is basically a port of where the developers spent all their real effort; tablets...
No the PC version is not subsidizing the iOS version. iOS is on closed system hardware (ie all Ipads are exactly the same except for memory). There are an infinite number of variables in the PC world which makes it harder to code for, so of course it costs more. But 19.99 isn't a bad price in my opinion.
Nah, i just wait for the android version
Then why do PC games cost less than console games on release?
Gaming on Android when 98% of Android tablets have sub-par GPU's. That makes a lot of sense.
I know the Apple haters hate to admit it, but iPads totally dominate Android tablets where graphics performance is concerned.
Not everyone cares about having the best GPU/CPU/specs, as long as it runs good your good in my opinion. Plus iPads are expensive in comparison to a lot of Androids out there and some of us just plain old prefer Android OS over iOS. This isn't always an anti Apple or anti Android thing.
I know between an high end android tablet or iPad I take the android one every time. I am just not the biggest fan of iOS and a large majority of high end android tablets have microSD, hdmi, micro usb slots which make it far more useful to me than an iPad (I don't want proprietary cables, thats BS in my opinion, rather just use an HDMI for hooking up to TV's and mirco USB for hooking up to computers)
In benchmarks there is a significant lead. The question is will anything be released within the tablets extremely short lifespan before a new one is released that actually utilized that extra graphical output? The answer is likely no. Obviously the main tax when it comes to graphics other than benchmarks is games. The game developers however realize that they have to be compatible with dated hardware as well. Just like this article pointing out that they tried to go as far back as the original iPad.
PC hardware is very similar to this as well. No developer would dare make a 690 or a 7990 the minimum requirement for a game released today. It would be the best looking game of all time but it would lose 99% of sales. With tablets also being treated this way and the fact that mid ranged tablets are coming out stronger than the last generations best. If we are going by the judgement purely on graphics it would only make sense to buy mid-ranged tablet for half the price.
Who cares about a little bit of new, mod-quality content? There's plenty of that free from the mod community. Bioware should've just fixed the BG1 engine issues so we could play the game on modern computers as it was originally. (it runs but stutters in graphics & doesn't play the continuous music).
Due to this, the BG1 game-engine related graphics (character sprites & animations & effects, character paperdolls, inventory screens & items, interface & buttons ... etc) are not there in EE. (BG2 is an excellent game and has much much more quantity, but it's quality: art/graphcis are %#$% ugly compared to BG1).
Bull.
This is Tom's (which I've been reading since the beginning). Everyone cares about specs, which is why Tom's has spent so much time over the years doing detailed tests of CPU's, video cards and hard drives. The only reason people "don't care" about specs for mobile is because Apple is in the lead and their hatred for Apple trumps performance. Really quite pathetic.
Enjoy those 10 Android Apps you have that are actually optimized for your tablet. And enjoy running an OS version that's always 1-2 years behind. Oh wait, you probably root. That's the only option if you actually want a newer version like JB. Just hope that your particular device is actually supported by the custom ROM community (or that it actually works properly without introducing several new bugs or losing features).
There are a lot of iOS titles that take advantage nf the newest hardware. This is the benefit of the iOS eco-system - better developer support than Android. Developers know there will be a certain number of devices with specific processors and OS version and they can target that.
iOS 6 hit 60% usage within the first month. After 5 months Jelly Bean has barely passed 6% and Gingerbread (two versions old) is still dominant with 50% of the market (ICS at around 28%).
If I was a developer would I write for a couple of tablet models that have over 50% of the entire market, or try and write for the other 200+ tablets that all have a small slice of the remaining 50% and all use different combinations of processor, GPU, OS version and screen resolution?
And people wonder why iOS totally dominates Android when it comes to tablet optimized Apps. /s
I just read on another Toms article how Android is now dominating the market...