![]() Gameprom is going to release exclusive iPad apps and significantly upgraded apps from iPhone. You've got to understand most iPad users own an iPhone as well, so the applications have to be different in major ways, otherwise the user will feel cheated. As for iPad games, the current tendency to release practically the same iPhone game, only with HD added to the icon and a couple of dollars added to the price is alien to us. That's why we're seeing so many productivity apps in the iPad charts. What's the iPad market like? Regarding the iPad, at the moment it's obviously being positioned as a working tool first, in contrast to the iPhone, which was and still is a games device first and a phone second. There have also been some nice changes such as the introduction of the top grossing chart and more substantial ad banners in iTunes. How do you think the App Store has changed over the years? The main thing I would like to point out is the number of applications is growing and the competition is becoming tougher. I personally prefer the tropics, possibly because I and one of our offices are in Thailand on a tropical island just like that one. According to the user feedback The Deep theme is the most popular, maybe because its difficulty level is in-between the simple Wild West and the hardcore Jungle Style. It's hard to tell why we chose these: it was just of the top of our heads. How did you decide on the themes, and which have been most popular? We've created three themes: wild west, underwater and tropical island. I can't say it was the hardest part of our development, but it definitely was the most important. ![]() So, why not? What is the hardest thing to get right with pinball games on iDevices? Pinball game are unimaginable without realistic physics. Why did you think pinball games would work well on iPhone? The iPhone and iPhone 3GS in particular have everything required for a good pocket pinball: touchscreen for intuitive controls, accelerometer for tilting the table, OpenGL 2.0 for fast 3D graphics. On its launch day, it went to #1 in US paid apps charts, which was totally unexpected. Now we are moving to iPad and our main success Pinball HD is basically an abridged version of Pinball for Mac, which is an intermediate level between iPhone and Mac versions. ![]() You can turn your iPhone into a remote control for Mac Pinball and play while sitting comfortably on your couch. Another interesting feature of this game is remote control. Everything was upgraded - graphics engine, sound, mission system. It's an improved version of the three iPhone pinball tables collected together in one application. At the same time we released Pinball for Mac. ![]() All three have been updated numerous times because we always listen and quickly react to user feedback. So we realised we'd found our niche and continued, to-date releasing three pinball games for iPhone: Wild West Pinball, The Deep Pinball and Jungle Style Pinball. The reviews were positive, the sales were good, and the free version has been downloaded several million times, reaching #1 in the US free games chart. We concentrated on the realism and fast 3D graphics from the start and it turned out great - as far as we are concerned. We just wanted to develop a good pinball game for ourselves. Why did you start making pinball games? The pinball genre was chosen spontaneously. Before that we had released about 20 titles, which were well known in the Russian market, mostly for J2ME mobile phones, although our portfolio also contains some peculiar projects, e.g. Pocket Gamer: What's Gameprom's background? Philipp Pogosov: Our company has been making videogames since 2004, but we only become famous globally when we started working on iPhone games in 2008. We caught up with CEO Philipp Pogosov to find out more. Now it's looking to branch other further onto new platforms and with new games too. Bursting on the iPhone scene with its pinball series, Russian developer Gameprom has since expanded its games onto Mac and iPad.
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