Exclusive: World of Warcraft on Apple iPhone, Video iPod Already Exists, iTMS to Offer 3rd Party Applications for iPhone, AppleTV Doubles as a Console

Click to zoom. Posted by dennis on February 9th, 2007 at 02:59pm Comments

Introduction

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve been wondering why Apple iPhone needs such a powerful (ARM11) processor and a Wi-Fi connection. No other phones, even the ones that can play movies have such powerful hardware on board. Even the Nintendo DS and Nokia N-Gage, which are portable consoles, are powered by ARM9 class CPUs, far below the iPhone’s capacity. Alas, my answer came in the form of a very knowledgeable and serious Anonymous Tipster, who asked to remain anonymous.

Apple iPhone

World of Warcraft on Apple iPhone and Video iPod

We all know that Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (from now on just WOW) was already ported to Mac OS. We all also know that OS X powers the Apple iPhone. Most of us know that Apple’s representatives say that it’s a full featured version of OS X. There were also rumors of secret features and programs that the iPhone will support. The Anonymous Tipster spilled the beans on this one:

From a reliable source, who made the following comments to my wife and I last Saturday night as a sidebar to the main subject of the phone call. The Source said “oh, by the way I’m calling you guys using an iPhone”, knowing my love of all things Apple would elicit a bombastic response, to which I exclaimed “how the hell did you get your hands on an iPhone?’ The Source admitted that they indeed were not calling me on one right then, but did have their hands on it recently at Apple. The Source explained the circumstances as to how that came to be and followed up with the following based on several hundred questions I posed in little over ten seconds.

Here is one of the highlights of the conversation. The Source said, “watch out for the iPhone and their new video iPod when it comes to gaming. Imagine playing WOW on them using the touch screen interface. Think of the impact its going to have on the handheld game market and Apple’s revenue.”

I tried to get more on WOW but all I could get was “Steve goes big and WOW is as big as they come when it comes to on-line games.”

The Source also said “Steve’s demonstration of the touch screen functionality at Macworld was just the tip of the iceberg, what I was shown blows the Macworld demo out of the water. The whole iTunes, iPhone, iPod modus operandi is going to make Apple investors a lot of money.”

World of Warcraft

Just to be sure that I understood everything correctly about WOW, I directed a few more questions at my Anonymous Tipster. Here are the answers that I got

A: Yes, the Source said he/she was shown a demo and that the apps shown were beta versions.

A: He/she said He/she was told that WOW on the iPhone worked with both WiFi and EDGE (without simultaneous phone use) and full multi-tasking with 3G in the future. New iPod will utilize WiFi.

Video iPod Already Exists

Wait, “Video iPod?” you may ask? There were rumors that Video iPod is already being developed, and will be using the same touchscreen technology that the iPhone has. It seems these rumors are absolutely true. Anonymous Tipster provided a few more answers to my questions about the Video iPod:

A: He/she did not say if it was a prototype or production release.

A: Yes, he/she saw WOW and other games demoed on the new iPod.

iTunes Music Store Will Provide Third Party Applications

Some of you might correctly note that Steve Jobs originally said that there won’t be support for third party applications with the iPhone. However, what he in fact meant to say, is that they will only be available through the iTunes Music Store – and now we know why Apple filed a patent for the secure iTunes -> iPhone internet transactions that would go through the computer first instead of going directly to the iPhone. Downloading WOW from the Internet on the iPhone would’ve taken weeks, while with broadband connection it can be done in a matter of hours, and then easily transferred to the iPhone. Here’s what the Anonymous Tipster had to say about that:

He/she was told that Select 3rd. party apps will be available through ITMS and was shown a modified version of Xcode with a Multi-Touch conversion module. He/she said it was very slick.

AppleTV

Games on AppleTV

The Anonymous Tipster didn’t stop there though, as he also provided some information about games on the AppleTV:

He/she also said He/she was shown a demo of AppleTV streaming games through to a WS TV and that it used a wireless controller to interact with the games that utilized the IR receiver on the AppleTV. He/she said it will be marketed as an AppleTV option for game use.

Conclusion

So what did we learn today?

#1 – Video iPod already exists.
#2 – Both Apple iPhone and Video iPod will be offering WOW, playable using touch-screen technology. And surely Apple won’t stop with just WOW, so we can expect to see more interesting games for both of these upcoming devices.
#3 – Apple will be offering select third party apps for the iPhone, but only through iTunes Music Store.
#4 – AppleTV will double as a console, which could give a run for their money to PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.
#5 - Apple iPhone will have 3G support in the future.
#6 - The new Video iPod will have Wi-Fi support.
#7 – There are yet more secret features that will be revealed closer to iPhone’s release date.

All these are very exciting news, and the best part is that I have certain confidence in the Anonymous Tipster based on the amount and level of knowledge and other information not covered in this article that he provided. Hopefully he will be able to provide even more interesting information in the future.

Dennis Sloutsky

buy wow accounts at BuyMMOAccounts.com, World of Warcraft accounts.

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maddys_pal

Dennis, that is red-hot info.It changes everything I imagined about the prospects for the iPhone. It now appears that the phone app is almost peripheral to the console capabilities.Hooda thunk it?

Ian

Absolute rubbish... for a start WoW takes up over 6GB of disk space. The iPhone only comes in 4GB and 8GB models. Secondly, WOW only works well on a high-resolution display (e.g. I play on 1920x1200). The iPhone has a resolution of 320x240. Not enough to even show the minimap... Finally, most net connections on phone systems cost an absolute fortune just for simple stuff like Mail. Imagine the costs for WoW.

If Blizzard won't port WoW to consoles, what makes you think it would even consider the iPhone?

dennis

Ian,

#1 - You bring up a good point about the size of the screen. That's something that I've been wondering about myself.

However:

#2 "for a start WoW takes up over 6GB of disk space" -- do you not think that high resolution graphics would be removed from the iPhone version of WOW (see #1)? High resolution graphics is exactly what takes most of that 6GB, and they obviously wouldn't be needed.
#3 "Finally, most net connections on phone systems cost an absolute fortune" - Yes, that's why I mentioned Wi-Fi which the iPhone will support.

공현정

저걸로 인던뛰겠나? -_- 에드되겠네 ㅋ 해상도가 너무 작아요

anamonous

this is retarted... people, the processor is a high power because it is running quarts composer... far greater than any handheld. duh... wow will not play on it either... please people... why is this on comcast news???? get a clue people

Steve Bradley

Not buying this rumor. I play WoW on a G5 with a full keyboard and 5 button mouse. During particularly active moments, I'm using multiple keys at one time, and alternating my right hand between the mouse and the numeric keypad.

Even if they tone down the great graphics so they're somehow acceptable on a tiny little low-res display you just aren't gonna have the control with that non-existant keyboard (that has to pop up and obscure part of the game when you need it).

For you folks who actually play: can you imagine trying to coordinate the fights in places like AQ40 and BWL on a little tiny screen where you can barely read raid chat? No Vent. No dedicated mouse. No 'hot keys'. No easy way to page action bars.

Unplayable, even if it was technically possible, which I doubt.

Phil

As Steve Bradley points out, there is no way you could play WoW with the limited options for input provided by the iPhone. Forget the pre-BC raids; some of the level 70 5-man dungeons have 8 mobs in one pull. You could never keep track of that many on so small a screen.

Why can't people understand some "tips" are just plain lies?

dennis

Phil,

I accept your criticism. There's a big chance that I've been had.

However there's a small chance that I wasn't.

The decision to publish this information was not an easy one, however due to the sheer importance of this information, I decided to go ahead and publish it.

Time will tell if I was right or wrong, but for now just take it with a grain of salt.

However -- I've noticed quite a few editors at other sites that linked to this article talk about latency and controls. Let me address that.

Latency: iPhone has built-in WiFi. Which means the latency will be the same as with any wireless connection. People with wireless routers somehow play WOW, don't they?

Controls: what if the controls were revamped completely for WOW iPhone version? I believe it could be possible to simplify them a lot. Of course it might be tough with dealing with the inventory, however iPhone has a feature that zooms in on particular objects on the screen, so that could be applied there.

As for other questions, I really don't have any answers.

So once again, time will tell whether our source was right or wrong. For now let's just take it for what it is -- information from an unconfirmed source.

SiR Gad

According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture , the Nokia N93 and N800, and the Zune, use an ARM11 CPU. Kinda takes the bite out of the "even the Nintendo DS and Nokia N-Gage, which are portable consoles, are powered by ARM9 class CPUs, far below the iPhone’s capacity" comment.

Martin

@ian

if this is true, the version of WOW for the iPhone will not take as much space as the full version, all images will be scaled down, there is no need for high res images on a smaller screen

no the iPhone screen is NOT 320×240, it's 320*480 !

lukebob1

there would be no use for hotkeys or a mouse, there is a touch screen. and most of the things are now true -- all but the wow on the iPhone and 3g.

can't wait

cj

I think this is great, I would really play instances or pvp, that's why I have my of. But if it let's me log on check my mail, post and buy stuff from the auction house, trade items, even chat with my friends or guild I would be happy with that.

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