As usual, some of these are free for a limited period only, so don’t hang about.

Numeric Paranoia

The picture pretty much explains what’s going on. It’s a path-finding/line-drawing puzzle game related to Polarium on the GBA and DS, and like Polarium comes with Arcade and Puzzle modes. From simple 4×5 grids with four numbers, up to scary 10-number 8×6 levels, there’s loads to keep you amused here, and it’s very slickly executed.

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After all those stats and stuff.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDIzMGh94vo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

Finger-snappin’ pop tune? Check.

Awesome chorus? Check.

Video featuring chainsaw accident? Check.

Super hot girl? ULTRA-CHECK!

Something else occurred to me this morning after reading over yesterday’s lead story again. According to 24/7WallSt’s largely-invented figures, just 4% of iPhone/iPod owners use their device for piracy, yet have been responsible for actual real losses of over $450m in revenue that would have been spent were piracy not possible.

Logically, this means that the other 96% of owners must be spending the same sort of amount, (since the figure was arrived at via an allegedly-conservative notional conversion rate of 10% of pirated copies being genuinely lost sales, rather than just stuff the pirates wouldn’t have bothered downloading if they had to pay for it). Which means that the App Store must have generated an impressive $11.48bn of revenue in the last 18 months.

Since Apple have revealed that there have been a total of 3 billion downloads, which includes both paid and free apps, that would make the average price per download just short of $4. But since the 247WS figures were based on just an estimated 17% of downloads being paid apps, that bumps the average per-paid-app price up to a little over $23.50 (compared to 247WS’s claimed average of $3).  If other analysts’ estimates of the proportion of paid apps to free ones is more accurate, the average price of each paid-for download could be as high as $160.

Doesn’t seem awfully likely, does it?

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The content industry has a long and shameful history of spurious figures when it comes to the subject of intellectual-property piracy. This much we already knew. But the most recent set of “statistics” on the economic cost of piracy – which have, of course, been seized on and repeated unquestioningly by the press – may have set some sort of record.

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There’s been something of a Biblical flood of the-end-of-civilisation movies in recent years. From 2007’s 28 Weeks Later (zombie plague) and I Am Legend (cancer cure gone wrong) to Charlie Brooker’s harrowing alleged comedy Dead Set (another zombie plague), the BBC’s remake of Survivors (lethal virus pandemic) and the same broadcaster’s re-remake of The Day Of The Triffids (er, homicidal walking plants), 2009 mega-budget effects-fest 2012 (the classic “solar flares cause planet to boil from the inside”), and right up to this year’s The Road (unnamed catastrophic event), the cultural world is suddenly alive with the mass culling of humanity. Hurrah!

The one avenue for the obliteration of mankind that hasn’t been explored for a while is the classic nuclear holocaust, even though – or possibly because – an increasingly aggressive and powerful Russia has been rattling its sabre on the world stage for the first time in two decades. However, with the imminent The Book Of Eli making reference to a war that leaves the planet a ravaged wasteland, it looks like the atomic menace is back, Back, BACK! Which got WoSblog thinking – what’s the bleakest nuclear holocaust movie ever?

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Bill Bailey’s Birdwatching Bonanza, with Sherrie Hewson and Joe Pasquale.

I’m not making that up. I wish I was, because I watched all 60 minutes of it in that special sort of horror where you can’t switch over (because there’s nothing else on).

(Last week on Alan Partridge TV: Derek Acorah’s Ghosthunting With The Happy Mondays.)

How long can you bear it? I managed a minute or so before I got pretty queasy. The absurd Night Mode is actually a bit more manageable, and I notched 5,980 on that (44 lines), if you’re looking for a target.

(Via The Triforce)

Get a move on, because most of these are free for today only.

World Of Tunes

Pretty Ouendan-style rhythm action game with high production values – if slightly dubious beat synchronisation – and inventive boss battles. Gets wildly polarised reviews at £1.79, so grab it today at no risk.

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Actually-worth-reading games industry trade mag Develop has launched a rather generous offer for January: subscriptions to the print editon of the magazine (normally £35) are now free. Develop is full of actual proper features about game development and the world of gaming in general, and while the online version has been free for some time you can’t beat having paper and ink in your hands instead of twatting around with PDFs that you can’t read properly on a screen less than 40 inches across. Click the image for more info.

Or click here to sample the online edition and see what you’re getting.

Starts at 21.44 here:

(Courtesy of alert viewer S. Byron.)

As the writer of the Definitive series of games histories for Retro Gamer, the bane of my life is websites repeating stuff they found somewhere else and didn't bother to check. Because if the original "fact" isn't actually true, the weight of repetition quickly causes it to become accepted as the truth anyway, and you end up with a load of cobblers becoming the official historical record, at least until I have to come along and fix it, usually by playing the game(s) all the way to the bloody end myself.

(I suppose I shouldn't complain, as if it didn't happen so much Retro Gamer's first feature on R-Type wouldn't have been SO full of glaring errors that I couldn't stop myself writing them an angry letter about it, and thereby managing to secure the Definitive gig in the first place, which has been quite a nice little earner.)

And printing rubbish about games can still be dangerous even if you think you're really obviously joking, as this picture I recently found lurking on my hard drive proves:

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The App Store is a strange and capricious place. Once an app reaches a certain level of market awareness, success becomes a self-perpetuating phenomenon, regardless of any characteristics of the app itself. There's no other way to explain, for example, the continued existence of the extraordinarily terrible Beautiful Boobs near the top of the free-app charts.

Despite thousands of one-star ratings (the app's overall score is an extremely generous 1.5) and the presence of countless superior free lady-ogling apps (which is to say, all of them), the mere fact that it's in the top 10 causes more and more people to download it, keeping it there and shutting out more worthwhile titles.

The same problem also afflicts the paid-app charts, which is why Doodle Jump has been the No.1 paid game for about the last 50 years despite not being particularly great and there being an army of similar titles that are better (eg PapiJump+) and/or free. And such extended systemic bed-blocking sometimes causes very obviously brilliant apps to inexplicably fail to reach the heights they richly deserve.

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Not by Apple, admittedly. But Stephane Richard, the incoming CEO (and current vice-president) of mobile phone company Orange (one of Apple’s European network partners) appears to have inadvertently let the much-rumoured cat out of the bag. In an interview with French TV station Europe 1, the following exchange (translated) takes place:

Interviewer: According to [French magazine] Le Point, your partner Apple will be launching a tablet
Stéphane Richard: Yes.
Interviewer: … equipped with a webcam.
Stéphane Richard: Yes.
Interviewer: Will Orange customers also be able to enjoy it?
Stéphane Richard: Of course!, they will actually particularly enjoy it because the webcam will allow live video streaming. It’s a new take on mobile video-conferencing.

My schoolboy French seems to back up the internet translation, but you can check the interview out for yourself here if yours is better:

I should very much like to know the story behind this.

(It’s in Wickwar, between Bristol and Stroud.)

Just got round to watching last year’s apocalypse blockbuster. Didn’t realise the title was actually a rating out of 10 for how prodigiously, stupefyingly awful the last 30 minutes were.