By Leo Stiles
Apple set their sights on Nintendo and Sony on Wednesday as they announced an update that will bring an online gaming service to most of their portable devices.
The service called the Game Centre will allow users to keep track of their games, play against their friends online, enable competitive matchmaking and earn achievements, much like the Xbox Live service on Microsoft’s console.
During his presentation, Steve Jobs name checked his competitors and claimed that total sales of iOS devices now exceed the combined sales of Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP and that the iPod touch is now the number one portable games platform.
Epic Games CEO Mike Capps made a guest appearance to show off their Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone. Unreal Engine 3 is the software that is at the heart of the majority of console games including Epic’s own Gears of War series.
Capps went on to demonstrate a new game called Project Sword, an action role playing game the company hopes to launch late this year. The game showcased graphics that were comparable to those on a home console and set a new benchmark for what is possible on the iPod and iPhone.
Anyone who has an iPad, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or third generation iPod Touch can see for themselves as Epic has released a free tech demo on the iTunes store called Epic Citadel.
