Mobile game developer Gameloft has launched a new app store for its Android titles. It’s called Gameloft Live, and if that sounds a lot like Xbox Live, there’s good reason.

Like Xbox Live, the new Gameloft app isn’t just a store for buying and downloading games. It’s also a social hub that lets you send messages or chat with your friends, invite them to play games, or share your achievements. You can also create custom avatars for you account.

This isn’t the first time the company has taken inspiration from outside. Many of the top Gameloft games are blatant rip-offs of other titles. Order and Chaos, for instance, is a World of Warcraft clone, Eternal Legacy draws heavily from Final Fantasy, and NOVA is basically Halo for Android.

Even if you don’t care about the social aspects, Gameloft Live might be worth checking out. The company promises to offer exclusive discounts to members, and the service should make downloading and installing Gameloft titles on an Android device a little simpler. Some of the company’s many games aren’t available in the Android Market.

via EuroDroid

Game developer Gameloft is running a massive sale for the next week. Starting this morning at 10:00AM Pacific, all of the company’s games availabel from the Android Market will be available for 99 cents. The sale runs through 10:00AM PST on January 5th, 2012.

Some of Gameloft’s titles are always just under a buck, but some of the company’s higher-end games such as Order & Chaos Online and Modern Combat 3 normally run $6.99.

Gameloft is often criticized for their lack of originality (Order & Chaos is basically a World of Warcraft clone, Eternal Legacy is a Final Fantasy clone, and Starfront: Collision is a Starcraft clone). But their games are usually well designed, with excellent graphics.

Unfortunately not all of the company’s games are available from the Android Market, so not all of Gameloft’s Android games will be on sale, but titles including Asphalt HD, Texas Hold’em Poker 2, and The Adventures of Tintin should all be eligible.

via Droid Gamers

Every day dozens of new games are released for mobile phones and tablets — but every now and again you don’t want a new game. What you want is to relive a truly great classic game that you first played on a Playstation or computer.

Recently two of those classic games found their way to iOS and Android.

The first is Sonic CD, a Sonic the Hedgehog title from the 90s. Originally developed for the Sega CD, the game has since been ported to the Plyastation 2, GameCube, and PC. Now it’s available for $1.99 in the Android Market and iTunes App Store.

Next up we’ve got Grand Theft Auto III – a title that changed the way many people think about video games on a number of levels. GTA III was released for the PS2 in 2001 as a game that let you solve missions by driving, fighting, and problem solving in Liberty City, a fictional place that’s detailed enough to be a character in the story.

The game also pushed the boundaries of violent and sexual conduct in a mainstream video game.

Now GTA III  is available for $4.99 from the App Store and Android Market.

OnLive is a service that lets you play video games by streaming them over the internet. We’re not talking about dinky Flash-based games here though. We’re talking about console-quality games that you’d normally need a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 to play.

The company offers a box that you can connect to your TV to turn it into a game console, as well as a wireless remote control. This week the company launched new apps for iOS and Android that also turn your phone or tablet into a portable console-quality gaming system.

OnLive has been showing off the service since this summer, but now the company’s mobile apps are finally available for download from the App Store or the Android Market.

I took the service for a spin on my NOOK Tablet, and there’s a lot to like. The selection of games may not be all-inclusive, but it’s pretty good. And the games felt snappy and responsive even though I was basically using the tablet to control a game running on a remote server.
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Qualcomm is getting ready to take on NVIDIA in the Android gaming space. NVIDIA unveiled the Tegra Zone store for Android games optimized for NVIDIA Tegra processors earlier this year. Today Qualcomm unveiled its own game discovery app.

It’s called Snapdragon GameCommand and it will highlight video games designed to run on Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. The chip-maker already highlights games with its Snapdragon Game Pack which launched this summer. But the Game Pack is little more than a list of games, while the GameCommand app will help users discover games while using an Android device.

Qualcomm makes a wide range of processors for phones and tablets, including processors for inexpensive phones and superchips which the company says will be able to deliver console-quality gaming on mobile devices. My guess is that GameCommand will mostly feature the latter.

Snapdragon CameCommand is scheduled to launch in early 2012.

The company is also adding new games to its Snapdragon Game Pack including Galaga Special Edition, Fight Game Heroes, and The Ball. The Game Pack featues more than 100 games which Qualcomm says show off the features of its embedded Adreno graphics cores for Snapdragon processors.

Rockstar Games has announced plans to launch Grand Theft Auto III for Android and iOS. It’s been 10 years since the crazy popular video game hit the scene, but it still offers more depth than an awful lot of games available for mobile platforms today. It should be interesting to see how Rockster revamps the classic to work on mobile devices with touchscreen displays.

The list of officially supported devices isn’t all that large. It looks like you’ll need some serious processing power to handle the game. The iOS app will only support the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

The Android list is a little longer, with the Motorola Atrix 4G, Droid X2, HTC Evo 2, LG Optimus 2X, and Samsung Galaxy S2 phones and the Acer Iconia Tab, Asus Eeee Pad, Motorola XOOM, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets.

Rockstar says the new games will be available this fall. There’s no word on how much they’ll cost.

via CNET

Some video games you play over and over again. Others you might play for a few hours until you complete a quest, and then you never load the games again. Those are the sort of games that you might want to consider renting rather than buying outright. While companies have been offering rentals for PC and console games for a while, WildTangent and T-Mobile have just launched the first major game rental service for Android.

The WildTangent platform lets you play games for 24 hours for prices as low as 25 cents. You can also play for a fwe hous for free after watching a video advertisement.

Some of the most popular Android games cost just a buck or two, which makes a rental service seem a little silly. But honestly, mobile gamers can be cheap. While console gamers regularly plunk down $40 or $50 to pick up the latest title, the Android Market is littered with people complaining about high prices when developers decide to charge more than $4.99 for a game.

Right now there are only a few dozen titles available through the WildTangent app. But a few big name games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Guitar Hero 6, Fruit Ninja, and Doodle Jump are included.

In order to try out the service you’ll need to be a T-Mobile USA customer. If you fit the bill, just text “GetWild” to 6255 from your phne to get a download link.

While you may not find many in the Android Market these days, there’s no shortage of video game console emulators for Google Android. These apps let you play classic GameBoy, Nintendo, or even Playstation games on your phone — assuming you have the video game ROMs, which I’ll just go ahead and assume you obtained legally.

Last week developer Yonzh released an updated version of his Nintendo 64 emulator for Android — and it has one pretty slick new feature: it lets you connect multiple Bluetooth game controllers so that you can play multiplayer games.

If you have a phone with a fast processor and an HDMI output, you can fire up N64oid, pair two gamepads, plug in a TV and play 3D games on a big screen TV using your phone instead of a game console.

The folks at AndroidNZ have put together a demo video showing what Mario Kart 64 looks like using this setup.

Although the new multiplayer feature looks great on an HDTV, you could also theoretically use a 10 inch Android tablet for some multiplayer gaming on the go. I somehow doubt you’ll spend a lot of time racing against your friends on a 4 inch phone.

You can purchase the latest version of N64oid for $4.99 from the SlideMe app store. You’ll need to make sure your phone or tablet supports installing apps from “unknown sources,” and you’ll want a phone with a pretty fast processor in order to get the most out of the app.

via Droid Gamers