Apple has always publicly distanced its products from the video games market, preferring to offer a platform where developers can thrive on their own rather than competing head-on with established giants. The runaway success of the company's various iThings put it right at the center of one of the fast-growing sectors of the gaming industry today, however. I think the launch of Game Center last year is a direct result of that, as are some newly discovered patents which suggest that avatars are coming as well.
Two separate patents filed by Apple in April point to an interface that will allows users to create customer avatars in Game Center (via AppleInsider). The demo images included with the patents show distinctly Mii-looking avatars, though that's not necessarily indicative of what a final version of the feature might look like. The patents allow for these avatars to be linked with and used in Game Center profiles and titles, much like what you see with the Xbox 360 and Wii.
Source: AppleInsider, Patent 1, Patent 2
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CapAmerica08
I like the idea. All these people getting butthurt over it are just mad cause they can only afford those cheaply made androids and not an iPhone.
ChoAsNiNja
I'm over Apple. The phone it self still makes crappy calls and they have not improved it aside from Siri since the 3gs. Android does what Apple copies. Let's not forget windows live phone lets you have avatars. All apple does is copy and tweak. The Galaxy S2 has a pretty neat assistant named, Galaxy, I don't here them raving about it...Oh wait thats because its been out for a while and its unoriginal. Apple calls things new when its new to their phone and people flock to the product as if its revolutionary. Well thats my rant of the day, thanks for listening.
THEMrFill
this is just getting silly now, since the launch of the iPhone they've done pretty much nothing original with the phone - everything they've done they've looked at phones from 5+ years ago and said "that's a good idea, let's do that"... the only "advancement" is putting the voice recognition within the phone rather than on-line
I predict their next "advancements" will be: widgets, different wallpapers on each screen, being able to go to any page with simple links - and they'll claim that all of these are "new" because it's just come to the iPhone :-P
DaMan6021
Sounds so original, it deserves a patent.
steveredd
oh great how much you wanna bet apple is gonna sue nintendo and microsoft for " copying " their avatars?
Displaying 1–5 of 5