A new home for our blog

Blogger has been a fantastic platform to help us get started with our blog, but we'd like our blog to be more integrated with the rest of our web site so we've moved it to its new permanent home:

firemint.com

Please come and join us there!

Real Racing and Flight Control win big!

We've had some fantastic news today - it seems that reviewers and players alike both love Real Racing and Flight Control above all others :)

Continue reading on our new blog...

iPhone App video-making tips

We've had quite a few questions about how we make our iPhone videos, so we thought we'd share some tips about what we've figured out!

Continue reading on our new blog...

Happy Birthday, App Store!

Apple has added a new featured section to the App Store to celebrate its first birthday, and lists some of Apple's favourite games for each region.

Continue reading on our new blog...

Build time at Firemint

It's always a happy time at Firemint when we have a new build to put on everyone's iPhones and iPod touches...

Continue reading on our new blog...

Flight Control v1.2 has landed

In Flight Control v1.2, we have added two new airfields.

Continue reading on our new blog...

Flight Control site update & Facebook page

We've just uploaded a new version of the Flight Control web site to Cloudcell. Hmm, what could it mean...



In further Flight Control news, we've also set up a Facebook page for fans to share tips and chat, so please come join us there :)


Alex

Firemint Real Racing scrum

Here's a happy snap of the Firemint Real Racing team during their morning scrum. Daily scrums are part of our game development process. They take about 10 minutes, and each team member updates everyone on their progress since yesterday. Everyone on the team takes part - programmers, artists, QA and producers. Most people will be standing rather than sitting to keep scrums short and sweet! We've had well over 200 scrums for Firemint Real Racing.

As you may have heard, unfortunately we did not hit our target release date of April 2009. If you've read our earlier blog post, you'll know that we're just as keen to see Firemint Real Racing on the App Store as you are (maybe even more so!) As soon as we have an expected release date, we will let everyone know.

New on Cloudcell: Tag and Follow

We've added two new features to Cloudcell. You can now tag yourself with a list of words that describe you, to help your friends find you on Cloudcell. Each tag will also have its own leaderboard so you can see the highest scores for everyone with that tag.

You can also "follow" people on Cloudcell, which will add two personal leaderboards to your profile page: one for all the people you're following, and another one for the people following you!

Flight Control Sales Numbers

When we launched Flight Control on 6 March 2009, we made a committment to share our sales numbers with the game development community. At the time we had no idea that Flight Control would reach the #1 paid app position in so many different countries, and just how interesting these numbers would be!

Continue reading on our new blog...

Firemint Real Racing launch delayed

We previously announced that Firemint Real Racing would be available by the end of April. Until a few days ago, we had still hoped we could hit that date, but now it's time to recognise that we won't, and give you an update while we still have a little time left in the month.

Why is it delayed?

There are actually numerous reasons, none of them are due to us not wanting to get the game out. The primary reason is that we are not 100% happy with it yet. Every time we evaluate a version of the game that we think might be "the one", we find something that we think is important to improve.

What does this mean for Firemint?

Every day that we delay the release of Firemint Real Racing we spend more money and resources on it (we believe it is the biggest development budget ever for an iPhone game). At the same time we reduce our potential sales. In addition to that we let down people who were expecting the game to be out late April. The temptation to just release it is enormous.

The only way to "win" from delaying a release is to make sure the game is so good that people don't care in the end, and all is forgiven. That remains our focus.

So when will it come out?

There is tremendous pressure on us from many directions to state a release date. All we will say is that this game looks finished, it has looked finished for quite some time. It feels very close now. PreviewsIt’s not the same as shipping the game, but until you can get your hands on Firemint Real Racing, we’ve put together a collection of previews from industry experts who played the game at GDC (21-27 March 2009):

• Chris Holt, Macworld: "the 3-D graphics are some of the best I’ve seen on the iPhone" (Macworld Preview)


• Tracy Erickson, Pocket Gamer: "potential to become the portable counterpoint to PlayStation's Gran Turismo" (Pocket Gamer preview)


• Levi Buchanan, IGN: "incredibly smooth visuals" (IGN Preview)


• Russ Fruhstick, UGO: "the best looking racing game on the iPhone by a large margin" (UGO Preview)


• Steve Palley, Slide to Play: "this superlative racer is going to set some new benchmarks for the genre" (Slide to Play Preview)


• Nacho Andare, iPhoneGamesNetwork: "It looks better than any PSP racing game I have played." (iPhoneGamesNetwork Preview)


• Dale North, Destructoid: "This seems like a real game on a mobile device -- something we can sink our teeth into." (Destructoid Preview)

Firemint Real Racing (video and more preview quotes)

The FM Band rocks Melbourne

Last night the FM Band settled in for a jam session. At 8:55pm a tremor ran through our studio... some say it was an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale, but they obviously haven't heard the FM Band!

Beer O'Clock

It’s beer o’clock and the Beer Czar has loaded up his trolley, ready to quench the hard-earned thirst of the Firemint team. I reckon he needs to pimp his ride, any suggestions?