Gamevice's iPhone Gaming Controller Gets Price Drop and Integration With Sphero Droids - MacRumors
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Gamevice's iPhone Gaming Controller Gets Price Drop and Integration With Sphero Droids

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Gamevice, a company that makes a Made for iPhone/iPad gaming controller for iOS devices, today announced that its partnership with Sphero has expanded, allowing the Gamevice gaming controller to be used with Sphero droids.

Starting today, the Gamevice, which already works with the Sphero app, can be used to pilot the BB-9E, BB-8, and R2D2 from Sphero, giving droid owners a better control method than the iPhone's display. Gamevice previously announced integration with the DJI app, allowing the DJI Spark to be controlled via a Gamevice controller, and it already works with the Sphero SPRK+.


As of today, the company behind Gamevice has confirmed that the GV 157 model for the iPhone is fully compatible with the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, and to celebrate both the new droid functionality and the confirmation that it works with Apple's newest devices, the price of the GV 157 is dropping 20 percent to $79.95.

"We chose to lower the price to $79.95 as demand for Gamevice has increased due to the fact that it can now be used for more than just gaming," said Phillip Hyun, CEO, Gamevice. "Gamevice not only makes gaming on smartphones better, but it adds precision control to app controlled gadgets such as Sphero's app-enabled droids and DJI's Spark Drone, with more on the way."

The Gamevice works with more than 1,000 iOS games, including several games optimized for iPhone X like Lineage 2, The Talos Principle, and Grid Autosport.

The GV 157, which works with the iPhone 6 Plus and all subsequent iPhones released by Apple (with the exception of the iPhone SE), can be purchased from the Gamevice website for $79.95. There are also Gamevice controllers available for the various iPads, which are priced at $99.95.

Top Rated Comments

Scottsoapbox Avatar
114 months ago
No one drops the price because demand has increased.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
114 months ago
Is Nintendo just millions of times better at hardware then these other companies, or why are the Joycons millions of times better, for the exact same price?

The controller situation is why real game developers are beating down the door to have their titles on Switch, while iOS continues to just have mobile games on it (or crappy ports of old games).
iOS won’t get console quality games unless the phone comes with a controller out of the box. Percentage of users who have a controller is just not enough for anyone to bother porting a real AAA game to iOS.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
honglong1976 Avatar
114 months ago
iOS won’t get console quality games unless the phone comes with a controller out of the box. Percentage of users who have a controller is just not enough for anyone to bother porting a real AAA game to iOS.
And it has to be apple that creates this controller. A third party one will always die!
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The controller situation is why real game developers are beating down the door to have their titles on Switch, while iOS continues to just have mobile games on it (or crappy ports of old games).
I agree. It's annoying because as soon as the app store was released there were some quality console games. Remember Super Monkey Ball? That was superb! I thought, that's it, the iPhone in the new game console. Lots of capcom and sega games were released, even resident evil came out. My fav was Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution.

Then, it all went pear shaped. All Bejeweled based games or annoying clash of the clones type games. That's it now.

The iPhone had it's chance and blew it. Nintendo tried with the mario game but without a controller, the experience sucks!

So it's either Nintendo do their thing and iPhone do their thing. Or iPhone compete with Nintendo and kill their hardware sales with them ultimately being a dev for the iPhone.

So far, Nintendo is doing great though!

They make innovative hardware with superb games (with the odd dud now and again, Virtua Boy, Wii u) but because they take risks we end up with the DS, Wii, 3DS and Switch.

Unlike Apple who release the same old every year, it's new and improved (while actually being pretty much the same).

- Last year A10, now A11
- zzZ
- 8mp camera now 12mp camera
- zzZZZ
- 4" screen now 4.7" screen
- zzzzZZZ
- We have a notch
- zzZ wait ... a notch
- Yes, you can play AR games
- wow!

2 years later, all the AR games are clones of each other, suck and all the fancy tech ends up being used as a device to measure a kitchen floor!

wooo!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
honglong1976 Avatar
113 months ago
It’s smooth enough that it didn’t bother me at the time. I play it on my iPad Pro usually... zero slowdown there.

Im actually confused about what point you’re arguing for. Is it framerates, the iPhone as a legitimate gaming platform or just that you love your Switch?

Don’t post videos of Switch games as evidence there’s something wrong with an iPhone. They all have pros and cons that lead to compromises in framerates or battery, depending of what the goal of the device is. There are more than enough perfectly fine games to legitimise the iPhone as a good gaming platform it isn’t funny.

If you want a pissing contest about framerates, let me just get my PC and we can talk about how ridiculously bad your Switch is in the framerate department.
You love your iPhone! I get it! I love mine too. But it sucks for games. From the moment the app store came out, the games look nice but frame rate wise they suck! Frame rates are important for a good gaming experience. Especially racing games. The iPhone is very powerful, so there is no excuse. It's always been like that and looks to continue.

The iPhone devs focus on pretty games! My videos were showing the alleged smoothness of an iPhone racing game versus one on the switch.

I wish iPhone devs would aim for 30 or 60fps regardless of what it looked like. It would be a much better gaming experience! I gave up with the iPhone as a gaming device a long time ago! I check out the newer games now and again and always come away disappointed!

PC gaming! haha. Seriously, from the moment 3D hardware came out (3DFX onwards) it has been one walking around with a gun game after another! But why did 3DFX change the whole gaming experience? The games went from being choppy and blocky to looking awesome and buttery smooth. Smooth matters! Obviously!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
113 months ago
So much this. Games now are weighing in around 50GB per title and bigger games are coming in close to 100GB per title. To me, iOS seems perfect for mobile and casual games.

I agree mobile is good for casual games but there’s a huge opportunity for full gaming as well which over the years has been fulfilled at times, for example a X-com enemy within came out a few years back and was successfu.

2017 has been a big year showing what mobile gaming could be with games like the witness, GRID coming out (its a 4 year old Xbox 360 game which is a complete port) which shows just what is possible with iOS - and obviously you just have to look at the switch/nvidia shield portable 2 to see even more games that could make the jump to iOS with the developers support - it just needs Apple to pull their finger out and make mfi controllers more visably for sale/supported games easier to search for in the App Store
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
114 months ago
iOS won’t get console quality games unless the phone comes with a controller out of the box. Percentage of users who have a controller is just not enough for anyone to bother porting a real AAA game to iOS.
Real “AAA” games are usually too massive to port to a system like iOS, but real quality PC games like The Witness, Talos, Grid and Portal Knights (not mfi... yet?), amongst others are around.

The real issue with mfi is that the average user doesn’t know what it means, and controller support is never advertised, nor is it searchable on the App Store. I have to use Gamevice’s website to find what’s new because (and this is crazy) it’s the only reliable resource for finding mfi games on the planet when looking for iPhone and iPad mfi games.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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