Interviews

Firemint talks Flight Control DSi: iPhone version 'cheaper than it should be'

Price hike on Apple's handheld still a possibility

Firemint talks Flight Control DSi: iPhone version 'cheaper than it should be'
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DSi
| Flight Control (DSiWare)

Flight Control is one of the games that made the iPhone what it is. Simple, addictive, inventive, and perfectly suited to an exciting new technology, it took off with very little fanfare at the beginning of last year and spent the next 12 months smashing sales benchmarks like a plane grinding birds through its enormous jet engines of success.

Like several other iPhone casual games before it, Flight Control has set off for the more established shores of Nintendo's DSi to see how it can fare against Mario on a platform whose lineage goes all the way back to the dawn of gaming.

It's a new money game on an old money platform, and we're interested to see whether it manages to have the same impact when it hits DSiWare tomorrow.

We threw a few questions Firemint's way to get its take on how the iPhone and DSi versions of Flight Control compare, why the DSi version costs more, and what the company has in store.

Firemint community manager Alexandra Peters was good enough to answer.

Pocket Gamer: First off, can you give us the story of how you came up with the idea for Flight Control?

AP: Flight Control started as a holiday project for our CEO, Rob Murray. While the rest of us were taking a break from working on Real Racing, Rob wanted to explore some theories he had about the process of game development.

He really liked the iPhone touchscreen and had been thinking about drawing and painting with your finger, and brainstorming some exciting professions that could provide a good setting.

He read about how air traffic controllers have an incredibly stressful job, but they all love it, and everything started to fall into place from there.

Why did you decide to port Flight Control to the DSi?

The DSi touchscreen and stylus offer a similar interface to the iPhone touchscreen and finger, and through DSiWare we can also easily get our games to players via the internet, similar to the App Store, so it was a really natural next step for Flight Control.

How does this version compare with the iPhone version?

We're introducing a brand new map, called 'Windy'. It's quite topical given the blizzards that have been shutting down airports in the Northern hemisphere this winter, because it's set in a snowy airport where runways are shut down and reopen depending on the direction of the prevailing wind.

So the next time your flight is delayed because of snow and you're sitting at the airport wondering what to do with your spare time, you can whip out your DSi and take control (sort of)!

Will players of the DSi version be able to share a leaderboard with players of the iPhone version?

No, we don’t have online leaderboards on the DSiWare version of Flight Control. However, you can play multiplayer games between two Nintendo DSi handhelds.

At 500 Nintendo Points it's quite a bit more expensive than the 59p iPhone version. Does this reflect a higher quality game, or the simply the different marketplace?

We originally launched Flight Control at a "Grand Opening Sale" introductory price, intending to increase the price later because we think it's worth much more than 59p (particularly once you think about it in terms of how many hours you spend playing it).

However, Flight Control became such a massive hit so quickly after launch that it felt wrong to put the price up at that point, even though we added a lot more content to the original game.

So the iPhone version is still cheaper than it should be, rather than the DSiWare version being more expensive. We've been considering putting the price up on the iPhone version, that's definitely still a possibility.

You've already revealed that Flight Control is coming to iPad. Do you plan to release it on any other platforms - Wii, for example?

Anything's possible!

Quite aside from its own success, Flight Control has arguably created a new genre of casual game. Any more like that up your sleeve?

Firemint is all about creating games that are fun, fresh and addictive. We've been taking our time with our next games to make sure we get them just right - we're not interested in pumping out lots of derivative games quickly, and we've thrown away plenty or prototypes that just didn't have that Firemint magic.

It's a pretty tall order to create a whole new genre, but we'll certainly have a shot at doing it twice!

Thanks to Alex for her time.
Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.