Steel Media - Quality index
Pocket Gamer ranks iPhone games by goodness rather than sales.
For Immediate Release
London, UK – 5th November 2010 – It's not too hard to see which are the best selling games and apps on iTunes, but what about the highest quality examples?
Of course, Apple does provide aggregated reader reviews alongside apps, but at present you can't specifically search by them. Besides, when you take into account the somewhat partisan nature of most reviewers, plus the growth of dedicated review / promotion services and black PR campaigns, the resulting scores can offer rather more shades of grey than black and white.
Fortunately, there's a host of independent critical sites out there whose writers test literally hundreds of these digital delights and who make it their life's work to sift through the apps in order to provide a balanced view. Here, though, lies a different set of problems: you can hardly be expected to check around the leading sites and what happens if your chosen reviewer has an off-day?
The ideal solution would be a centralised site that aggregates the collective wisdom of the reviewers to provide a definitive one-stop shop...and that's precisely what Steel Media - publisher of the Pocket Gamer website - thought when they put together the Quality index
( www.qualityindex.com ).
This meta-site trawls the web for game and app reviews from the world’s most respected online and print sources, including the likes of 148Apps, Pocket Gamer, Macworld, IGN, Slide to Play and TiPB, then collates them together, applies its own magic formula, and ultimately outputs a single definitive Qi score for each iPhone title, as well as providing links to all the individual reviews for those who want more detail.
Naturally, these listings are live and subject to constant change as new releases and new credible reviews emerge, but in order to provide a regular marker of the current critical zeitgeist, the site will be rounding up the best of the iPhone games and apps released each month and providing a definitive Qi Top 10, the first of which for October 2010 is outlined below...
Qi Top 10 iPhone games October 2010
POS GAME NAME PUBLISHER QUALITY INDEX 1 Cut the Rope Chillingo 9.1 2 Linkoidz Retro Dreamer 9.1 3 EVAC Hexage.net 8.9 4 Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus Gameloft 8.9 5 Galaxy on Fire 2™ Fishlabs 8.7 6 Game Dev Story Kairosoft 8.6 7 Samurai II: Vengeance Madfinger Games 8.5 8 Age of Zombies™ Halfbrick Studios 8.4 9 Angry Birds Halloween Rovio Mobile 8.4 10 Kiko: The Last Totem Fabulapps 8.4
Qi Top 10 iPhone apps to October 2010
POS GAME NAME PUBLISHER QUALITY INDEX 1 Mario Batali Cooks! High Five Labs 9.5 2 Calvetica Calendar Mysterious Trousers 9.5 3 Cadremploi Adenclassifieds 9.0 4 MasterChef Academy US Shine 9.0 5 Nike+ GPS Nike 8.9 6 Dragon Search Nuance Communications 8.9 7 CineXPlayer NXP Software 8.9 8 Epic Citadel Epic Games 8.4 9 iSwing Golf News Marie-Louise Scotet 8.3 10 Direct Star Bollore Media 8.3
N.B. The monthly games chart is based on titles released and reviewed in the last month. The apps chart is based on titles released and reviewed over the last three months. Hence, this is not a cumulative chart and earlier released titles may have higher scores.
Whilst the Top 10 does share some of the most popular titles from the App Store like Cut the Rope, Angry Birds Halloween, and Galaxy on Fire 2, there's also a host of smaller titles such as Game Dev Story, Linkoidz, and Evac that have slipped under the radar and would otherwise be lost amidst the 300,000 apps on offer. The apps chart, meanwhile, is dominated by celebrity chefs, sports, and some natty organisational titles.
We'll be providing an updated listing each and every month, together with a round-up of the year. For all the up-to-date information on which games, apps, and publishers are reviewing best, head on over to the Quality index now.
Know of a great reviews site that should be included?
If you own or know a reputable apps review site that should be added to the Qi, then pop along to our instructions for getting listed.
About Steel Media
Steel Media is a leading mobile consumer technology publisher based in the UK. Headed up by Chris James and with a team boasting over 50 years of experience in consumer and contract publishing, the company currently publishes Europe's biggest mobile and handheld gaming website PocketGamer.co.uk, the leading mobile games industry portal PocketGamer.biz and consumer friendly mobile entertainment site PocketPicks.co.uk. Steel Media also runs the iPhone Alliance and Smartphone Alliance advertising networks, syndicates content to mobile operators and handset manufacturers and provides a range of editorial, design and other contract publishing services to a number of leading blue chip brands.
For further information on the Pocket Gamer network or Steel Media, contact MD Chris James.
Kind regards,
Richard Brown
Staff Writer
Quality index
Web: http://iphone.qualityindex.com
Twitter: @qualityindex
Email: richard.brown@steelmedia.co.uk