Just to confirm what Fishing Cactus started with R.O.G.E.R project using Kinect. Here is an interesting discussion on PublicSector.com.

In discussions with researchers, developers, and customers, they report at least four broad areas of health/medicine within which technologies like Kinect can be applied:

(1) Physical therapy and rehabilitation: As described above, your device can verify who you are, measure what you’re doing, and connect you to your doctor(s) in various ways. There are probably positive effects of this technology on medical conditions that we can’t quite envision yet; One early “success story” in this regard involves Kinect and child autism.

(2) Telemedicine: There are many ways in which medicine can be performed remotely using something like Kinect. Features like the ability to interface with other video chat platforms like Windows Live Messenger allow general hands-free communications while walking around a room – or even the outdoors.

(3) Medical training and education: Everyone knows that doctors go through lots of instruction before they become “doctors.” Technology like Xbox and Kinect can be used not just for remote learning, but also to display virtual human patients that are interacted with through motion-sensing. Virtual teachers can take students through a digital gross anatomy course (no formaldahyde, either).

(4) Neurocogitive and psychological practices: Whether it’s the ability to visualize and analyze brain images taken through Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), or to perform group psychological therapy with some people with the counselor in person and some remote, there are immense possibilities here.

Full article can be found at the following URL: http://sectorpublic.com/2010/11/xbox-kinect-applications-to-health-and-medicine/

After 2,000,000 apps downloaded and more than 180,000 sold: SHIFT, that was initially developed by Armor Games as Flash game and adapted by Fishing Cactus on the iPhone in 2009 is now making its entrance on the PlayStation®Store: an improved minis version, available soon on the PlayStation®Network.

As part of an on-going process with Armor Games, we are currently in charge of the technical transition and enrichment of the title, which will be available on PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable) and PlayStation®3 through the PlayStation®Network.

This PlayStation®Network version called SHIFT extended will offer no less than double the content of the iPhone version and some new gameplay mechanics. It will definitly stand out from the other puzzle games out there thanks to its significant amount of content, its spotless realisation and its unique gameplay mechanics (you already know them if you read this blog). We expect to release the game before the end of this year.

Last but not least Shift will be published by Zallag. More info about the content of the game very soon (and trailer as well)!

Minim has been updated with a major fix on a bug preventing the game from running on iOS4.0 on 3G.

All should be fixed now.

For the last 2 years, I’m invited at the game design and project management school in Valenciennes, Supinfogame. I’m invited to attend the end of the year jury where students who are graduating present their prototype to a board of game industry professionnals. To give a little bit of context, each of the student has to present a game idea in their first year. At the start of the 2nd year, 5 to 6 of the ideas are selected to be projects developed for a total of 9 months. You can see some of the old projects here.

Students are in groups and can ask for external help (artists, programmers). Not to mention that they have no fund to do so (looks like a real indie studio). When getting external help, they are often working with professionnals who have some spare time, amateurs or team up with other, more dedicated, schools.

As an ex-student from the Supinfogame (I graduated 8 years ago, oooh growing very old), I’m amazed to see the number of growing and known people attending this jury. This is partly due to the increasing quality of projects presented. This year I’ve been really amazed by the quality of productions. Some concepts were very innovative and some of them were really more than prototypes, near finalized products.

Students presented us 6 prototypes: “Le marionnettiste” (The Puppeteer), “When Gods Play”, “Contre-Jour”, “Blork”, “The Uncanny Fish Hunt” and finally “Big Bang”.

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A good news for RollOut, our last iPhone game released about 3 three weeks ago has been selected by AppModo as one of the three best games of June on the Apple AppStore.

After being Top#1 Paid App in the French AppStore, let’s now hope we’ll get the same success in the US. Spread the word and in the meantime, here’s the link to the news: http://appmodo.com/24859/3-best-games-june/.

Powerball is almost here! I guess it’s time to start showing some of the goods then

No set release date yet, but you should be able to spin this baby very soon!

More screenshots coming, stay tuned!

We’re getting bigger, so we’re stocking up on ultra-uber-super servers space for all our techie needs…

…but let’s face it, it’s waaaay funnier to use this to store people!