SGN Launches Another iPhone Game: iBowl

A couple weeks ago I wrote about SGN launching the iGolf game. The game went on to become the most downloaded free iPhone application for at least a day or two. The company has decided to move forward with their iPhone development and has released a successful game which leverages the iPhone accelerometer. That game is called iBowl and it’s a wii-like bowling game.

I downloaded the application and tried it out and it’s not too bad. The only problem with the application is that it isn’t very sensitive when it comes to putting spin on the ball. I have a feeling that the company will improve the sensitivity in their next release. The other interesting feature that I tried out was the “invite your friends” feature. Unfortunately this simply send them an email to check out the game on the iPhone.

Right now the iPhone doesn’t have many social features but once Facebook Connect launches, I think it will be a lot easier to integrate social features into the games. Alternatively, Apple could decide to add their own iPhone profile feature which lets users build their own profiles and connect with their friends through the phone. While this would be competition to Facebook and other social networks, it would be a quick way to enter the social networking space.

Fortunately for Facebook, I don’t think Apple has any plans to launch a social network on any platform, anytime soon. The game is extremely simple and my guess is that they will roll out new features quickly as they did with the previous application. The key to success in software is typically release and iterate as quickly as possible. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s the approach they take on this one.

Check out the iBowl application and let us know what your thoughts are!