Videogame makers racing to develop for iPads

“It's going to be a really powerful handheld game console,” said Asbjoern Soendergaard, founder and chief executive officer of Tactile Entertainment. “It's going to be an awesome gaming experience.”

Soendergaard's Denmark-based company is building a pet simulation game for the iPhone called “Pocket Creatures” and he said the iPad will allow the game developers to add “features that we only thought we could a year ago.”

The iPad's larger screen, rich graphics and processing power has videogame and application developers around the world racing to put the final touches on programs for the iPad in time for when it hits the stores next month.

Free and paid applications for the iPhone — more than 150,000 to date — helped make the smartphone a smash hit and developers are hoping for similar success with the iPad, which goes on sale in the United States on April 3 and in nine other countries at the end of the month.

“We're very excited about the iPad because it gives us more room to play,” said Brian Meehan, the head of worldwide product development at Sourcebits, a company focused on mobile applications and gaming with offices in Atlanta and Bangalore, India.

“It's got a larger screen obviously and more CPU,” Meehan said of the iPad's central processing unit, what Tactile's Soendergaard described as the “power under the hood.”

Besides games, one of Sourcebits most successful products is “Knocking Live Video,” which allows iPhone owners to share live video with each other and has attracted over 750,000 users in just three months.

Soendergaard said the iPad is “different from the iPhone where you have your personal apps” and predicted it will be “a family device, a shared device.

“On the multi-player side it's going to be really exciting,” he said. “Maybe you can play board games on it.”

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