Say goodbye to your iPad with Disney's new toys

A new free iPad app from Disney may revolutionise the way we think about toys and the way that children play with them. Children have an amazing capacity to imagine new worlds with only a cardboard cut-out and a piece of string for help, but Appmates uses toy cars and an iPad app to create a game that combines races, missions, and simple open-ended exploration.

The toys are based on Pixar’s movie Cars 2. Four characters will be sold : Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater, Finn McMissile and Holley Shiftwell, costing $20 for a pair. The app itself is free to download and, when opened, reveals the world of Radiator Springs.

When one of the cars is placed on the iPad screen, the app recognises which character it is and responds appropriately. So when the Tow Mater, the tow-truck, comes across a broken down car on the screen, the car asks for a tow back to the garage. And when British character Holley Shiftwell is on the iPad, she says things like “You don’t get any tumbleweeds in London.”

Players can explore Radiator Springs, picking up hubcaps which they can then exchange for upgrades to their characters, such as horns or headlights.

There are several racetracks where players can compete against other characters simply by moving their car across the screen as the track moves beneath them. The app responds to every move by tracking the position of three sensors on the bottom of each toy. There are also cleverly positioned mirrors that reflect, for example, light from the app up through the toy to illuminate the headlights, which come on when the game is set to nighttime.

Disney is releasing both app and toys on 1 October, and is obviously eyeing up the Christmas market.

The strengths are that Disney can release upgrades to the app that provide new racetracks, missions and new areas of the world to explore. That would help keep the game exciting for little minds that might get bored easily. They can also expand the character list, selling different toys that kids can collect. And once the concept has been proven, it’s easy to generalise the technology to other franchises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quDUzyFqQwY

This is the first of several Appmates toys that Disney plans to release. They also plan to release an app that allows children to sing along with their favourite Disney songs.

The Appmates concept is reminiscent of Nintendo’s Wii, which started the trend in video games of using a range of physical game controllers to play video games.

The negatives? IPad owners might want to invest in a screen protector, lest little grubby hands get grit in the wheels. It would be terrible to see a rerun of when the Wii first came out, when some overly enthusiastic players lost a grip on the controller and smashed it through their expensive flat screen TVs . Cracked iPad screens seem unlike, unless you have an incredibly strong five year old, but scratches would be a drag. Regardless, iPad owners should also be prepared to never see their iPad again!