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I have a game that I made over a 4 day period on iOS and Android. It's not brining in much revenue, but it was a cool challenge. My game isn't really that great, but I haven't touched it in over a year as well as there is no motivation to keep working on it. Once too many bugs start showing up, I'll probably pull it from all 3 app stores.
The amazing thing to me is that at WWDC, Tim Cook (I think that's who announced it) seemed genuinely thrilled that there are over 2,000,000 apps for iOS. So sad and useless. You could hear the barely contained horror of the assembled developers. iOS has become a victim of its own success. I guess the market will eventually sort it out, but when? 2030?
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/993499/16283312/2...
The industry grew a lot - surely driven by the most successful titles, but also for the longer tail of developers. More of the total revenue and earnings are captured by the top 100 publishers -- but still, even compared to 2012 or 2013, the 10000th biggest app is earning more due to the opening of all the new territories.
The game earning model moved from a hits based model, where you launch with lots of hype and reviews and generate a lot of earnings in the initial months to a model where long playing loyal players stick with the game over many months & years and monetize via longer term in app purchases. It's not possible to bring back 2010. We need to be ok with that and learn to engage users over longer timelines.
The truth is there's plenty of us in the middle still. My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. The problem is not that there's no middle ground, it's that the everyone used to get guaranteed downloads, and with the removal of new releases and the never ending flood of apps, 90% of apps will get just about zero downloads after launch nowadays.
But there's still plenty of room for small studios like us who know their target audience and what works on the app store to make a sustainable business. So I'd say top 0.1% for the insane successes that can support hundreds of employees, but for a small studio, just getting in the top 5% can work.
If you're curious about numbers, check thinkgaming.com, to see that the top 200 grossing game is still pulling ~$10K a day on iPhone in the US alone. When you add all countries, tablets, and Android devices, you start to see you don't need a top 10 or even top 100 grossing app to make some serious cash.
So while it has gotten a lot tougher in the app store and it's increasingly difficult for newcomers with no experience to hit it big, there's still very much a thriving middle ground between the insane successes and the utter failures. I suspect that it's not well known is due to the fact that those in similar positions to us don't want to dish out the valuable knowledge they've acquired through years of experience that could only increase the competition.
The amazing thing to me is that at WWDC, Tim Cook (I think that's who announced it) seemed genuinely thrilled that there are over 2,000,000 apps for iOS. So sad and useless. You could hear the barely contained horror of the assembled developers. iOS has become a victim of its own success. I guess the market will eventually sort it out, but when? 2030?
It does seem utterly tone deaf to celebrate this fact at a developer conference but they seem to do it every year.
And honestly developers, individual and companies, are peer pressure driven. As long as others make it a popular platform, they'll develop for it.
Apple, goddamn. You had a potential major gaming platform on your hands – but almost 10 years later, we're stuck with $5-10 CPIs and store that doesn't even try to do anything with the long tail. Just open up Steam sometimes if you wonder how it should've been done.
The reason I could be a Mac Developer was the small pond; There wasn't a LOT of work, but there was enough for good people, and it paid well. On balance I /never/ developed anything for windows, because of the 'tree vs forest' problem : Even if you are REALLY fantastically good, there are so many people on the market that you can't possibly stand out.
And that's why I never even wrote a single iOS app, even tho i was a wiz at ObjC and OSX (Imagine a Classic MacOS dev thrown together with a UNIX wiz, and that's me); it was guaranteed to bring in the 'forest' to OSX as well, and make any 'edge' more or less pointless.
Also, from what I've seen, if anyone comes out with a nice app/game, there's a dozen or more group of people who will throw their dev team at copying it immediately, diluting any hope of revenue. It's these guys business model after all, you just can't win, and it's not like you can defend your IP anyway.
So, 2016, I wonder what took people so long to realize it was all doomed but for a tiny fraction of apps.
The platform cratered with the dominance of pay to win games and the "freemium" model. This allowed the store to be cluttered with junk. I can't shop there, because I'm not sure what I am buying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does seem utterly tone deaf to celebrate this fact at a developer conference but they seem to do it every year.
Why? From Apples standpoint it means developers are continuing to keep iOS popular. And honestly developers, individual and companies, are peer pressure driven. As long as others make it a popular platform, they'll develop for it.
