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Where have all the iOS games gone?

minotaurproject.co.uk

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Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#21

Post by wmil »

eludwig wrote: post #3

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?

The market may never sort it out. Apple doesn't need to fix the app market to make money, and they're really the only one who can.

So unless they start allowing third party stores, nothing will change.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#22

Post by nostrademons »

eludwig wrote: post #3

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?

Usually it takes one turn or so of the technology cycle. Basically the market is poisoned as long as it's too competitive for customers to really differentiate between alternatives. Developers realize this, and stop paying attention to the market. Adjacent technologies (eg. iOS platform libraries, hardware capabilities, backend systems, market penetration) continue to improve, but nobody notices their improvement because everybody's given up on the space as unprofitable. Eventually somebody combines 2-3 of these new emerging technologies together in a way that makes a big difference to consumers, their growth rate starts to look like a hockey-stick, and they get bought for a billion dollars or so (if they weren't already in a big company). Then people start paying attention again, you get another gold rush, etc.

We went through this with the web between 2000-2004. All the money-oriented folks gave it up for dead with the dot-com crash, a number of tinkerers started to move in and play with it, and eventually we ended up with the GMail/GoogleMaps/Flickr/Facebook/YouTube/Reddit/AJAX/Rails explosion around 2004-2005. So usually 3-4 years.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#23

Post by zepto »

buserror wrote: post #17

Weird, I was a die hard mac developer (since 1984), and I immediately stopped when iOS came out with the app store. Like, stopped /dead/. 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, th…

Weird - so you were uniquely position to capitalize on the growth period, but because you predicted that it would ebb a decade later, you decided not to take part?

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#24

Post by retromario »

Yeah it's a challenging market.

Just to add another data point, we're small indie (games) developer, we spent over a year on our first title with very little marketing budget and these are our sales figures from our launch: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YacineSalmi/20160519/273030/E...

In short, decent sales but not enough to recoup our costs. Still, we never expected that we would hit gold on the first try. I think to be as sustainable on iOS you either have a successful niche product or a collection of product, with each release building a further revenue stream.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#25

Post by archagon »

fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. 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…

The context is that this is Jeff Minter's blog. His iOS games have received high acclaim over the years, especially early on in the App Store.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#26

Post by diziet »

fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. 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…

The sentiment is totally right -- especially if you take other countries into account. The numbers you mentioned are pretty far off for US -- a typical rank 200 game in iPhone earns around $4000-6000 or so per day, but worldwide we can expect the top 100 app to earn around 100k / day on both platforms, and the top 200 app earns roughly half of that.

This is wonderful because this kind of revenue can sustain a lot of companies and studios -- and it does not take ad revenue models into account.

This is after apple/android 30% cut.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#28

Post by Lerc »

fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. 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…

I can't help but note that the only game in the top 200 that is not "Free" is Minecraft.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#29

Post by st3v3r »

fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. 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…

"I hear this myth"

With it happening to more and more developers, you can't really call it a myth. You can say that maybe their stuff wasn't really that good, or that they're an outlier, but you can't call it a myth.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#30

Post by buserror »

zepto wrote: post #23
buserror wrote: post #17

Weird, I was a die hard mac developer (since 1984), and I immediately stopped when iOS came out with the app store. Like, stopped /dead/. 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, th…

Weird - so you were uniquely position to capitalize on the growth period, but because you predicted that it would ebb a decade later, you decided not to take part?

Yes, because I'm an engineer, not a gambler or a marketer. In that time, I also saw OSX become more and more iOS like, with fisher-price grade APIs replacing old, working ones, etc.

Quite frankly I still compile my old stuff now and then, but I have no regrets leaving it all for the hipsters to fight over.

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