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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?

#171

Post by chongli »

iofj wrote: post #126
CydeWeys wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a lifelong gamer who's entered a bit of a rut these past few years. I would love to pay to play great apps on my phone. But I don't have the slightest clue as to how to find them. The top grossing lists are all complete F2P junk, and there's nothing close to the cottage industry that's built up around PC and console gaming. Every time I try to go look up good mobile games I get hit with lots of dodgy top-10 compi…

Actually if that's what you want I'd advise you to buy a windows 10 tablet. They run old (and gog.com) games and come with decent mouse emulation and actually last 4-5 hours on battery. Taking games like Spelunky on a 400 gram tablet with you for on the train/plane is nice. Even something like Civ 4 is playable.

Just curious: how the heck do you play Spelunky on a touchscreen? That game is hard enough on keyboard or gamepad, I can't imagine playing it on a touch screen with any degree of success.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#172

Post by astrodust »

jpeg_hero wrote: post #78

Apple needs to move the "standard price" from 0.99 one time download -> 0.99 per year Delete app to unsubscribe Remove 0.99 one time pricing $5.00 minimum one time download price

The last thing we need is little apps you never use nibbling away at your bank account.

Uninstalling things you use on extremely rare occasions is ridiculous. If I play something I want to keep the high score, etc. even if I never really use it. I'm not paying for that privilege.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#173

Post by shimfish »

cageface wrote: post #121
jarjoura wrote: post #107

How is it that Sony PS4/Vita stores can sell these same indie games for $20 a pop? Sony pushes these games hard and gives every one of them a fair amount of free marketing. They also celebrate their game developers by writing about them on their blogs and press-releases. The Apple App store in its current iteration is just mentally exhausting. Everytime I open it up I'm presented with a new grid of app icons and no c…

Apple has fantastically bungled the management of their app store. It could have been a lively and creative ecosystem of indie developers but instead it's just a trash pile of exploitative junk. They will pay the price for their negligence as apps become less and less of a differentiator between their extremely expensive phones and much cheaper but equally capable Android devices. I believe we're seeing this already.…

...which is why they just introduced subscription pricing for productivity apps.

This may, or may not, make a big difference for serious apps on the iPad.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#174

Post by joelrunyon »

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…

Not game-related, but in the "app utility" space, there's still a lot of room to grow if you're creative and can actually build tools that enhance people's lives. We've done 6 figures the last couple years on that alone.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#175

Post by cousin_it »

coralreef wrote: post #88
kbenson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I understand your position. The iOS platform has probably made more indie dev millionaires than any other platform in history. I think the assertion is something along the lines of that being possible because more indie devs are on that platform than ever existed before. Sure, there's a lot that made it big, but so many are in the pool that it's still a relatively minuscule chance.

I suppose that makes logical sense. But I don't know of any platforms or markets where the proportion of risk to reward is much better. And if that opportunity was much better, economics dictates that it eventually would draw in more competition until risk-reward became par with any other market. No free lunches out there.

Most people enter game development because of passion rather than risk-reward. So the market is distorted and will stay that way.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#176

Post by animal531 »

coralreef wrote: post #88
kbenson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I understand your position. The iOS platform has probably made more indie dev millionaires than any other platform in history. I think the assertion is something along the lines of that being possible because more indie devs are on that platform than ever existed before. Sure, there's a lot that made it big, but so many are in the pool that it's still a relatively minuscule chance.

I suppose that makes logical sense. But I don't know of any platforms or markets where the proportion of risk to reward is much better. And if that opportunity was much better, economics dictates that it eventually would draw in more competition until risk-reward became par with any other market. No free lunches out there.

The whole point of the article is the the proportion of risk to reward is non-existent on the platform.

The unlucky developer will LOSE money by releasing their apps. The average developer might break even or make a ridiculously small amount. Only at the very top/lucky end will you get projects (that due to social media, word of mouth or just random luck) that nets between decent to good money.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#177

Post by ino »

makecheck wrote: post #114

I recently tried for about 10 minutes to find a game that met my criteria, using the iOS version of the App Store. I wasn’t asking for much (at least, so I thought): I wanted a game that could be purchased once (no In-App Purchases), and I wanted a particular category. The search was practically futile; every single match was In-App Purchases. I even decided to stop caring about the category and it was the same. The…

There are games like those you're looking for but they use In-app purchases (IAP):

Games with ads and that are incomplete, where you purchase the "complete game with no ads" with a single purchase.

So it's like a demo that you upgrade to full version.

The problem is that because there's no "demo" functionality in the app store, they get labeled as games with IAP which turns many people, me including, away.

Before IAP, there were Free and Full versions of the same game (with and without ads and other perks), like Angry Birds and others.

If they made a "demo" category where the game has ads and fewer levels, or limited play time that you could upgrade to full game without ads, I'd be much happier as a dev and as a consumer.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#178

Post by jawngee »

kefka_p wrote: post #123
zepto wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what OSX APIs you saw being replaced?

While not the person to whom the question was directed, I'd offer that the move from QuickTime to AVFoundation (taken directly from iOS) & friends (CoreMedia, CMIO) was one such example. Core Media I/O was released a few years ago to replace vdig and/or sequence grabber IIRC. Despite being released a few years back, the only documentation available for CMIO is a sample project. AVFoundation was limited in terms of co…

Are you kidding?

AVFoundation is in nearly every way superior to QuickTime, minus the fact that you couldn't make ref movies with it until El Capitan.

QuickTime's API sucks in comparison.

Source: I write a video editor for macOS.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#179

Post by amelius »

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…

> My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years.

This statement does not say much, because in the worst case, that's $100.000 divided by two equals $50.000, which is less than average wage for programmers.

In the best case, you make a pretty good salary :)

Anyway, I just wish Apple would disclose some numbers about app sales. There's one thing worse than government regulating a market, and that is a company regulating it.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#180

Post by gutnor »

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?

After 20 years working on the same platform maybe he didn't want to go into that fight, knowing the eventual outcome anyway.

I have seen that quite often with my ex-colleague. Some people have been working on the company for ages, solving issues in the same business realm and just at the beginning of the next big thing in the company, they decide it is time to go someplace else.

I used to think they were just afraid they could not compete, or were technically rusty. With many more years in the industry, I understand that the most likely reason is that they didn't want to commit to another round of the same bullshit with new shiny tech on top of it and they simply needed some fresh air.

We are lucky to be employed in an industry where you can still say fuck it and find something else to do instead.

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