Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 255 posts

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#131

Post by mananaysiempre »

flenserboy wrote: post #26

A wedge for developers looking to boost Linux: make small, quality games that distribution makers can be convinced to include. MicroSoft did this with Minesweeper and Solitaire, and far more people than you might think demanded Windows not because it could do the tasks they wanted, but because it had the simple recreations they desired and had grown used to. The best way to crowd out the ad-laden and micro-transactio…

IIRC the official history says Minesweeper and Solitaire were both included as user-education devices—Minesweeper for teaching left- vs right-clicking and Solitaire for some other thing (drag&drop?). Not sure if the official history is true (wasn’t Freecell distributed as a Win32s test app?).

Also, if anything I’d say the old, write-your-Xorg.conf-by-hand Linux desktop included more of these than the modern glossy one: Chromium B.S.U., Tux Racer, GNOME Robots (still in gnome-games I think), there were a ton of those. As well as xneko, xeyes and so on. Whereas on Windows you needed to look on computer magazine CDs and such to find the equivalent.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#132

Post by justeleblanc »

rchaud wrote: post #110

The mobile gaming landscape could have been completely different if Rovio charged a flat $10 for Angry Birds all those years ago. I'm sure they've made significantly more money by going freemium with ads, but in doing so they also poisoned the well of mobile gaming. Everything now is Pay to Win. Despite there being genuinely impressive games on mobile (Asphalt racing for one), the mechanics of how the game actually w…

It's not one company's decision ten years ago that shaped that whole behemoth of a market.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#133

Post by stuckinhell »

Applejinx wrote: post #102
stuckinhell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be happening with many works of fiction. They can't compete so they remake or redo things with modern audiences sensibilities. These usually fail because people liked those works of fiction for their historical sensibilities. Even Roald Dahl is having his works censored and rewritten. I believe its due to reaching "Peak Content".

Not so much peak content as minimum friction. If things are more localized, you can build up more momentum as a home team kind of competitor and gain skills. If you have to compete on an even playing field with everybody else in the world from the word go, it wildly distorts things and produces really weird results. It's still optimized, but it's optimized for a mass audience that is SO huge, and applies more pressur…

When you are competing with your own greatest hits, I think that exemplifies "peak content". People have so much content, they don't even need or want new things from your. They are satisfied, and have enough.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#134

Post by tombert »

JohnFen wrote: post #126
tombert wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm right up there with you. I will admit that paying like $15 four years ago for Stardew Valley on iOS felt a bit weird, but $15 is pretty cheap considering that it's the full game . It doesn't make you buy gems every twenty minutes, or watch an ad every time you plant six crops, or spam your friend to share your status for some extra gold. It's a full game, and you pay a nominally-high-but-ultimately-reasonable pri…

$15 is a screaming deal for a game like Stardew Valley.

Yeah, honestly, for the amount of content you get in that game, it's insane. That's not even taking into account the fact that it still gets free updates.

It's definitely my go-to recommendation when people ask about good iOS games.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#135

Post by JohnFen »

falcolas wrote: post #74
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should really call out Apple and Google for mismanagement here. Imagine if there was the option to play a game for an hour as a free trial, and then buy the game instead of having to plunk down $4.99 sight-unseen - or having your game in the Free category with the microtransaction shovelware around it. If I'm the developer who wants users to have any semblance of try-before-you-buy, the free category (with…

Games could still do this (via a single one-time "microtransaction"), and some do this. But standard microtransactions are stupidly profitable, enough to tempt most devs. And, frankly, the gaming industry at large has proven that paying up front does not prevent microtransactions. Even in mobile games.

But the pool has been poisoned already. If I see that an app uses microtransactions, I won't install that app -- so I'd never even know that the microtransaction was to purchase the game outright.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#136

Post by archon1410 »

stuckinhell wrote: post #39
cld8483 wrote: post #11

They can't compete with what they once were, so they bury the past. I suspect many industries are like this. If classic movies were played alongside new Hollywood releases, the new movies would probably be choked out. Accordingly, Disney will even restrict the availability of their old movies on DVD. They can't stand competing with their former great selves.

This seems to be happening with many works of fiction. They can't compete so they remake or redo things with modern audiences sensibilities. These usually fail because people liked those works of fiction for their historical sensibilities. Even Roald Dahl is having his works censored and rewritten. I believe its due to reaching "Peak Content".

[dead]

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#137

Post by mysterydip »

tensor wrote: post #58
petepete wrote: post #9

It's almost as if when given the choice people prefer games without microtransactions, even if they're older and have fewer features/powerups etc.

I won't play any iOS game with either ads or with a "free but micro-transaction model." If you look in the pay up front category on the app store, there are very very few games. It's too bad.

That's because games where you pay once get dropped so far down in downloads compared to "free" ones. I've had people tell me to my face "your ($1) game costs too much" while sipping their daily $5 latte.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#138

Post by kachurovskiy »

rchaud wrote: post #110

The mobile gaming landscape could have been completely different if Rovio charged a flat $10 for Angry Birds all those years ago. I'm sure they've made significantly more money by going freemium with ads, but in doing so they also poisoned the well of mobile gaming. Everything now is Pay to Win. Despite there being genuinely impressive games on mobile (Asphalt racing for one), the mechanics of how the game actually w…

I'm willing to bet that the wast majority of Angry Bird users (including myself) didn't have a payment method on file at the time of install, much less would agree to spend $10 on it.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#139

Post by permo-w »

cld8483 wrote: post #11

They can't compete with what they once were, so they bury the past. I suspect many industries are like this. If classic movies were played alongside new Hollywood releases, the new movies would probably be choked out. Accordingly, Disney will even restrict the availability of their old movies on DVD. They can't stand competing with their former great selves.

I agree with the sentiment, but is Disney a good example? has Disney not recently had a pretty strong run of form critically and commercially?

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#140

Post by amanaplanacanal »

gspencley wrote: post #85
hedora wrote: post #45

We need copyright reform for cases like this. In particular, copyright infringement damages should be capped at a small multiple of lost sales. That way, when a copyrighted work goes of market (or is no longer sold at a reasonable mass-market rate), there would be no penalty for redistributing it. (Derivative works might need to be handled differently, since the above effectively invalidates the GPL, though not Apach…

I have a nuanced take on this. Say, hypothetically, that I am the creator of a song, book, video game or whatever. One day, for purely selfish reasons that I don't need others to understand, I decide that I no longer want to offer my creation to others. Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offer…

Under the original copyright act of 1790 the last Calvin and hobbes would be entering the public domain at the end of this year. That seems about right to me.
Post reply on HN