"Apples platform is destroyed"

http://translate.google.com/transla...uer/3168/er-angry-birds-spillenes-idol-vinner

Sorry for the crappy google translation. Interesting read though.

 

Apple can fix that, for example:
- Supress App/game that have been unsold for X month. ( For now they are still fighting android with big numbers instead of quality )
- Push a random game in the front page of the store. It will smooth the delta of sales between "Apple featured" and other...
Of course game picked randomly will need to fill some criteria to avoid having crap in the front page ( game need to be sold 100 times mini for example )

They can make this kind of decision whenever they want, and wait any change in the market before acting.

 

Trip is just confused by the ecosystem of the app store. He's says things aren't working like they should be what he means is they aren't working like he wants them to work.

One unforeseen side effect is that the app store rewards apps that are outstanding and unique. In the end, is that the games on the app store evolve quickly and keep getting better. None of the other mobile platforms come close to the number of superior app.

 

He's also unhappy that big publishers don't call the shots and artificially control game prices by controlling supply. He apparently does not like the democratization of game publishing.

 

I've bought an iPhone/iPad and many apps for those devices and as i've heard i'm not the only one, so it can't be this bad. The only thing is i don't inform myself via the iTunes/App Store and instead use some in my opinion reasonable websites and suggestions from other people or developers i'm already familiar with. I might be in a minority but that's also the way my friends are doing it. Interestingly my apps also differ mostly from those top listed ones. Dunno if i am interested in adventure games, i simply know what kind of adventures there are available for a certain platform and then i can buy them if they are good and i want to/have some time. Obviously i won't drive any sales for, geee, we've invested so much effort and money products if i don't like them, just like on any other system as well. Uhm, what was the point again?

This guy for sure doesn't travel a lot to different places in the world or has an idea of software patents.

 

While I don't agree with a lot of his points, I do agree that the platform is practically destroyed.

The price of apps went into a free slide, and because of this most consumers now aren't willing to spend more than a $1 on an app and many won't purchase anything that isn't a free.

It's very hard to make a living off $1 apps, UNLESS all you're doing is throwing out a crappy app a month trying to make a quick buck. Which is practically all that happens now. The majority of apps on the app store are 1month quick jobs. There is no love, dedication, creativity, polish etc, just the desire to make a quick dollar.

I do find it amusing that most (not all) people will refuse to pay $5-10 for a good app, considering how much they are forking out for the phone.

 

I think the problem is people are not looking for big investments they just want a quick diversion, they are paying for 10- 30 minutes of entertainment on their lunch break or whilst travelling, its all perception, $10 sounds like a lot for something you may only play once.

 

I don't feel like the platform is really destroyed.
But apples lazyness on offering demo capabilities like WP7 / XBLA always did has serious negative impacts on games that want to sell at more than $1. Lite is nice but lite is a flood machine, one that should never have existed, and at least for the time being IAP is no solution either as it does not work on iTunes and you can't offer 2 versions of the same app on its app page with the free demo + one with the iap included at its price, you have to use the Lite duality

I agree though on the trash flooding and apple has definitely started moving against it (release of exactly the same thing with just a different theme image and alike - or lite floods of the same to gain virtual exposure by mass)

 

Prices are going back up, and people are downloading more apps than ever: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/11...downloads-and-average-sales-price-increasing/. Kind of the opposite of "destroyed".

--Eric

 

The informations there are pretty nothing saying though and thats for the two simple reasons:

1. The more apps per device does not take into account fremiums
2. The price rebound does not seperate iPhone / iTouch and iPad which makes a major difference cause iPad apps always were significantly more pricey and the user attitude on ipad also is a totally different one than on iPhone / iTouch when it comes to paying more.

Thats like saying that people download more games on steam than ever before - sure not a problem now that Steam has introduced F2P titles including their own TF2

 

IDK.... all the games I've seen that actually have made money looked like they deserved it.

I can't think of a single piece of shovelware in that pile.

Anybody else feel that the market isn't rewarding good games made well?

 

were you in a cryo chamber?
Or how comes you missed iFart?

 

I don't think that article holds any merit.

It's like saying 'Theres 20 billion .exe's available on the internet for PC, but only X amount of money going through PC software sales so we divide that money by the number of .exe's on the web.... and that much per developer".... which is silly. To assume every developer wants to make 100g on their app is not true. Every app going onto iOS needs to go through the app store, so there isn't any place for 'pure hobbyist' or 'just for fun' devs to post stuff on like personal websites. I'd bet you the majority of apps on the app store do no expect to make any significant amount of money. The developers who are for profit and want to make money seem to be doing well, or atleast in the process of growing and gaining a fanbase as far as I can tell.

 

I do think there should be a new category called HQ, which only has the contents of apps apple has previously featured. This would give people an incentive to polish their turds so to speak. Far to many people release a bunch of crap every single day. Hundreds of rubbish apps appear daily.

I find it insulting something I've slaved over which has a high production value and was expensive to make (not all indies bang out a game with ms paint textures) sits next to iFart 10 with ms paint graphics and a rotating glitchy sprite.

It doesn't really make much sense. It instead forces me into also making shovelware to compete, probably with adverts a well. Everyone loses.

 

Is iFart a badly-made product, or merely a trite one that sold well?

 

Its badly made trite with lots of clones. So many clones apple started deleting them. I don't mean iFart literally in the sense of that app, but the attitude and clones of shovelware games in general.

 

I understand that you're making that distinction.

What I'm trying to get at is this: iFart arrived and was successful. So, one can presume that it, albeit trite, filled a market niche, no different than the same niche for silly gag gifts that people buy in gas stations- they aren't just there to look at, people actually buy them. (note that this may just be a cultural curio here in the States; here, if you go into any truck stop, you will see some Really Weird Stuff, heh)

What I doubt is that any of its copiers made money; the niche was filled, unless somebody makes an iFart2 that is, well, more stinky and smelly than the first one. IOW, something that delivers superior-enough value that the market notices.

So, I'll try to make this more clear: in a market where every niche can be addressed by capitalists, and every niche, however trite, corny, pornographic or weird (well, within the constraints of various laws) can be reached, is it fair to say that it's broken, because somebody filled a niche you never even considered?

I mean... when the Big Publishers fund the likes of Rockstar to make games that are deliberately amoral, trite, violent and even disturbing... we're all like, "hey, they're artists, and in a free market, they should be rewarded". But when it's some college kid who writes an App that will make farting noises or whatever, we're like, "whoa, it's totally uncool that something like that is my competition".

I think the problem here is that, well, iFart is not your competition. Shovelware that is vaguely like your gameplay but is poorly polished is your competition. If you can beat them, in terms of features, why don't you charge more and see how the market reacts? I mean, I've read your story; you got in at a good time and monetized via ad revenue, with just one published game.

Just based on Martin's recent post-mortem, it looks to me that if you have something reasonably solid, you can do just fine; Martin didn't do any marketing, he created no buzz, he just got released, got reviewed, got featured and got paid. He's not even in every possible part of the market yet; chances are fairly good that he'll see reasonably good results, for what is, at least in my opinion, his most polished game thus far.

This does not look like a lotto situation to me, but a market that is functioning fairly rationally, unless you can point me to a dozen games released that day that were that good and made zero money.

 

I think you have to stop thinking in conventional business models. People generally want quick to play stuff that easily and casually entertaining for a brief moment of time. If people want a deep experience the buy a XBOX or a PS3 and play that. Look at all the top sellers: cut the rope, angrybirds, canabalt etc all are simple light brief experiences. What you need to do is cut down on volume of the games but make game that do have a high value. Your games should be like little bursts of joy. Also consider splitting your game up in smaller episodes. Do what soaps do have cliffhangers and have people waiting and anticipating for the next episode. Feed you customer with small amounts of great gameplay.

 

That's exactly how I feel about this ecosystem. But then again, there's always that deep, engrossing (yet medium budget) rpg long-shot that pays out. In a nutshell, make your games as fun and as well crafted as you possibly can/ afford/ have time to, regardless of niche/ play time and/ or platform. Something will eventually pop up.

 

You're all banking on quality being the main factor for sales and I love you for it.

I just hope you're right

 

Meh. Consider the source:

* Trip Hawkins jumped ship from Apple before it launched the Mac (and, about 16 years later, the iMac—the rest, as they say, is a cliché.)

* Trip Hawkins co-founded Electronic Arts (with a few million bucks from Sequoia Capital—so there's a link with Unity Tech. there!)

* Trip Hawkins also created the really popular 3DO console platform. (Yes, I'm being sarcastic.)

So... he got one out of three right!

His "$1bn / 250000 apps" calculation is utter bollocks: many of those apps are free! And, yes, some developers get piffling amounts while others do very well indeed—"Angry Birds", anyone?—so the distribution is clearly not going to be evenly spread.

Shockingly, the same holds true for the rest of the entertainment media world: most movies tank. Many TV series never get past the pilot stage. (Hell, most TV show pilots never get made at all!) Of those series that make it to a full series, many fail to get a second.

And it's the same story in the traditional console game industry: most console games do not earn out their costs of production and marketing.

So the App Store is basically no different from anywhere else. Except that you don't need a $[LOTS] license just to get permission to develop for an iPhone or iPad, let alone release for it.

Methinks Trip doth complain too much.

 

I'd like to believe it's the main factor for sure. I've done alright so far by just making things that I think are cool.

Here's a link to another article quoting Trip Hawkins about this stuff that hasn't been run through the google translate meat-grinder: http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ps_as_sony_ngp_is_called_dead_on_arrival.html

In my opinion, Trip and Nintendo's execs can't handle the competition - they'd like to believe that quantity is the enemy, when in fact their own quality just isn't that impressive for the price tag. Search Digital Chocolate's catalog of apps, and it's all pretty derivative. They had a few successes in the first year or two of the app store, and thought they could just keep milking it by releasing re-skinned versions and sequels of the same stuff over and over. From where I'm standing, they made a huge pile of 3D rollercoasters and mini golf games, realized they didn't have any other ideas, and started mouthing off about how the store was broken.

Meanwhile, Nintendo is terrified by the idea of cheap, fun games because they'd rather sell you overpriced, stale games. Their business model is the same as Digital Chocolate's (how many identical "mario karts" and "mario parties" have we seen in the last 10 years?) they just have a much stronger brand. But when you lean on the power of your brand and stop innovating, you end up like Disney about 10 years ago - you close up your animation studio because nobody wants to see another 2d-talking-animal-flick that's not quite as good as last year's... I'm looking at you "Home on the Range".