The iPhone's market is amazing, where else can people grab cheap games from anywhere in the world? How many times on a bus have you been bored out of your mind wishing you had something to do for the next 10 minutes? The target audience is amazing, so naturally everyone wants to get there share of the pie *mmmm pie*. The Australian game developer Firemint recently released an iPhone game called Flight Control which is a simple game where you take the role of a flight controller, (hence the name) whose job is to guide planes with your finger to the appropriate runways, having them avoid crashing into each other. A simple idea that just works in both presentation and gameplay that takes little time to get into.
The most amazing thing about this story is that the sales of the game in the already heavy populated market has already reached 700,000 worldwide purchases, even with the small price of entry of 0.99USD that is still a large slice of the above mentioned pie. The power of the impulse purchase is amazing with Steam doing great things with its famous weekend deals, but it goes to show with a little spark of creativity and the right target audience it's possible to break into the market. Think of all the fantastic flash games that could make a huge splash on the "on-demand" platform? We can all expect to see some great games appearing on the iPhone platform after more developers start to smell the aroma of a certain pastry delight.
I agree, it's a great platform (I do have one myself). And also for Indie Developers, there's a fair chance of creating more complex games, also in 3D. Take Unity Engine for instance, they already provide one-click deployment for iPhone games using their engine.
Impulse purchase is also a good keyword, considering that with the 3.0 operating system (to arrive this summer), developers will be able to provide in-app purchase (for additional levels, gear or whatever you can think of).
It's definately a cool and surprisingly good platform, if you consider that they basically never released any phone before and see how they hit the market...
Steam? :P
rly want to get an iphone dammit!!!
To play css or other games from steam :D
Mmm pie..
So there is the famous piece of the pie and I hope it's Cherries and not Cranberry. So what about it then? Everybody make an iPhone game now and be rich?
Its more along the lines of the market is there, and people are willing.
Right now, 90% of developers working for iPhone can't cover the dev investment with App Store earnings.
It is really hard to make your app visible with 130.000 other apps fighting vs you, so many good apps free, and so low pices.
App Store is (now) just any other real market: Big companies make lots of money because the inverst lots of money. Only lucky or innovative indies make money.
Maybe if the iPhone didn't use such a shoddy platform like xCode and Objective C you'd see a lot more developers actually care. I've seen xCode first hand and I personally cannot figure out how people can even stand to use it for developing anything at all.
After using it I had to ask myself, "What the hell? Is this REALLY it?" Your only other opportunities are using the Unity Engine that allows you to write C# instead of objective-c which is garbage. Has anyone even looked at the syntax for it? It makes me want to puke.
I personally believe the fact that they are using such a terrible platform is a barrier to entry in itself and keeps many programmers from entering the iPhone market. That along with the fact that Apple are money nazis and will charge you an arm and a leg to even enter the filtered app store.
Wow! it's amazing but i still prefer the PC... :P
**** Apple, they still refuse to allow purchases from their internet store in many parts of Europe, especially the new ones and thus if they ignore parts of Europe, they also ignore the rest of the world that is not USA or western Europe.
I was considering getting an ipod touch just for the games , seeing how it basically an iphone without the phone and camera and is quite cheaper.
Its not so popular as a gaming platform but its pretty slick.And god knows my psp is a heavy peace of equipment to carry around if I only use it to listen to MP3s
For me, a 40 dollar game IS an impulse buy. I'm by no means rich, but gaming is one of my main hobbies (as most other people in the site are)
Either way, I want an iphone, but cant afford one (probably due to my unsavvy spending as described above) There's lots of good games, but even with so many I don't think its substantial enough to justify the pricetag for me. but the average joe who buys an iphone/ipod touch not just for the games, it makes complete sense
i can't get an Iphone because at+t is horrible here but I'm saving up for an ipod touch though I prefer PS3 for gameing but PC has great indie games and mods but PS3 is amazing so I like both