
Where have all the iOS games gone? - chadaustin
http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=376
======
fnayr
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
that there's no middle ground, it's that the everyone used to get guaranteed
downloads, and with the removal of new releases and the never ending flood of
apps, 90% of apps will get just about zero downloads after launch nowadays.

But there's still plenty of room for small studios like us who know their
target audience and what works on the app store to make a sustainable
business. So I'd say top 0.1% for the insane successes that can support
hundreds of employees, but for a small studio, just getting in the top 5% can
work.

If you're curious about numbers, check thinkgaming.com, to see that the top
200 grossing game is still pulling ~$10K a day on iPhone in the US alone. When
you add all countries, tablets, and Android devices, you start to see you
don't need a top 10 or even top 100 grossing app to make some serious cash.

So while it has gotten a lot tougher in the app store and it's increasingly
difficult for newcomers with no experience to hit it big, there's still very
much a thriving middle ground between the insane successes and the utter
failures. I suspect that it's not well known is due to the fact that those in
similar positions to us don't want to dish out the valuable knowledge they've
acquired through years of experience that could only increase the competition.

~~~
sago
Which myth? Did we read the same article?

> 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

Did he say anything like that?

In the version I read he said that his games weren't making enough money to be
viable, though he expected the market to be big enough to support their work.
No mention of middles, Clash of Clans or anything.

FWIW: I also let my Apple dev license lapse, for similar reasons. Perhaps I
could have gained that 'valuable knowledge' through years of experience, to
get to a point of making a modest return. Perhaps. But, like Jeff, I found
other platforms to be much more financially viable.

~~~
fnayr
Sure, and to be fair to author, my point wasn't made to combat his article. I
was more responding to the headline which reminded me of the "indieapocalypse"
articles that make news all the time.

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. If you found more viable platforms
of course that makes sense to pursue. I think that's what more developers who
complain about the meager app store sales ought to do (explore alternatives),
rather than just whine about the apocalypse and hope their downloads magically
change.

~~~
chris_wot
I think it's more interesting that to keep maintaining the games he was forced
to keep purchasing an Apple developer license, and that it was cheaper for him
to pull the games than to risk reputation all damage with crashing apps, even
if they are free.

This genuinely sounds like a problem for Apple. Without a healthy App Store
ecosystem there is little reason to purchase an iPad!

------
buserror
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, there are so many people
on the market that you can't possibly stand out.

And that's why I never even wrote a single iOS app, even tho i was a wiz at
ObjC and OSX (Imagine a Classic MacOS dev thrown together with a UNIX wiz, and
that's me); it was guaranteed to bring in the 'forest' to OSX as well, and
make any 'edge' more or less pointless.

Also, from what I've seen, if anyone comes out with a nice app/game, there's a
dozen or more group of people who will throw their dev team at copying it
immediately, diluting any hope of revenue. It's these guys business model
after all, you just can't win, and it's not like you can defend your IP
anyway.

So, 2016, I wonder what took people so long to realize it was all doomed but
for a tiny fraction of apps.

~~~
zepto
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?

~~~
buserror
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.

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

~~~
kefka_p
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 codec support relative to
QuickTime offering only support for built-in codes. Just as an example. Of
course QuickTime had no 64-bit future so Apple had to do something but it was
and still is a bit of a mess years down the road.

~~~
jawngee
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.

~~~
kefka_p
Not kidding at all. There was a lot of noise during the transition on various
mailing lists, as I recall. Even as an end-user the issue presented quite a
few problems. While AVFoundation is generally a better API it remains less
capable than the QuickTime umbrella was. Again refer to the functionality
provided by vDig and Sequencer APIs. A simple case: try to slap together a
video mixing app sometime that takes input from the camera or other source,
processes some effects on it, and dumps the output back as pseudo device that
can be used by other apps. Unless things have changed drastically the last
time I looked into the matter, such a thing isn't possible within the
constraints of AVFoundation itself. You have to resort to the essentially
undocumented CoreMedia IO API. Apple does provide similar functionality for
other types of devices at a higher level i.e. scanners, digital cameras via
some other API I can't recall off the top of my head at the moment. =]

------
billyjobob
I feel it's worth pointing out this isn't just some blog by any old indie
development studio. This is a blog by Jeff Minter. The man practically
invented home computer gaming. I was buying his games with my allowance 35
years ago, because they were great. And I still buy them today, because they
are still great. If Jeff Minter can't make the App Store work then no-one can.
(Although he probably could have done if he had been willing to make crappy
games with in app purchase rather than make good games. )

~~~
Steko
> If Jeff Minter can't make the App Store work then no-one can.

As a counterpoint I grew up on no small amount of Jeff Minter games, lost more
hours to Tempest 2000 on the godawful Jaguar than one should admit to in
polite company, and have downloaded almost all of Llamasoft's iOS games due
mostly to the fawning reviews in Toucharcade and played them for not all that
long because -- frankly -- they are simply not very good. They aren't _bad
games_ but they certainly don't stand out among the hundreds of games I've
tried for iOS.

The comparison he makes in this blog post between the income of (a) games he
independently released on iOS and (b) a game Sony paid him to make for the
PSVita but was shut down from release on other platforms because it too
closely copied T2K is beyond disingenuous.

~~~
onion2k
So the reality is that even if you're a semi-famous developer who has a
practically guaranteed revenue and media coverage from your fans, it still
isn't enough. You need to make a game that competes on quality with the
studios that spend $millions on their apps.

Thats not a very promising proposition to anyone considering making a game.

~~~
NEDM64
> You need to make a game that competes on quality with the studios that spend
> $millions on their apps.

No, for example Crossy Road or Flappy Bird made some good money with a minimal
team and minimal investment.

Not $millions like those studios, but also the creators didn't spend $millions
in marketing and assets.

> Thats not a very promising proposition to anyone considering making a game.

Risks.

That's why most people find a job and not make games for the AppStore/Play
Store in their room.

~~~
intoverflow2
> No, for example Crossy Road or Flappy Bird made some good money with a
> minimal team and minimal investment.

Could describe a lottery ticket win the same way.

------
eludwig
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?

~~~
nostrademons
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.

~~~
bhandziuk
When do you think those 3-4 years started for this bubble?

~~~
nostrademons
For iOS, probably last year (2015). Assuming Apple doesn't massively lose
consumer marketshare (certainly a possibility in hardware, just ask Motorola),
indie development on macOS/iOS/watchOS/tvOS will likely become viable again
between 2018-2020.

This is an interesting time in computing history, though, because there are
multiple overlapping tech cycles and multiple big companies driving them.
During the web interregnum, the dominant tech company was Microsoft, and
Microsoft basically completely controlled the channel to the customer. So we
just weren't getting fundamental innovations in the browser - there was
XmlHttpRequest and hidden iframes that sparked a lot of Web 2.0, and there was
Flash from Adobe, but that was largely it. Today, we have innovation in cloud
computing from Amazon and Google; we have innovation in programming languages
from Mozilla, Jetbrains, and Apple; we have innovation in big-data tools from
the Apache foundation and others; we have innovation in machine-learning from
Google and a number of startups; and we have innovation in computing devices
from Apple, Google, Pebble, Oculus, and a large number of other companies. So
while the Apple ecosystem itself may face a dot-com bust, there could easily
be a killer app brewing in technologies _outside_ of the pure iOS ecosystem
that uses an iOS app to deliver its service to the customer.

------
eirikref
As a user who frequently opened the AppStore just to browse, discover new
apps, and who used to buy a lot, I've just stopped opening the AppStore over
the last three-four years. Browsing and discovery has become too hard for me,
and I feel like they're pushing games too hard.

I used to buy a lot of games as well, but often I was just in the mood to look
for some neat applications. If I could somehow filter out all games and just
browse apps across all categories, I might still browse the AppStore regularly
and still buy apps (including games, when I'm in the mood for that). The end
result now is that they've lost a customer who used to buy new apps every
week.

~~~
NEDM64
The AppStore has a category listing.

Of course category search is not going to work for everybody with 2 million
entries.

If you want to search the games for genre, price, etc. go to toucharcade.com

------
jarjoura
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
context to why I should care.

To further detriment, Apple has trained the market to stay away from 3rd party
curation of iOS apps in any kind of useful way. So we're left only with a
gateway of lists. That's nice, but not worth my time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ultimately an indie game has limited replay value
because they're just so small in scope, but they're usually a lot of fun. So a
one time upfront payment to enjoy for a few weeks is a great business strategy
I think.

Edit: Not to sound like I'm bashing Apple here, as I don't think the Google
Play store does it any better.

~~~
CydeWeys
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 compilation linkfarm spam sites. I don't
even know where to go to find the best mobile games, and every so often after
investing another ten fruitless minutes of research (into what should be fun!)
I'll give up all over again.

Contrast with my recent gaming experiences on the PC -- Civ V, The Witcher 3,
Kerbal Space Program, and Faster than Light. All excellent games well worth
their price that I was able to find out about easily. I don't know if anything
comparable exists on mobile gaming, or if it's all just shit, nor do I even
know how to find out. Back in the day Sony and Nintendo owned and published
official magazines that were excellent sources of finding out about games, and
many other non-official rags filled any potential void left over (I'll forever
look back fondly on my afternoons after school spent reading issues of PC
Gamer, PSM, and EGM cover-to-cover). Nothing comparable exists for mobile
gaming, and Apple and Google could be doing a much better job of curating
their gaming content.

~~~
iofj
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.

~~~
CydeWeys
If I were going to get an entire dedicated system for mobile gaming, I think a
PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS XL would be a better choice -- they're both way
cheaper, have dedicated controls for gaming, and have large libraries of
purpose-built games. But I'm just not interested in more devices, especially
ones I'd have to remember to charge and bring with me. I already have a
smartphone, several desktops, two laptops, a Kindle, and an Android tablet.
It's enough already.

~~~
iofj
Some renew your office subscription and get you excel updates etc for another
year, and cost like 20-30$ more than just the office subscription itself.

~~~
CydeWeys
I don't use any of that stuff either though. I'm a big GNU/Linux guy (at home
and at work), and I exclusively use Windows for gaming. Office 365
subscriptions hold no value for me.

------
makecheck
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 browsing experience was almost unbelievably inefficient; I found myself
scrolling through handfuls of games when I should have been able to rule out
dozens. Apple likes to show you “only the icon” most of the time, which is
really quite a terrible way to browse; you keep having to go in, out, in out,
to learn anything about what’s in the list.

I ended up buying nothing at all because I _couldn’t even tell_ if there were
games that supported buy-once without any of the usual bullshit gem-buying
tactics. Despite having simple goals, the App Store just failed me.

~~~
ino
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.

~~~
intoverflow2
> 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.

This would make no difference, people would just play the demo then move on to
the next game. There are 2,000,000 apps in the store.... if your title is any
good someone will clone it and put a free version up anyway.

------
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...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YacineSalmi/20160519/273030/Ellipsis__Sales_Numbers_for_a_Premium_Game_on_iOS_in_2016.php)

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.

~~~
eridius
That game looks pretty neat. You just sold a copy :) But it's a game I've
never heard of before, and I'm pretty good about checking the new games lists
on the App Store each week. So I think the takeaway from this shouldn't be
that premium games (is $2.99 really "premium"?) don't work, but rather that
you can't rely on free marketing to sell your game. Once a game falls off the
lists, it's pretty hard for people to stumble across it unless they're looking
for it specifically.

~~~
retromario
Thank you!

That's another problem, there are so many good games coming out on a weekly
basis, it's hard enough to stand out among those, let alone the 800 other
games coming out every week.

We've experimented with various marketing ideas. Advertising is very
challenging, especially when it costs more to acquire a user than we charge
for the game. The F2P user acquisition market insanity has made this a
complete non-starter. Press seems to have very little impact unless it's a big
publication. So we're focusing on word of mouth and quality and a longer term
outlook.

------
diziet
It's often hard for indie developers without marketing budgets, but in the
same vein the whole gaming market on iOS is doing tremendously well. Here's a
high level snapshot of iPhone earning by country, month by month:

[https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/993499/16283312/2...](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/993499/16283312/2ca78050-3881-11e6-9fea-889dbc2e647a.png)

The industry grew a lot - surely driven by the most successful titles, but
also for the longer tail of developers. More of the total revenue and earnings
are captured by the top 100 publishers -- but still, even compared to 2012 or
2013, the 10000th biggest app is earning more due to the opening of all the
new territories.

The game earning model moved from a hits based model, where you launch with
lots of hype and reviews and generate a lot of earnings in the initial months
to a model where long playing loyal players stick with the game over many
months & years and monetize via longer term in app purchases. It's not
possible to bring back 2010. We need to be ok with that and learn to engage
users over longer timelines.

~~~
jblow
The problem is that games designed to "stick over many months & years and
monetize the player" are generally garbage, as far as the quality of the
actual game goes.

Of course these things are relative or subjective and what have you, but it's
pretty rare for people who have a lot of experience playing games to seek out
stuff on iOS because of the great quality of games there.

If you build a system that incentivizes garbage games, that's what you get,
and well, that is what we have.

Fortunately if you are someone like me, who wants to make actual good games,
there are still platforms where you can do that, and do quite decently money-
wise. I am hoping those don't go away.

~~~
diziet
Jonathan, I would disagree about the generality of the games being generally
garbage.

The parallel on the PC side of things of games that have recurring revenue
sources lies in the spectrum of WoW / Dota 2 / TF2 / League of Legends to
little known asian market MMOs where you buy xp boosts.

The top grossing games are played by a lot of users who play a lot. Similarly,
the top titles on mobile have very repeatable revenue sources with high
retention rates. I can't blame companies and businesses for investing in
predictable revenue streams.

Now without a doubt there is a point of conflict between long user retention
and addiction, and the drive to maximize LTV can be taken too far, but I don't
think this is happening to most games. As an example, Farmville (2) is a well
crafted experience in terms of mechanics, art style, pacing and progression
for what it is trying to achieve. I can appreciate the work and thought that
went into the game.

I can also similarly appreciate The Witness and I was happy to pay $40 for it.
I appreciate the game for different reasons and different set of skills in
game design and story telling and pacing of challenges. I love games all about
gameplay -- heck, I spend time playing a pure maze puzzle game (
[http://www.pathery.com/](http://www.pathery.com/) ) that about 300 other
people play. But this does not stop me from appreciating and respecting the
game design work and decisions that went into making the mass market IAP
driven games.

I might disagree with the long term reward-loop design of some of the titles,
but I would not call them garbage.

------
mmanfrin
There are only so many combinations of the words
[Lord|War|Clan|Battle|Fight|Clash|Of|Reign|King].

------
highCs
Aside some interesting comments here I find very true, my theory is that you
should treat your game has a startup product: customers will not come, you
have to chase them. And get them talk to their friends about your game. Just
launching a game and making some marketing wont work. You need: feedback loop
+ word of mouth + growth.

~~~
NEDM64
I just thought I would just need to make a game and pay $99 a year.

Do you mean that's not enough?

(sarcasm)

------
mucker
The platform cratered with the dominance of pay to win games and the
"freemium" model. This allowed the store to be cluttered with junk. I can't
shop there, because I'm not sure what I am buying.

~~~
quantumhobbit
This loss of trust amongst consumers is what caused the original video games
crash in the 80's. Nintendo's seal of quality is what restored consumer trust.
Apple may need to get more aggressive about the App Store.

~~~
st3v3r
Well, they had a category (maybe still do) called "Pay once games" or
something like that. Basically highlighting games that you paid for once, up
front, like normal games, and that didn't have a bunch of IAP.

~~~
eridius
They also show on every single app whether or not it has IAP (and you can see
what the IAP is with a tap), so you can do your own filtering when looking at
the new games list if that's an important criteria.

~~~
Blaaguuu
But you often have to play the game for half an hour before you start running
into really gross IAPs, though. If you want to find games that don't have
those predatory game loops and IAPs, the only way seems to be to go outside of
the app stores and find review sites - but no site can keep up with reviewing
every game that gets released.

~~~
st3v3r
I dunno, if you look at the list of IAPs offered, and see that most are for
"gems" or "coins" or something like that, you can be pretty sure that they've
got something up their sleeve.

------
NEDM64
Well, try your luck at Android or Consoles or PC.

Never noticied the AppStore was some kind of heaven where money rained.

Seriously, so much entitlement. If you want to make money selling games, you
have to spend a lot in advertising, how much does Clash of Clans and etc
spend? It's the rules, it always has been, what's the surprise? Maybe it
worked for a couple of months out of novelity, but it doesn't work any more.

Get real, people.

And yes, it's free games with IAP the rules. Because they are designed for
kids without credit cards that at most buy iTunes gift cards. And yes, it's
jewel and candy games, because that's what there is for girls, which are 50%
of the population that the "mainstream gaming" has abandoned.

~~~
Roboprog
The first part was a bit harsh, but you make a good point about games for
girls. (my now 20 daughter plays a lot of console games, but hates "ugly"
scenery)

------
melling
I saw this article yesterday about how more and more apps have become
abandoned:

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/the-apple-app-store-
gravey...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/the-apple-app-store-graveyard/)

The App Store will keep growing but it won't be good if half the apps are
abandoned.

------
golergka
Apple, goddamn. You had a potential major gaming platform on your hands – but
almost 10 years later, we're stuck with $5-10 CPIs and store that doesn't even
try to do anything with the long tail. Just open up Steam sometimes if you
wonder how it should've been done.

~~~
tluyben2
I was looking for a proper English way to say this, but exactly; the long tail
in the Appstore is nearly unrecoverable in the Appstore. And even outside it;
I ran a review service (one that actually make enough to live on) for apps
years ago and most (all on some sites) reviews are bought so they are skewed
towards deep pockets. It stinks and I'm sorry I ever even did that.

~~~
golergka
That's because Apple failed miserably at creating any kind of community - the
thing that helps the most with skewed reviews, lowest-denominator titles, and
other trash like that.

Once again, I'm too lazy to explain this in detail; just look at Steam again.

------
joeblau
I have a game that I made over a 4 day period on iOS and Android. It's not
brining in much revenue, but it was a cool challenge. My game isn't really
that great, but I haven't touched it in over a year as well as there is no
motivation to keep working on it. Once too many bugs start showing up, I'll
probably pull it from all 3 app stores.

~~~
tluyben2
Which one is it? I always find it interesting to see what someone can do in a
short time.

~~~
joeblau
\- [https://joeblau.com/orb/](https://joeblau.com/orb/) \- The idea was based
on bullet time so when you're moving the Orb, time is passing, but when you
pick your finger off of the screen, time pauses. The goal is to dodge all of
the smaller black orbs as long as possible.

------
ascotan
It's sad. You don't need to see income metrics to support this, just look at
the quality of the games. I'm an avid consumer of iphone games and the quality
of them has been getting worse and worse.

Really neat and creative games seems are gone and we're left with 'Qbert' and
'Bejeweled' clones being recommended as 'featured games'. Most of the great
iOS shops seems to have left the market or have been drowned out in a sea of
'crapware'.

It seems that to be successful in this market you need to go back to
advertising. Apple makes it very very hard to sort crap from quality, so you
have to get your brand/name out there.

------
projectramo
Wait a second:

" the first non-iOS game I did after spending two years on iOS, released on a
Sony handheld that many describe as being “obscure”, generated literally
_thousands_ of times more income for us than two years and ten games on iOS
with its potential billions of users."

What was the platform? I wonder if there is a strategy to be carved out making
games for Windows 10, Linux mobile, etc.

~~~
the_hoser
The Vita. A "dying" console. It's actually the best handheld gaming device
I've ever owned.

------
kmiroslav
You know the situation is bleak when even the legendary Jeff "llama" Minter
says he can't make money on the app store.

------
kinnth
These lists in no way take account of ad revenue. For the average indie game
ad revenue now makes up at least 50% of the gross daily revenue or if well
integrated can make up 70 or even 90% if the game is an advergame like the
Ketchapps one finger frustration games.

There is still quite a lot of revenue in the market place, just like there is
on web. You need to be shrewd and think more about business than just creating
and releasing a fun game.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Same reason I stopped making games for iOS years ago. I too did truly enjoy
making them though. I created original games and the effort all outside
working hours overnight and weekends did at least teach me skills I still
utilize today.

------
roryokane
If you’re looking for “the free .apks that we have put up for our Android
ports of five of the iOS games on this site”, they’re at
[http://minotaurproject.co.uk/Minotaur/donate.php](http://minotaurproject.co.uk/Minotaur/donate.php).
The five games are Super Ox Wars, Five a Day, Caverns of Minos, Goat Up, and
Gridrunner.

------
douche
Someday, we'll realize that games on a tiny, fiddly touchscreen with no
tactile response, is kind of a stupid idea. I would much rather play games on
my dusty old Gameboy Color than struggle with a phone.

------
triptych
Toucharcade is a great site / resource to find and learn about iOS games.

------
coldtea
> _To give some idea of just how awful iOS was for us, the first non-iOS game
> I did after spending two years on iOS, released on a Sony handheld that many
> describe as being “obscure”, generated literally_ thousands* of times more
> income for us than two years and ten games on iOS with its potential
> billions of users.*

Yeah, but the Sony handled has like N titles, whereas the iOS has 1000xN.

------
reiichiroh
As someone who enjoyed Tempest, isn't Minter a bit of an industry grump now?
Albeit someone who's shipped games unlike Chris Crawford.

------
profeta
history will look back on this iphone era we are living as the second dark
age.

~~~
xufi
Agreed, I do feel there could've been much better games made on the phone. For
example, I remember Nintendo was about to make a push to bring its old classic
Gameboy Era games /Gameboy Color games to the phone to no avail

~~~
intoverflow2
Would you have been happy to pay $5-$8 per gameboy/gbc title?

Yeah didn't think so, but Nintendo DS owners are.

------
jpeg_hero
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

~~~
spikengineer
That is unaffordable to most consumers in the world. You will end up limiting
urself to a market of few rich communities in rich countries.

~~~
vonklaus
that is not true. again, we aren't talking about a coursera course and
paywalling information and vital self-learning here. We are talking about a
dollar for a luxury game on a device that costs nearly $1000 and $100 a month
for service. This is leaving aside that the economics of $4-5 a game would be
better than a free game that is unwinnable unless you spend > $10.

I believe the parent, and if not then certainly I, am talking about games that
are subsciption based and promote full releases that get upgrades and create
community. not a 0.99 clone. this market is largely rich communities anyway if
you use the world income scale, but we aren't using that scale, we are talking
about iphone owners with discretionary income already willing to spend 1-30 a
year on games...

~~~
madgar
> a device that costs nearly $1000 and $100 a month for service

If you're going to make a fiscal argument then don't exaggerate your numbers
by 60-120%.

They start at $400 and top out at $750.

If you pay $100/month for service that's your own fault, I don't know anybody
paying over $60/month.

------
bolasanibk
The site seems to be down.

Link to the Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-8QtKz9...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-8QtKz9Lo2oJ:minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/%3Fp%3D376+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
ccvannorman
One iOS game I enjoyed and recently rediscovered is GeoDefense. I highly
recommend it (at $3.99 I think) and it is definitely a middle-ground app. I
estimate they made between 500K - 5M lifetime sales over 4 years with both
games.

~~~
SystemOut
The geoDefense games (regular and swarm) were huge favorites of mine at the
time. I wish they were still making games but haven't seen anything new from
those developers since that game came out.

~~~
KingMob
Man, those games were fantastic. Best tower defense games ever made by a long
shot.

------
nathan_f77
Oh well. I'm about to finish up a tiny game that I've been working on, and it
will be fun to see what happens. At the very least, I've enjoyed learning
SceneKit and practicing Swift.

------
alttab
So much conversation and not a single reference to App Annie? Look at the data
yourselves.

