4 ms·

Switch also has actual button input which is ergonomically much nicer than non-physical buttons that are in the way of your game content

jsheard 2y ago
That's true, but the market is surprisingly willing to put up with bad touch controls. Genshin Impact has made billions of dollars by being the closest thing to Zelda BOTW on mobile, but of course BOTW is a game you buy once and Genshin is a "free" casino. Even mobile first person shooters are wildly popular despite being miserable to play if you're used to other platforms. There is a willingness to play these games on a phone, but seemingly only if the cost of entry is zero dollars, even though that means there will be much worse monetization woven into the game.
- GeekyBear 2y ago
  > There is a willingness to play these games on a phone, but seemingly only if the cost of entry is zero dollars This is the issue that drove the rise of the mobile games as they are today. Android users in particular were extremely reluctant to pay for games up-front. > Last week I found myself in one of those "good news, bad news" situations. The good was that more than 100,000 people were enjoying the new Android version of our game. The bad news was that only about 10 percent of them paid for it https://archive.ph/mRkJw https://archive.ph/mRkJw
  - chrisjj 2y ago
    > Once a player has installed the game on his phone, the handset senses which resolution the phone can handle and downloads the appropriate skin. I am mystified. Why does the game install not include the current skins?
    - kimixa 2y ago
      Probably because the size of the full-resolution "skins" are of significant size, which may be an issue on phones with limited storage - especially if they implement custom assets to fit each size rather than just scaling. Which also may happen to be correlated to the sort of phones who won't use the highest quality versions in the first place.
    - MindSpunk 2y ago
      Android has a max APK size of 100MB + another 4GB (iirc) of asset blob + overlay patch you can ship through the play store. Google was historically against delivering large apps like games and left it up to the app developers to serve bulk assets themselves as a post install step. If you have to serve asset downloads yourself as a post install, making the total download smaller both improves UX and also saves you money on CDN costs.
      - chrisjj 2y ago
        I'd have thought 4GB was ample for phones back in 2012.

jsheard 2y ago

That's true, but the market is surprisingly willing to put up with bad touch controls. Genshin Impact has made billions of dollars by being the closest thing to Zelda BOTW on mobile, but of course BOTW is a game you buy once and Genshin is a "free" casino. Even mobile first person shooters are wildly popular despite being miserable to play if you're used to other platforms. There is a willingness to play these games on a phone, but seemingly only if the cost of entry is zero dollars, even though that means there will be much worse monetization woven into the game.

GeekyBear 2y ago
> There is a willingness to play these games on a phone, but seemingly only if the cost of entry is zero dollars This is the issue that drove the rise of the mobile games as they are today. Android users in particular were extremely reluctant to pay for games up-front. > Last week I found myself in one of those "good news, bad news" situations. The good was that more than 100,000 people were enjoying the new Android version of our game. The bad news was that only about 10 percent of them paid for it https://archive.ph/mRkJw https://archive.ph/mRkJw
- chrisjj 2y ago
  > Once a player has installed the game on his phone, the handset senses which resolution the phone can handle and downloads the appropriate skin. I am mystified. Why does the game install not include the current skins?
  - kimixa 2y ago
    Probably because the size of the full-resolution "skins" are of significant size, which may be an issue on phones with limited storage - especially if they implement custom assets to fit each size rather than just scaling. Which also may happen to be correlated to the sort of phones who won't use the highest quality versions in the first place.
  - MindSpunk 2y ago
    Android has a max APK size of 100MB + another 4GB (iirc) of asset blob + overlay patch you can ship through the play store. Google was historically against delivering large apps like games and left it up to the app developers to serve bulk assets themselves as a post install step. If you have to serve asset downloads yourself as a post install, making the total download smaller both improves UX and also saves you money on CDN costs.
    - chrisjj 2y ago
      I'd have thought 4GB was ample for phones back in 2012.