4 ms·
This discussion seems to focus on the mostly-saturated iOS App Store, which is fair enough, given the money being thrown around there, but I wouldn't write the
by hdivider 14y ago
This discussion seems to focus on the mostly-saturated iOS App Store, which is fair enough, given the money being thrown around there, but I wouldn't write the Windows Store off just yet.
We've got just over 800 indie games in the Windows Store right now, and many of those are (quite frankly) basically crap. To me, this looks like a tremendous opportunity for indie game devs. It's still a gamble, but that kind of comes with the job.
"Although 2D and casual games are still dominant, a growing fraction of mobile gamers are looking for console or PC level quality."
Gameplay/concept/'atmosphere' comes before graphics, surely. Sometimes even the big players get this (eg: WoW, especially near its launch).
- michaelpinto 14y agoKindle Fire might also become a good platform to focus on -- also Android users outside of the United States...
- Turing_Machine 14y agoKindle Fire has a lot of promise for developers in general, but the last time I looked at it Amazon's setup for actually getting your code in their store sucked (even by comparison with iOS and Google's Android store). Has that improved?
- drawkbox 14y agoBetter looking but the waits/review times are still long. You have a longer initial review just to get in their Android store, then an additional review/wait delay for Kindle Fire. I was sure Amazon would be the fastest but they are new still really and should improve. Play! is actually great to launch on and test initial builds, then when solid update for the others. Being able to update right now is so useful in promotion and software, but it does lead to more versions and less quality control I bet in the end. But it is more responsive to issues.
- drawkbox 14y agoWindows Store for Windows Phone 7 was largely a flop since it was impossible to do native code with it (games had to be in C# with XNA, or in other words a new title entirely and harder to port). Android grew faster in games with 2.3 introduced the best NDK support (C/C++ rather than Java) (NDK initially was limited in 2.2). Windows Phone 8 allows native support, this will be a land rush soon if there are decent phone sales. The only pain point of going to Windows then will be the DirectX portion compared to OpenGL (they really should have gone OpenGL ES on mobile for port reasons, it won on embedded already). Platforms like Unity and others will be setup for it so it opens it up for many more devs = more games.
- pjmlp 14y agoThere are many AAA studios already making use of C#. A big issue was surely the tiny market size Windows Phone has.
- jblow 14y agoAAA studios may use C# for tools, but exactly zero of them use C# for their actual game engine.
- pjmlp 14y agoAre you sure? I know a few cases in German studios.
- jblow 14y agoLike what? AAA has a definition involving budget, it doesn't just mean "not indie". I am not aware of anyone operating at that budget level and using C#.
- pjmlp 14y agoExDream, http://exdream.com/Games/ http://exdream.com/Games/ The first company in the world releasing a .NET commercial game back in 2002. Bitcomposer, http://bitcomposer.com http://bitcomposer.com EA Phenomic, http://www.phenomic.de/ http://www.phenomic.de/