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We had this conversation while building our somewhat popular mobile game. Despite being a huge fan of Android, iOS remains significantly more profitable, especi

• CodeWithCoffee 13y ago
  I think that the primary reason that games are more profitable on iOS is because a lot of games are using the free-to-play + in app purchase model and there are a lot more iTunes accounts with credit cards linked that can make purchases compared to Google Play accounts, so Android games tend to rely more heavily on ads.
• corresation 13y ago
  Your game is only available on iOS, so you aren't speaking from any personally observed metrics. By the most recent metrics I've seen, the top 200 iOS apps pull in $18 million a day, while the top 200 Google Play store apps pull in $12 million. iOS still leads (courtesy of the lubrication of things like iTunes gift cards -- there will again be a huge bump after Christmas), but is there any rational player who looks at those numbers and thinks "Oh, I want no part of the latter"? And note that this difference has been closing very quickly (iOS is up 20% YoY, Android is up 242% YoY). Which is exactly why the majority of apps are built cross-platform from the outset. Whether using tooling that enables it easily (e.g. Unity, Titanium, etc), or designing around abstracting from the platform.
  • zachlatta 13y ago
    We made our decisions through thorough conversations with some of the most successful free-to-play (that's probably a major factor) developers on Android and iOS. We're planning on making our backend platform-agnostic and then write frontends for iOS, Android, and others though.