Grimes said:
HappySqurriel said:
Honestly, I don't ever see $10 applications being particularly popular on these handsets; and (unless China, India and Africa buy into these phones rapidly) it will take decades for sales on individual games at these prices to match the revenue of handheld gaming systems.
I know a handful of people working at "shovelware" developers who release games for portable devices and the PC; and (right now) most projects that are exclusive to smart phones are being heavily subsidized in order to create a market, even with how low budget these games are (often a fraction of the development costs of a Nintendo DS game). From what I have been told, most of their games that sell for $0.99 or $1.99 on iTunes are also being sold for $10 to $20 on popcapgames.com or steam; and the number of units sold are similar on both. They have no ability to increase their price because every game they're selling soon has a dozen clones that are free or selling for $0.99 on the iPhone.
You might see the occassional large publisher push a big budget iPhone game at $20, but I'm expecting every last one of those games will disappoint their publisher for the next 5 years (at least).
|
That's not really the point. It's about clipping the margins. The iPhones/Android sales don't need to exceed Nintendo and Sony to put them in a serious situation. By eating away at the edges, profits could take a big hit.
|
There are certain styles of gaming that the iPhones will probably take over, namely 5 minute games like Bejewled or Tetris, but larger budget games will remain on handheld systems because they are the only platforms that can generate the revenue to cover development costs.
