| milkyjoe said: "I think so far we've made about $500 on iOS." Interesting. That's reality vs iOS hyperbole based on Rovio success. |
A guy I graduated from Universiy with joined a local small "casual" game developer immediately after graduation. When he started there, the company was making games similar to games you see on mobile phones/tablets today for the PC and selling them on their website (and through other services) for about $20 a peice, and they were turning a small profit. I hadn't seen him in a couple years and we got together for beers last night after work and he had a few interesting things to say.
Back in 2009 (or so) they moved from PC based casual game development to ios (and recently adopted Android) because of the massive interest from investors for companies producing games for mobile phones. Since then their company has trippled in size, their average game is being played by far more people, and they're making about half as much revenue as they once did.
From what I have been told by several sources, and what I have seen myself, development for the mobile platforms is similar to the dot com bubble. While there will eventally be a viable business model that emerges from this, the vast majority of development is being driven by speculative investment into companies that are bleeding money; driven by an irrational belief that these companies will (eventually) be able to produce a game that has been bought millions of times at $1 to $5, when most of them struggle to get anywhere near that level giving their game away for free.
