iOS expected to become world's biggest gaming platform by year's end (Lol)

[mrstickball]

sethnintendo said:

mrstickball said:

Your citation pretty much confirms that most failures are due to horrible promotion and guesswork by developers, lending creedence to the problem not being the iOS ecosystem so much as it is the developers themselves.

The problem is that the iOS and android "ecosystem" is like the early 80s on Atari 2600.   There is so much shit that it becomes difficult to find the true gems (even with good reviews you don't know if it is going to work for your phone (talking android fragmentation here), if the users that reviewed the game are complete idiots (most are considering they can't spell worth a shit), etc...  Someone stated the comparison a lot better during another article that was stating that the Nintendo system (way of doing business was outdated).  If anything the smartphone system brings us back to the early 80s.  There won't be a crash but most people won't view their phones as the primary gaming choice, and those that do never really cared too much for the dedicated gaming hand helds and consoles.

The issue with iOS entirely deals with the issue of application/game discovery. The article wfz cited earlier shows that: The most successful developers spend about $30,000 on average for marketing. That helps with discovery, which then helps titles jump up the various charts, which then helps with additional discovery, as users aren't going to venture outside of the top-200 lists often.

Such an ecosystem in the internet age can survive and thrive. The analogy with Atari is a poor one in some cases, because the issue was that users had no way of rating or ranking good titles against the crappy ones on the shelves at a local store. With iOS and Android, you have user ratings and other ranking services that allow for a real-time feed that allows users to rate quality games, and discourage shoddy games from purchase.

The same can be said about the internet: The internet is so vast, and available to everyone, so how does one even discover new sites? How do new sites generate user interest in a world where they may be competing not against dozens, but millions of other sites? Marketing, which results in new ways for user discovery.

That is the key. Most iOS developers are incredibly stupid when it comes to discovery, thus why you have about 5% of apps generating 90% of revenues. However, if you look at how large the pie is, it is an incredibly attractive picture, because top-200 games are generating thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars daily.