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Forums - Gaming - If not the ipad then what instead?

famousringo on 31 March 2012
rocketpig said:
famousringo said:
disolitude said:
@famousringo and mrstickball

Im out for the night and can't look for specific examples and apps but there are lots of very successful windows phone exclusive apps. I am on every windows phone news and xna developers RSS feeds and and every week a new success story is shared by a dev. Usually windows phone apps perform better than Android counterparts.

Look up Elbert Perez for a very successful developer exclusive to windows phone.


This guy, huh:

http://www.wpcentral.com/2011-lessons-learned-windows-phone-developer

So, he has twelve games to his name and they earned him $61,000 last year. I'm supposed to believe that this guy is capable of churning out a quality game every month or so and that an average of $5,000 revenue per app is big success? That's a decent income, sure, but a single good app on iOS can make an indie dev a millionaire (granted, those million sellers usually take more than 30 days of work to make).

I see your point but you shouldn't take the assumption that all of those games he created last year suddenly stopped selling. And that $61,000 was probably back-loaded; in January and February when he had 1-2 games for sale, he probably made squat. By November and December when he had close to a dozen for sale, he probably made the bulk of that $61,000 in those two months. It takes time to build a catalog large enough to sustain a living and those old games aren't suddenly going to disappear because the calendar flipped to 2012.


The opposite, actually. It's in the link. His big months were February, March and July, his lowest months September and November.

It's hard to know exactly what effect time will have on app sales. I know a highly priced app can burn slow for $250 or even $1,000 dollars a day if they do a good job serving a niche market. Free to a buck games are, I think, more dependant on high placement on the charts. Users are rarely so committed to a cheap app as to go hunt it down, or if they do, a handful of downloads a day from dedicated customers doesn't work out to meaningful revenue.

Anyway, my original point is that while Windows and Xbox are more often than not lead platforms for software development in their respective categories of computing, Windows Phone is at best the 3rd most popular platform for mobile devleopment. (I've heard rumours that Blackberry's App World is surprisingly strong, but I've never seen hard data to back that up.)



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
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rocketpig on 31 March 2012

Interesting. I knew cheap games cycled quickly but I had no idea they cycled THAT quickly.




Or check out my new webcomic: http://selfcentent.com/

mrstickball on 31 March 2012
disolitude said:
famousringo said:
disolitude said:
@famousringo and mrstickball

Im out for the night and can't look for specific examples and apps but there are lots of very successful windows phone exclusive apps. I am on every windows phone news and xna developers RSS feeds and and every week a new success story is shared by a dev. Usually windows phone apps perform better than Android counterparts.

Look up Elbert Perez for a very successful developer exclusive to windows phone.


This guy, huh:

http://www.wpcentral.com/2011-lessons-learned-windows-phone-developer

So, he has twelve games to his name and they earned him $61,000 last year. I'm supposed to believe that this guy is capable of churning out a quality game every month or so and that an average of $5,000 revenue per app is big success? That's a decent income, sure, but a single good app on iOS can make an indie dev a millionaire (granted, those million sellers usually take more than 30 days of work to make).

Youre right that this isnt a massive success, however ive been reading a lot of small dev success stories on windows phone. Elber Perez games really arent anything special. Really simple games some of which are not even that good, however he has had success with them on WP.

Here is another dev that made $ 100,000 on a single game. http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-game-taptitude-hits-100k-mark

As far as bigger players and devs, there have been many reports that windows phone marketplace performs astonishingly well for howmany users they have. http://www.everythingwm.com/fruit-ninja-over-7-times-more-revenue-on-windows-phone-compared-to-android/2011/03/09/

So while no one is going to argue that wp app store can go toe to toe with iOS in terms of revenue, it does just fine on its own terms.

Compare the $100,000 success stories on WM7 to the multi-million dollar stories and empires built on iOS and Android, and you'll come to the conclusion that the WM7 environment isn't very conducive to making the platform a hit-factory.

Sure, WM7 punches above its weight in regards to the number of users it has vs. revenues, but when you're comparing a million handset sales a month to a million handset sales a day, you'll get the picture that its a difficult value proposition to make WM7 the focus of your gaming empire.

Oh, and as for Fruit Ninja - those numbers are from last year. As of February, Fruit Ninja was leading about 3:1 on Android in regards to gross revenues.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

disolitude on 01 April 2012
mrstickball said:
disolitude said:
famousringo said:
disolitude said:
@famousringo and mrstickball

Im out for the night and can't look for specific examples and apps but there are lots of very successful windows phone exclusive apps. I am on every windows phone news and xna developers RSS feeds and and every week a new success story is shared by a dev. Usually windows phone apps perform better than Android counterparts.

Look up Elbert Perez for a very successful developer exclusive to windows phone.


This guy, huh:

http://www.wpcentral.com/2011-lessons-learned-windows-phone-developer

So, he has twelve games to his name and they earned him $61,000 last year. I'm supposed to believe that this guy is capable of churning out a quality game every month or so and that an average of $5,000 revenue per app is big success? That's a decent income, sure, but a single good app on iOS can make an indie dev a millionaire (granted, those million sellers usually take more than 30 days of work to make).

Youre right that this isnt a massive success, however ive been reading a lot of small dev success stories on windows phone. Elber Perez games really arent anything special. Really simple games some of which are not even that good, however he has had success with them on WP.

Here is another dev that made $ 100,000 on a single game. http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-game-taptitude-hits-100k-mark

As far as bigger players and devs, there have been many reports that windows phone marketplace performs astonishingly well for howmany users they have. http://www.everythingwm.com/fruit-ninja-over-7-times-more-revenue-on-windows-phone-compared-to-android/2011/03/09/

So while no one is going to argue that wp app store can go toe to toe with iOS in terms of revenue, it does just fine on its own terms.

Compare the $100,000 success stories on WM7 to the multi-million dollar stories and empires built on iOS and Android, and you'll come to the conclusion that the WM7 environment isn't very conducive to making the platform a hit-factory.

Sure, WM7 punches above its weight in regards to the number of users it has vs. revenues, but when you're comparing a million handset sales a month to a million handset sales a day, you'll get the picture that its a difficult value proposition to make WM7 the focus of your gaming empire.

Oh, and as for Fruit Ninja - those numbers are from last year. As of February, Fruit Ninja was leading about 3:1 on Android in regards to gross revenues.


I will not argue anything about iOS app store as I know it's a monster. However I do feel that you are giving android store credit that it doesn't deserver. Pretty much everything I've read about it is that it performs abysmal compared to the amount of users that use the handsets.

Few articles that I've read about this lately -

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397918,00.asp

http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/31/flurrys-analytics-apple-app-store-amazon-appstore-android-google-play/

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/03/31/is-google-better-off-killing-android.aspx

Nevertheless, I do agree that Windows Phone app store revenue is not yet comparable with either Android or Apples offerngs due to lack of apps and lack of handsets sold but its doing a lot better than people think. Its the Ron Paul of app stores lol...



mrstickball on 01 April 2012
disolitude said:
mrstickball said:
disolitude said:
famousringo said:
disolitude said:
@famousringo and mrstickball

Im out for the night and can't look for specific examples and apps but there are lots of very successful windows phone exclusive apps. I am on every windows phone news and xna developers RSS feeds and and every week a new success story is shared by a dev. Usually windows phone apps perform better than Android counterparts.

Look up Elbert Perez for a very successful developer exclusive to windows phone.


This guy, huh:

http://www.wpcentral.com/2011-lessons-learned-windows-phone-developer

So, he has twelve games to his name and they earned him $61,000 last year. I'm supposed to believe that this guy is capable of churning out a quality game every month or so and that an average of $5,000 revenue per app is big success? That's a decent income, sure, but a single good app on iOS can make an indie dev a millionaire (granted, those million sellers usually take more than 30 days of work to make).

Youre right that this isnt a massive success, however ive been reading a lot of small dev success stories on windows phone. Elber Perez games really arent anything special. Really simple games some of which are not even that good, however he has had success with them on WP.

Here is another dev that made $ 100,000 on a single game. http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-game-taptitude-hits-100k-mark

As far as bigger players and devs, there have been many reports that windows phone marketplace performs astonishingly well for howmany users they have. http://www.everythingwm.com/fruit-ninja-over-7-times-more-revenue-on-windows-phone-compared-to-android/2011/03/09/

So while no one is going to argue that wp app store can go toe to toe with iOS in terms of revenue, it does just fine on its own terms.

Compare the $100,000 success stories on WM7 to the multi-million dollar stories and empires built on iOS and Android, and you'll come to the conclusion that the WM7 environment isn't very conducive to making the platform a hit-factory.

Sure, WM7 punches above its weight in regards to the number of users it has vs. revenues, but when you're comparing a million handset sales a month to a million handset sales a day, you'll get the picture that its a difficult value proposition to make WM7 the focus of your gaming empire.

Oh, and as for Fruit Ninja - those numbers are from last year. As of February, Fruit Ninja was leading about 3:1 on Android in regards to gross revenues.


I will not argue anything about iOS app store as I know it's a monster. However I do feel that you are giving android store credit that it doesn't deserver. Pretty much everything I've read about it is that it performs abysmal compared to the amount of users that use the handsets.

Few articles that I've read about this lately -

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397918,00.asp

http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/31/flurrys-analytics-apple-app-store-amazon-appstore-android-google-play/

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/03/31/is-google-better-off-killing-android.aspx

Nevertheless, I do agree that Windows Phone app store revenue is not yet comparable with either Android or Apples offerngs due to lack of apps and lack of handsets sold but its doing a lot better than people think. Its the Ron Paul of app stores lol...


Please remember that those numbers aren't actual hard numbers for application sales. They are relative metrics, comparing user spend per market. iOS users do spend more than Android users, but Android users come from a much wider swath of users, and sells a lot more units.

The actual gulf between both stores is still shortening in favor of Android - albiet slowly. Android is heavily skewed towards free games, in which it does incredibly well. Look at Angry Birds - it does immensely well on Android via ads because the user base is unreal, and its seen tens of millions of downloads - likely more than iOS, despite being on the market for a shorter period of time.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

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rocketpig on 01 April 2012
mrstickball said:

Please remember that those numbers aren't actual hard numbers for application sales. They are relative metrics, comparing user spend per market. iOS users do spend more than Android users, but Android users come from a much wider swath of users, and sells a lot more units.

The actual gulf between both stores is still shortening in favor of Android - albiet slowly. Android is heavily skewed towards free games, in which it does incredibly well. Look at Angry Birds - it does immensely well on Android via ads because the user base is unreal, and its seen tens of millions of downloads - likely more than iOS, despite being on the market for a shorter period of time.

Ad-served free games are not going to bring in anything close to the revenue of a paid game, especially if that game is $2 or more. Since we're talking about developers wanting to use a platform to make games, this is worth pointing out as a negative, not a positive.




Or check out my new webcomic: http://selfcentent.com/

mrstickball on 01 April 2012
rocketpig said:
mrstickball said:

Please remember that those numbers aren't actual hard numbers for application sales. They are relative metrics, comparing user spend per market. iOS users do spend more than Android users, but Android users come from a much wider swath of users, and sells a lot more units.

The actual gulf between both stores is still shortening in favor of Android - albiet slowly. Android is heavily skewed towards free games, in which it does incredibly well. Look at Angry Birds - it does immensely well on Android via ads because the user base is unreal, and its seen tens of millions of downloads - likely more than iOS, despite being on the market for a shorter period of time.

Ad-served free games are not going to bring in anything close to the revenue of a paid game, especially if that game is $2 or more. Since we're talking about developers wanting to use a platform to make games, this is worth pointing out as a negative, not a positive.


Actually, they are. Rovio stated that Angry Birds revenue on iOS and Android were at parity in March 2011. Angry Birds is the top-selling iOS title of all time, so what should that tell you?

I fully agree that the markets aren't at parity yet when it comes to paid titles. But its slowly creeping for both systems to be at parity.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

rocketpig on 01 April 2012
mrstickball said:

Actually, they are. Rovio stated that Angry Birds revenue on iOS and Android were at parity in March 2011. Angry Birds is the top-selling iOS title of all time, so what should that tell you?

I fully agree that the markets aren't at parity yet when it comes to paid titles. But its slowly creeping for both systems to be at parity.

Angry Birds also has an INCREDIBLE play time per user. Because of its immense popularity, it's also only a $.99 game when they could easily get $2 for the title (and they get $3 on iPad, how do you think the Android tablet version of AB stacks up against that in revenue per user?).

In short, Angry Birds is not representative of the market.

As someone who has a lot of experience with click-through revenue, I know what it takes to reach parity with another paid product. The average game is not getting the requisite 2-3 clicks per user it requires to reach even a $1 threshold, as Rovio is not selling that click-through space at much more than $.50 per click and could be getting as little as $.30 per click.




Or check out my new webcomic: http://selfcentent.com/

mrstickball on 01 April 2012
rocketpig said:
mrstickball said:

Actually, they are. Rovio stated that Angry Birds revenue on iOS and Android were at parity in March 2011. Angry Birds is the top-selling iOS title of all time, so what should that tell you?

I fully agree that the markets aren't at parity yet when it comes to paid titles. But its slowly creeping for both systems to be at parity.

Angry Birds also has an INCREDIBLE play time per user. Because of its immense popularity, it's also only a $.99 game when they could easily get $2 for the title (and they get $3 on iPad, how do you think the Android tablet version of AB stacks up against that in revenue per user?).

In short, Angry Birds is not representative of the market.

As someone who has a lot of experience with click-through revenue, I know what it takes to reach parity with another paid product. The average game is not getting the requisite 2-3 clicks per user it requires to reach even a $1 threshold, as Rovio is not selling that click-through space at much more than $.50 per click and could be getting as little as $.30 per click.

I understand that. But as I've said: even in regards to the paid market, Android is slowly creeping up on iOS. It'll take more time for it to happen, but the gap is slowly moving in favor of Android. If Google ever fixes their fragmentation problems even slightly, they will decimate iOS due to their >50% market share of all smartphones being sold.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Dark_Lord_2008 on 01 April 2012

IPad holds over 70% of the entire Tablet market share. Android Tablets are struggling to compete with the popularity of the Apple brand.

Either get a cheaper IPad 2 or a New IPad with improvements in screen resolution.

Considering the OP already owns a laptop, an Apple IPad would be a good device for him to play around with. Size of IPad either 32GB or 64GB.