With Respect To Gaming, Android Still Lags Behind iOS (bgr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: No matter what you think about the Android/iOS divide from either a hardware or software perspective, there's simply no getting around the fact that many developers still take an iOS-first approach with respect to app development. With games, where development costs are already sky-high, the dynamic is even more pronounced. For instance, one of the most addictive, successful, and highly rated apps currently available on the App Store is a great snowboarding game called Alto's Adventure. It was originally released this past February for the iPhone and iPad (and now the Apple TV). Still today, nine months after its initial release, an Android version of the app remains non-existent. Now if you're an Android user who happens to enjoy mobile gaming, it's easy to see how this dynamic playing out over and over again can quickly become an endless source of frustration.

Comments

Hardware

[bickerdyke]

Espescially with games, it's where the bigger hardware variety turns around and bites Android in the back.

It's testing on 4 or 5 models vs testing a game on 300 phones.

Add the fact that iOS users are more willing to pay for Apps (they signed up with their credit card already so those 88ct are 88ct only and not 88ct plus signing up with your credit card at a vendor with questionable reputation of making profits with data)

Re:Why?

[fluffernutter]

Actually from what I see, iOS is more popular with kids, who are more likely to have money to spend on games themselves or have parents that are willing to throw them a couple bucks to shut them up. iOS is not the 'premium' OS as people say, it is the OS for grade-schoolers.

Re: Why?

[AmiMoJo]

a good chunk of those are still on gingerbread or Froyo even

Which is of course horse shit. A mere 4% of users are on pre-4.0 versions of the OS, and their devices are likely not powerful enough to run any game that actually cares about API features from later versions.

Android had over 80% of the market in 2014, and rising. Even if any given Android user spends only 1/5th as much on apps, it's still as lucrative as iOS.

Finding a few games that are not out on Android means nothing. There are popular Android games not out on iOS. There are many games that can never come out on iOS due to content restrictions. The reasons why games don't always come out on every platform are complex, and looking at the AAA titles that are available on Android it's obvious that there is no problem developing or making money on the platform.