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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.
Is iOS simply more profitable?
Is Android harder to program or support?
Is code easily portable?
Do iOS devices have more hardware resources?
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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)
bickerdyke
Gaming on a phone is a painful experience unless the phone is physically designed for it like the Nokia N-Gage (talk about a throwback). After playing Angry Birds and Temple Run it's a miracle I haven't smashed my phone more often.
Interesting, because the mobile game I play "Castle Clash" which is available for just about every platform under the sun lags behind on iOS compared to Android, by a considerable amount. It can be weeks before updates to the game make it to iOS. On the other hand Amazon which has a smaller user base than iOS gets the updates much faster, usually only a day or two behind Google Play, and sometimes even in advance.
Could it be that the developers just develop on whatever platform they are comfortable with, whether that be iOS or Android and might simply not have the wherewithal to develop for the alternative platform.
I live in Vietnam so everything here is pirated already. How bad is it in the U.S. (and other "developed") countries? Are most apps available (illegally) for free?
Maybe even if they are "pirated" they can still earn revenue for their developers if they earn money through ads. Or have the pirated versions been modified to remove/change the ads?
I'm kinda out of the business in my 40s. Just as a curiosity, do you think gaming is stronger on consoles, mobile devices or still PC (Steam)?
Interesting, because the mobile game I play "Castle Clash" which is available for just about every platform under the sun lags behind on iOS compared to Android, by a considerable amount. It can be weeks before updates to the game make it to iOS. On the other hand Amazon which has a smaller user base than iOS gets the updates much faster, usually only a day or two behind Google Play, and sometimes even in advance
Castle Clash and its' ilk are ad supported and freemium no? The likes of them tend to go with platforms that provide more eyes, in this case android (and to certain extent, Fire OS)
...may also be a contributing factor. I reckon that being able to install emulators, thus having thousands of pirated oldsk00l games on tap, does hurt the willingness to pay for games.
Then someone make a clone for Android and you cry a river because people know about it and probably make the money your should have received. knowing nothing about your game on Android when you release it later. see 2048 history
This is to be expected, as there are more Android users. There are more applications, especially free ones, in Google Play.
This is scored "0"? It's actually insightful. CP/M wasn't considered a suitable game platform in the early days of PC gaming because there were a plethora of different CP/M machines with different keyboards, screen resolutions, CPUs, RAM...even different disk drive formats. CP/M wasn't just one platform...it was actually several.
The Commodore 128 was probably the CP/M machine with the most compatiblity with others, that being due to the the 1571 being able to read and write other CP/M disk formats.
You can do TapJoy on the Google Play, but you would have to spend a *LOT* of time to accumulate even a moderate amount of in game currency. So much that it is not worth the effort unless you are really poor and have insane amounts of free time on your hands.
Therefore you mostly fork out real $$$ for the in game currency. Though you can do a lot completely free to play as well (as I do, not spent a penny).
It also just plain takes longer to get through the App Store submission process. On Google Play, you can release a new version every hour, if you want.
He's not wrong, iOS is definitely easier to code for due to the far lower number of devices compared to the user base.
Although, I use my phone as a phone. If I want to play a game, I go home and boot my PC up.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
No frustration. It's not as if Android is lacking in games after all. And IOS-only games are, well, only available on IOS. Since I have no iphone I never hear about them, and don't miss them.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
When I run out of games to play on my Samsung, I still won't consider Apple because I think their interface and control-freak issues mostly suck the big one. My company forced me to have one for awhile, so I had two phones. I just recently gave it back because a 'free' phone is worth exactly that; I'd rather pay for my Android than use a free iPhone.
Fortunately, I'm not one of those people who just have to have the latest game or phone so I can be part of the 'in' crowd. I'm happy waiting until my old phone breaks before getting a new one and playing the few games I have for the few minutes a day I play them because I'm not addicted to my fucking phone.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
That's because software developers can release updates to google apps without them going through the approval process again. Apple screens and tests all updates to ensure they're safe, and it can take several weeks for updates to finally appear in the Apple Store.
You could always make/play point-and-click games instead of trying to shoehorn directional-control mechanics onto a positional platform. Point-and-click worked for ICOM (MacVenture series), Activision (Return to Zork), Cyan (Myst), Sierra (King's Quest; Leisure Suit Larry), LucasArts (old Monkey Island), and Telltale (modern Monkey Island). Shoot-em-ups such as AirAttack HD also tend to work well, with the touch screen acting like a laptop's trackpad to move the player's vehicle.
Ideally, gamers would be able to buy a MOGA gamepad and clip it onto a phone. But last time I checked these gamepad manufacturers weren't releasing sales figures to let game studios determine the size of the market for phones with buttons.
Then perhaps you need to get more aggressive at suing cloners like Tetris is.
I have an iPhone, and when I go looking for games (or any app) I don't look at Google Play. I have a Mac, and I don't search for Windows software either.
Yet Windows and Android software keeps popping up in search results when you use a generic web search engine, such as DuckDuckGo or Bing, to search for reviews of apps in a particular category.
ios has nothing over android. you develop your ios game for profits and you will make 70-90% there, the android version is for reputation only. this is the normal non-candycrush/clashofclans scenario.
I am part owner of an established startup doing mobile games aimed at kids. The decision to support Android was always a contentious one for us, and after years of beating our heads against that wall, I wish we had never done it.
I won't get into value judgments or rhetoric about openness - the revenue on Android just isn't even faintly close to iOS. Maybe 20 cents on the dollar on a *good* day. But as you might guess, it's taken up a lot more than 20% of our time. This fact is sometimes presented with undertones that iOS developers are just greedy, but it's literally a matter of survival - for us, Android simply cannot sustain a viable business.
As far as ease of development: the other comments capture it pretty well; both platforms have a lot of annoyances that you have to work around. Compared to my background developing server applications on Linux, I find both platforms shamefully bug-ridden and slapped together, but I wouldn't say that one is noticeably worse in the big picture.
Due to unfortunate Apple's decision to set price minimum to $0.99, both app stores are flooded with dumb repetitive gameplay not worth paying for. They should have set base price at $9.99. Then, if someone manages to sell 100 copies of an interesting hobby game, they can buy themselves a new iPad and get motivated to do more.
Now it could well be that iOS has more copies of Candy Crush than Android, but I am not missing them in any way. What I wish is that Steam had an Android client with cross-platform play for desktop games with mobile ports, like Talos Principle and Fran Bow. Then each game would be worth more than desktop or mobile port alone, as I wouldn't have to give up big screen or conversely wait until I am home to play.
I personally refuse to endorse the litany of infringement excuses commonly repeated on Slashdot by "information wants to be free" types. But one I will endorse is when the copyright owner either A. cannot be located and contacted or B. refuses to offer a license at a royalty close to the royalty for comparable uses of comparable works. The law at least ought to make statutory damages unavailable in those cases, allowing a reuser to put a reasonable royalty into a trust with which to settle with the copyright owner for actual damages later.
Example of A: mccalli's situation and other situations listed in Orphan works
Example of B: Song of the South, where comparable works include the same studio's Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Another example of B: The detailed rules of Tetris or any other video game whose publisher wants to promote it as an e-sport, where comparable works include the rules of tennis
...stop laughing.
But,
It takes all of 5 minutes to run through every possible customization option in iOS, which leaves you turning to games that much quicker in your eternal quest to find more ways to stare at your phone. On Android you have a solid week ahead of you of trying out every possible flavor of the settings and apps that customize your phone. And that's just on the 'legit' app store.
Not denigrating either experience, this is just based on my experience switching between the two. I always found gaming on phones to be a frustrating waste of time. Never once considered putting anything but crosswords on my Android. But with iOS it gets stale so much faster that I ended up buying a number of games just because there isn't really any fun dinking around with the phone itself to be had.
That taking Google out of the equation couldn't fix!