Hey there, and welcome to my blog. I’ve been in the gaming world from just about the beginning and I’ve seen some pretty wild developments over the years. And, man, it sure doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon. Lately, the iPhone/iPod Touch market has gotten a lot of my attention. More about that in a minute.
In this blog I’ll be sharing my perspective on things, and I would love to hear back from you, too. Things change pretty fast in our world, and that seems especially true this past year. Okay, back to the iPhone:
Things are moving fast, but here's how it stands currently: over 2 billion downloads, over 85,000 apps and over 25,000 game apps! There are some pretty amazing things about the iPhone as a gaming device and it’s disrupted the traditional games business in a dramatic way. Of course, we all know that the traditional game companies have been hurting for several years...remember last year when everyone was saying gaming was recession-proof? OOPS! But now, with the avalanche of free and low-cost games on the iPhone and social gaming sites on PC... man, the big guys are really getting thrown back on their heels. Of course, they are starting to adjust....but when you’re used to 200+person teams, producing $20m-$40m-dollar games that retail for $80 bucks, free is quite a change! I feel for them, I really do.
But I’m not one to sit around complaining, so instead I’ve been focusing on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform for much of the past year. In just a short amount of time our development team at Portable Zoo has released several
games and been featured on the Apple landing page.
Here are a few of my general thoughts about what we’ve learned so far. I want to start a list of pros and cons, then in the next couple of weeks talk in more detail about them.
Five positives in developing for iPhone:
1. Touchscreen Interface/Accelerometer
2. Indies can flourish
3. Huge broadening of the gamer user base
4. Internet connectivity
and, finally
5. Iterate/Integrate
Five hurdles in developing for iPhone:
1. Lack of traditional game controls
2. Schizophrenic pricing
3. Inexperienced user base, game-lw’s (lightweights)
4. Needle in a haystack distribution
and last, but not least...
5. Freeware/Monetization