Comment by jarjoura | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jarjoura | Hacker News Reader

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How is it that Sony PS4/Vita stores can sell these same indie games for $20 a pop? Sony pushes these games hard and gives every one of them a fair amount of free marketing. They also celebrate their game developers by writing about them on their blogs and press-releases.

The Apple App store in its current iteration is just mentally exhausting. Everytime I open it up I'm presented with a new grid of app icons and no context to why I should care.

To further detriment, Apple has trained the market to stay away from 3rd party curation of iOS apps in any kind of useful way. So we're left only with a gateway of lists. That's nice, but not worth my time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ultimately an indie game has limited replay value because they're just so small in scope, but they're usually a lot of fun. So a one time upfront payment to enjoy for a few weeks is a great business strategy I think.

Edit: Not to sound like I'm bashing Apple here, as I don't think the Google Play store does it any better.

I'm a lifelong gamer who's entered a bit of a rut these past few years. I would love to pay to play great apps on my phone. But I don't have the slightest clue as to how to find them. The top grossing lists are all complete F2P junk, and there's nothing close to the cottage industry that's built up around PC and console gaming. Every time I try to go look up good mobile games I get hit with lots of dodgy top-10 compilation linkfarm spam sites. I don't even know where to go to find the best mobile games, and every so often after investing another ten fruitless minutes of research (into what should be fun!) I'll give up all over again.

Contrast with my recent gaming experiences on the PC -- Civ V, The Witcher 3, Kerbal Space Program, and Faster than Light. All excellent games well worth their price that I was able to find out about easily. I don't know if anything comparable exists on mobile gaming, or if it's all just shit, nor do I even know how to find out. Back in the day Sony and Nintendo owned and published official magazines that were excellent sources of finding out about games, and many other non-official rags filled any potential void left over (I'll forever look back fondly on my afternoons after school spent reading issues of PC Gamer, PSM, and EGM cover-to-cover). Nothing comparable exists for mobile gaming, and Apple and Google could be doing a much better job of curating their gaming content.

toucharcade.com is a good source for iOS game reviews.

I've read that site before, and it has pointers to good games -- unfortunately most are iOS-exclusive though. I have an Android phone.

Actually if that's what you want I'd advise you to buy a windows 10 tablet. They run old (and gog.com) games and come with decent mouse emulation and actually last 4-5 hours on battery. Taking games like Spelunky on a 400 gram tablet with you for on the train/plane is nice.

Even something like Civ 4 is playable.

If I were going to get an entire dedicated system for mobile gaming, I think a PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS XL would be a better choice -- they're both way cheaper, have dedicated controls for gaming, and have large libraries of purpose-built games. But I'm just not interested in more devices, especially ones I'd have to remember to charge and bring with me. I already have a smartphone, several desktops, two laptops, a Kindle, and an Android tablet. It's enough already.

Some renew your office subscription and get you excel updates etc for another year, and cost like 20-30$ more than just the office subscription itself.

I don't use any of that stuff either though. I'm a big GNU/Linux guy (at home and at work), and I exclusively use Windows for gaming. Office 365 subscriptions hold no value for me.

Just curious: how the heck do you play Spelunky on a touchscreen? That game is hard enough on keyboard or gamepad, I can't imagine playing it on a touch screen with any degree of success.

Actually bought a Vita specifically for Spelunky, plays beautifully the D-pad is probably the best I've ever used (and I've owned most handhelds/consoles)

TxK, Persona 4, Binding of Isaac, etc were the icing on a great cake.

Apple has fantastically bungled the management of their app store. It could have been a lively and creative ecosystem of indie developers but instead it's just a trash pile of exploitative junk. They will pay the price for their negligence as apps become less and less of a differentiator between their extremely expensive phones and much cheaper but equally capable Android devices. I believe we're seeing this already.

And their iPad "pro" initiative is DOA because everybody knows you can't make money selling productivity apps on the iPad.

Getting into the app business in 2016 is a mistake.

...which is why they just introduced subscription pricing for productivity apps.

This may, or may not, make a big difference for serious apps on the iPad.

Not to mention that it is nearly impossible to glean anything about the app/game from its ratings, if any are available at all. It truly is a confusing mess.

I deeply regret the day I got an iPad for my son instead of an Android device. At least ratings aren't censored or hidden there.

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