Android now more profitable than iOS for well-known game developer | Hacker News Reader

Android now more profitable than iOS for well-known game developer

blogs.computerworld.com

94 pointssadiq35 comments

Wouldn't it be ironic if Steve Jobs, during his iPad 2 keynote, drove developers to the Android market by pointing out the low app number for tablets?

With just 100 apps for Android tablets, NOW seems like the perfect chance to get your app noticed by being first on the market...

If I remember correctly, the first iPad shipped without a calculator app, so the first 3rd party calculator apps made a killing (and Apple made their 30%). I'm guessing the same might be seen with Android Tablets.

Pretty sure iOS developers were too busy drooling over the iPad 2 to suddenly switch to a practically user-less tablet platform.

Which of the following scenarios are unlikely?

1. iOS triumphs everything else as the one mobile OS to rule them all. Everything else dies.

2. Android triumphs everything else as the one mobile OS to rule them all. Everything else dies.

3. In the big wide world, both iOS and Android do well, appealing to different masses and classes. The developer ecosystem also makes money off both platforms, albeit in different ways.

I use the above question to grok most of the stories in the tech community these days. And I think both are fine platforms that appeal to different people in different ways.

Yes, a popular game is making more money off Android than Apple. So what? Tomorrow there will be another story about someone making more money off iOS than Android.

The Wired story on Rovio posted yesterday has many points relevant to this madness. They optimized towards maximizing their profits from all available platforms by adapting to the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.

Honestly, companies that succeed for any reasonable periods of time all do that. The whole 'kill x' angle is the breathless reporting and commentary that plagues most material on tech these days. It has little place in the real world.

Format wars have sometimes ended up with one winner, and then there's the windows precedent.

I think a lot of the polarization comes from fear of one side or the other 'winning' - a fear that isn't entirely baseless.

Except iOS and Android have the exact same format - large touch screen. The technical differences won't be relevant to 99% of customers, it's the advertising and brand recognition that will make the difference.

By that token, VHS and Betamax both had the "exact same format" of magnetic tape in plastic boxes. Their similarities didn't stop one from driving the other out of the consumer market.

Personally, I suspect that Apple has lots of time before Android chokes off the smartphone market, and even longer in the tablet space. But eventually, the commodity-hardware producers are going to do to those devices what Compaq et al did for PCs; Apple will have to decide between marketshare and margin, and I suspect they'll choose margin even if it makes them decreasingly relevant. But by that point maybe they can invent some new niche.

I am not sure the Windows precedent applies here. At the height of the reign of Windows the landscape as far as the competition goes was extremely different. To point out one of the many contrasts - Apple did not have the kind of money it has today or the strong auxiliary channels: apps, music, ebooks etc to support its main product line.

I don't think anyone can say the world is going to be 90% Android or 90% iOS as far as handhelds are concerned. It is a market that is still opening up and there are at least three distinct pricing segments in it. Plenty of space for the top 2-3 to grow without killing anyone else.

Probably #3. Much like game consoles have competed against each other for several decades. Seems to be a very good comparison. Most of the big titles will be cross platform, some tiles will be paid exclusives, with lots of smaller games targeting one or the other until they reach some critical mass of success that justifies going cross platform. It's going to be a Columns/Tetris -- Mario/Sonic sort of world but not just for games -- applications too.

Omg "Pocket Legends"?

You know why it's doing better on Android? Because iOS has much better games in the same genre as pocket legends. Maybe this is just a story about how android users are so desperate for games - any games - that this "ok-ish" game on iOS turned out to be a real windfall for them there. Good for them.

On iOS I'd rather play KnightsRush or battleheart (or the new space game, don't remember the name but it makes pocket legends look like the retarded dos era game that it is) any day.

The fanboy is strong with this one.

Meh. This is pretty typical among game fans, especially online competitive game fans. And I say that as a game programmer. And what he lacks in subtlety he makes up in passion and enthusiasm. He doesn't like the game. Oh well. Still, the basic point he makes is legit - with less compelling games in the field, the mediocre ones get a brighter spotlight shone on them.

It's actually a really good point. A game like this can do better on Android because iOS has so many more well-known, competing games in the genre. Since Android has so little, the user base is funneled through fewer games.

As for fanboys, I find Android fanboys to be the worst because they loudly tout "openness" as if it justifies everything.

I agree to the gist - there is incomparably better selection on iOS.

I recently switched to Android and really can't wait for decent games to come to the Market. By decent I mean stuff like Broken Sword, or any of the other ports of A-quality old games. The new ones from premium publishers seem to be too much oriented to 3D, polish and no playablity :(

I think it's before long, provided the market position Android has in the US. The start was slow, but once the paid model is proven on Android, we'll get it all :)

I would be interesting to see comparison from a well-known game developer focusing more on up front purchase price. Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that Spacetime Studios is so profitable on Android, but I would like to see how it compares for paid apps, especially since there seems to be an impression that Android users don't pay for apps (at least not up front).

Regarding the comments in the article about ad click-through, my personal hypothesis is that iOS users are more used to paying for apps up front, and ad financed apps are not the norm, therefore people filter out the ads in their brains. On Android it seems to be the other way around.

This is very impressive, though I wonder how much of their success may be due to the significantly smaller amount of competing games on Android vs iOS?

My best guess would be that's partially it. The other part being consumers are getter wiser when it comes to purchasing things. There's of flood of apps that lack polish and are quick cash-ins, and at this point the novelty of fart apps and what not has worn off.

That's exactly the point. Android is a more virgin market, so more potential there, especially for the tablet apps market. It turns out Scoble WAS right about Xoom and Honeycomb:

http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/04/developers-why-you-should-b...

One developer with an average game that has no competitors (unlike on iOS) means Scoble was right?

One of his arguments is that the platform is slower and less efficient than iOS, so developers are going to want to target it to show off their programing skill or something. It's a ridiculous article full of wishful thinking.

The article offers the same theory. Big fish, small pond.

And it seems that WP7 might ultimately be even more profitable for devs than Android.

http://mobilitydigest.com/despite-smaller-base-devs-see-high...

I don't know if there is one single takeaway from this info. It seems like the dearth of competitive games on both platforms at this point when compared to the iOS must at least be partly responsible for the higher returns.

I think we can all agree that a substantial number of Android supporters are a bit on the tech/geeky side - commonly presenting device specs and openness as a point of superiority over iOS.

I think we also can agree that most MMO players are on the tech/geeky side.

Thus, Android's consumer base is particularly well-suited to support a MMO.

Regardless, if I have to read one more article about what mobile OS is better, I'm going to lose my mind. Who cares? Unless you own a few thousand shares in any of these companies, you shouldn't. When I see these, I immediately picture two fat people arguing whether Popeye's or KFC is better.

LOL on the last sentence! :-)

Popeye's. I'm actually below average weight, so perhaps my opinion isn't worth as much.

We did a phone survey at the office, and it was just the opposite. The techie people mostly had iPhones, while the normals had Android phones or Blackberries.

I don't think the average Android owner could be described as "geeky" any more than the average iPhone user can tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica.

It's easy to find vocal examples of these extremes online but smartphones are basically replacing featurephones, very soon everyone will have one. Already the market penetration numbers are so high that I doubt the average iPhone or Android user could be distinguished much from each other, or from non-smartphone users.

So ... they make money through in-app purchases and advertising?

Maybe that's the problem on iPhones? Seems like any time you ask people for cash after subjecting them to ads they get seriously pissed. On Android the market is smaller, so the options are slimmer and people are less picky about that sort of thing.

Some smaller pitfalls in the logic:

1) The game Pocket legends: There might be far superior games on iOS

2) The crowd that owns iPhone is not interested in such an app at all

3)Games of such genre do not perform well on iOS

The point I want to make is that one app developer's one single games data is too small of a sample data to make any serious claims.

Looks like they have discovered the magic formula: "being a big fish in a small pond".

one drop in a big pond...

I've never even heard of Pocket Legends before, much less the developer.

And what point are you trying to make?

Their game is getting 12-13k downloads per day and has made best-of lists on Mashable and MSNBC; clearly they are well known, even if you are not personally aware of them.

That settles it, guys! One game proves that Android's app problem is over.

I'm pretty sure the point (which was not quite adeptly-made) is that calling Spacetime a "well-known game developer" is overselling the company by a bit.

I'd never heard of them before either. They're clearly doing a great job in the mobile space, but when I read "well-known game developer", I think of companies a few orders of magnitude larger than Spacetime.

For a company with wider brand recognition - whether it's Rovio (Angry Birds) or Blizzard or Harmonix (Rock Band) or whomever to do better on Android than iOS, that'd signal something a bit larger. Which is what I was expecting this article to be about.

you should try it, impressive MMO for mobile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com