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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

I have been writing software professionally for 15 years and I have never written a single line of code for an Apple device, and I never would. Contributing to the Apple ecosystem is a choice, no one is forced to do it. Any developer who contributes to the Apple ecosystem is taking an active part in the situation.

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Unfortunately for mobile games iOS tends to be where the majority of the money is.

I don’t think it’s just games. iOS users in general are more willing to pay for software than Android users and Android users are more willing to pay than web users.

This was my experience doing consulting/contracting for most of the 2010s. Clients would want both iOS and Android, and we’d release with full feature parity. In every instance the iOS apps brought in 2x-5x the revenue, even when our Android apps had more active users.

I’ve always wondered why that is. I’ve had both Android and iOS phones and I’ve spent far, far more on iOS apps. I don’t think I’ve ever paid for a web app. There’s something about the platforms themselves then encourage or discourage spending.

Where are all the good iOS games? I don’t know if I’d be able to name more than a handful[0]. How many people are making -- and similarly monetizing: upfront cost sans micro-transactions -- things like Mindustry?

0: Mindustry https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mindustry/id1385258906 and two more which are available with an Apple Arcade subscription, maybe also for individual purchase: Dandara https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dandara-trials-of-fear/id15761... and Fantasian https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fantasian/id1517339045.

Over the past few years, the highest grossing games are freemium pay to win games, like Star Trek Fleet Comman. While they're available on both android and iOS, the fact that iOS users tend to me more affluent means that the revenue tends to come from in-app purchases on iOS more than android.

This was shared on HN a couple months back, I found some nice games there: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/

Not just games, iOS App Store revenue is far higher in pretty much all categories vs Android.

> Contributing to the Apple ecosystem is a choice, no one is forced to do it.

This is such a disingenuous argument that ignores the huge pile of incentives at play. Here is an equally disingenuous argument: anyone who sells or gives away any software to anyone in the US is taking an active part in the US military industrial complex.

> anyone in the US is taking an active part in the US military industrial complex.

Its annoying how this isn't that far off. Even big consumer facing companies will end up working for or supplying intelligence to the MIC.

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