The #1 Grossing Game On Android And iOS Has Almost Even Revenues From Both | Hacker News Reader

The #1 Grossing Game On Android And iOS Has Almost Even Revenues From Both

techcrunch.com

48 pointspook1e18 comments

To me this makes the case for using a cross platform framework for mobile games, such as Gideros, Moai etc. If you can achieve 2x revenue with 1.2x effort it definitely seems worthwhile.

I'm using MOAI and it just plain rocks. There is no greater joy, after 3 years of platform-specific development, than having a single codebase to deploy on both iOS and Android platforms. It just makes sense.

I'm investigating Moai now. Do you have conditional code or different resources optimized for iOS and Android? Or can you build packages for both platforms with a one push of the button?

There is very little conditional code in the Lua sources, we do set a different theme as needed for Retina though, and yes .. at this point, we're building the MOAI host and integrating sources essentially at the push of a button - our buildserver checks out the Lua project, bundles it into .apk / .ipa files, and off it goes. It really is genius.

We've had to extend the host a bit, too. Its not too hard to do that, and in fact the point is that if you've implemented a certain feature natively, already, for either Android or iOS targets, then you can easily do the same for the MOAI host and then expose it to the Lua VM layer for ease of development within the Lua-side of the MOAI framework. I think this is a really nice, comfortable way to solve the platform issues - at least, for certain classes of application. It remains to be seen, yet, whether MOAI can do utility apps or is relegated to a game eco-system, but in fact there are interesting developments occurring in the realm of using MOAI for GUI-style development. This is really exciting.

I've got friends who swear by Unity for this reason.

I'm surprised that there aren't more games in this genre. Combining all of the terrible features of "social" games with CCG gameplay gives you a great number of players who regularly shell out hundreds of dollars in exchange for nothing as you release new content.

CCG?

What is this genre anyway? It appears to be Japanese and contain dragons but that's about all I got from the article.

"Collectible Card Game". Think Pokemon.

Collectible Card Games. Think Magic the Gathering, but with virtual cards. As such, they can sell as many virtual cards as they want, and the cards themselves can be 'upgraded'.

Oh. I should have guessed. Sounds awful!

Kids these days. In my day we had Fruit Ninja and we liked it.

CCG = collectible card game. Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, YuGiOh, etc etc etc. The mechanics translate to gaming well and many video games still use card mechanics with varying kinds of digital 'cards', usually mixed with other game play mechanisms.

If you look at this another way, couldn't you also draw the conclusion that Android is still behind on monetization? After eyballing this chart from march (http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-iphone-market-share-ve...) it looks like its Android at ~50% to the iPhones ~25%. To me that says that the Android market isn't converting as well, though it is better than the 4:1 ratio that was quoted in the article.

You don't need to eyeball it, the second graph gives the numbers for installed base 48 vs 32% Android to iPhone.

Two caveats: this is smartphone data, so doesn't count iPod Touch or iPad which will understate Apple's addressable audience and it's American data, not global, which will probably overstate Android's addressable market (though probably less by dollar spend than per person).

My Apple ID was compromised and the "hacker" used it to purchase $90 worth of in-game items for this game. I wonder if the developer is behind it somehow? /tinfoil

Not enough details in the 'catchy' title/article.

It could mean that it's taken the game on iOS half as long to reach the same revenues. It has been available on Android twice as long as it's been available on iOS (~8 weeks vs ~4 weeks).

FTA: DeNA says that Rage of Bahamut, which was the #1 grossing game on both Android and iOS yesterday, is earning about the same revenue per day from both platforms.

"Per day" seems to put that theory to rest. In general, the term "revenue" is almost always used to refer to a rate (quarterly, yearly, etc...).

Revenue PER DAY does nothing to address the time frame it has taken each app to reach that rate.

For example, if you have an app returning the same revenue per day after a week on the market as another app which has been out a year, tell me which one is performing better. You can't because you don't know if the app which has been out a year ramped up to that rev. per day or if it has kept it out of the gate (or even decreased to that rate).

Hence, the not enough details in the title/article, and the alternate scenario I gave vs. how the article portrayed it.

I bet that months from now if the revenue per day is still the same for both platforms, you'll be changing the timeframe just to make your point.

I remember years ago when the IPhone was selling more than Android. Fanboys kept saying that Android would not catch up.

Then Android starts selling more units than IPhone per month. Fanboys argue that it's because Android is available in more carriers.

Then the IPhone became available on Sprint and Verizon but Android is still outselling it. Fanboys argue that it's because people were waiting for the next version of the IPhone.

Then the new IPhone came out but Android still sells more units.

Ah, you can never please an Apple Fanboy. The goal post keeps moving.

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