IPhone X-Plane app quadrupled desktop sales
Choice quotes: "Question: Austin, it's been about a year since the launch of version 9. What are your overall feelings about 2008? Are the sales where you expected them to be, is the product at the technical level you wanted it to be?
Austin: 2008, for me, kicked butt. Lots and lots of Butt. Why? Simple reason: IPHONE.
Iphone sales of X-Plane have been strong (I hit #3 in the world.. and #19 in the world with X-Plane Airliner). As well, ever since I came out with the iphone version of X-Plane, sales at X-Plane.com of the desktop version have been up by 400%.
So, people buy X-Plane for the iphone, and then a lot of them buy the full version... enough to quadruple my sales.
Now we are really starting to get some noticeable amount of market share."
"Q: Are you going to release more iPhone apps?
Austin: Huh-Huh... if there is a huge pile of gold under your lawn, are you gonna dig for it? ;-P
I look at the cheesy games for iPhone now, and I look at the power of X-Plane on it.. the power I have to bring sophisticated Apps to millions of people is just STUNNING... Yah, I have a huge opportunity here and am grabbing it!"
"Q: Austin said you were also working on the iPhone version of X-Plane. What do you do on that project?
Ben: The iphone version of X-Plane actually runs the same scenery engine as the desktop version - with much smaller, simpler scenery files. So my main work on the iphone was to port X-plane's scenery engine from the desktop to the iphone, and build scenery files for the iphone."
"Q: What are the major differences in working for X-Plane 9 desktop and X-plane for iPhone?
Ben: Memory! :-) The iphone has a lot less of it -- it's a constant battle to put x-plane on a "memory diet".
Actually, the biggest difference is that on the iphone, we control everything that goes into it - everything is pre-packaged. Every airplane, every scenery file, it all comes from us.
By comparison, the desktop sim is very open to add-ons. People add their own planes, scenery and plugins...there's a ton of great add-ons on sites like X-Plane.org. We have to program the desktop version of X-Plane to handle a huge range of airplanes created by other people.
So the primary concerns on the phone and desktop can be different. On the iphone, we need to save memory at all costs; on the desktop, we need to handle a huge range of airplanes and scenery created by other people."
"Q: How would you describe 2008 for X-Plane?
Randy: In late 2008 we also created our first X-Plane port to the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. These are amazing devices, acting not only as the computer and monitor but also as the flight controls; all rolled into one. Even we are a bit surprised at the explosive sales these products are delivering, with Apple selling well nearly 200,000 copies in the first three months."