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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Pretty interesting statistics. The one that caught my eye was that Mac App Store accounted for 1% of revenue. That seems low, but damning enough to discourage Mac game development in general? SBSS was out on iOS for a good while (it seemed) before the Mac port...it had a huge push of publicity and rave reviews, so I would suspect that everyone who was conceivably interested in the game got it for iOS. And the universe of people who have a Mac but not either an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, must be pretty small.

The Android numbers don't seem that different compared to other lopsided iOS vs Android sales statistics.

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> That seems low, but damning enough to discourage Mac game development in general?

I'd much rather buy OS X games through Steam than the MAS. I'm sure there are a lot of other people who feel the same way.

Ditto. Steam tends to have the same price or lower, updates more frequently, and it's cross platform. I see no reason to use the MAS if there's any choice at all.

> The Android numbers don't seem that different compared to other lopsided iOS vs Android sales statistics.

Interesting how 77% of Android purchases were made when the app went on sale, versus 14% for iOS. Other articles mention how Android users favor ad-supported free apps above the ad-free $0.99 model.

Personally, the last thing I want to see when playing a game is a disruptive banner ad flashing at the top of screen. Not just games - it's ugly and tacky in just about any app.

It was available via the Humble Bundle sale before it was released in the play store, so people who are "into" android gaming probably grabbed it then.

My guess is that Mac users got it through Steam, not the Mac store.

Actually, most Mac users likely got it through the various Humble Bundles which all included a Mac version. I picked it up through HIB V even though I had the iOS version because it included several other fantastic games that I did not have.

This. I much prefer purchasing through Steam for games.

That being said, I wouldn't purchase a game on bought on iOS over a year ago just to play on my Mac.

I was curious about the super lopsided iOS and Android numbers, as we were discussing these stats earlier in the office, and it seems like Android wouldn't be worth investing in based on these stats alone.

However, the iOS version was released over two years ago (March 24, 2011 on iPad and April 27, 2011 on iPhone) while the Android version was released in November 2012.

I was wondering if these numbers are standard, or is availability the main issue here? Or something else that I haven't thought of?

The numbers here have some weird factors (significant lag in release date, available on PC before Android, Humble Bundle sales.) But yes, it's generally accepted that iOS games are more profitable.

However, they still made a significant amount of revenue from non-iOS sources. (It was about half and half.) Whether it's worth investing in an Android version probably depends on how just how much effort it would be. Here they got about 1/5 as much revenue from Android as they did iOS, but I'd bet it took less than 20% of their initial budget to do the port. (Especially given that they had already ported it to Windows, OSX, and Linux.)

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