Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK, iPod touch
iPhone is dominating independent gaming
Our friends at Joystiq make a very insightful and very telling discovery: the iPhone more or less owns the finalist list for the 2009 Independent Games Festival Mobile category. 11 of the 14 contestants aren't on the Nintendo DS or PSP -- they're built and played on the iPhone and the iPod touch. The popular Fieldrunners and Igloo Games' Dizzy Bee are standouts, but even innovative games like Galcon and the pseudogame experience Ruben and Lullaby are being honored with nods.Very, very telling -- the relatively low cost of entry into the App Store and the versatility of Apple's SDK makes the iPhone/iPod touch a dream platform for independent game developers, and clearly, even with less than a year of development time, Apple's handheld is making a big splash in the industry. Sure, there's still a few pricing hiccups that need to be worked out to get bigger developers on board in a big way, but for smaller and single person independent game developers, there's never been a better platform on which to make and market your games.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cyanide said 9:14AM on 1-27-2009
All those games they listed suck and if anything they are hunilating to the app store. The app Store has been opened for almost a year and all is has to show for is lame games like dizzy bee.and ifart
Come on third parties app developesr make some real games none of that lousy excuse for game.
Is that to hard to ask for.
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Tom said 9:26AM on 1-27-2009
Have you ever tried those games? Fieldrunners and Galcon are fun as hell - and this is what games are about right?
faustuscm said 9:39AM on 1-27-2009
Fieldrunners is one of the better tower defense style games on the iPhone.
Quix said 9:57AM on 1-27-2009
Um, the App Store hasn't been open for a year. It's been open for half that.
I predict some amazing games in 2009.
Neil said 9:16AM on 1-27-2009
It's just unfortunate that iPhone isn't really a very good gaming device. Give me buttons.
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Quix said 9:56AM on 1-27-2009
To all the anti-Apple trolls that infest every gaming blog and site and insist the iPhone/iPod is a gaming dead end (like they claimed about the Nintendo Wii a couple of years ago - I wonder how that turned out...), may I quote Tina Fey:
"Suck it, haters."
Yes, may of the current games are crap. But there are some real gems. Rolando is fantastic. The Tap Tap games are a blast. And Fieldrunners proves that an iPhone/iPod version of Starcraft would not only be possible, but awesome. The future is bright indeed, despite the naysayers' ranting to the contrary.
Buttons? We don't need no stinkin' buttons.
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Sean said 11:51AM on 1-27-2009
My 7 year old daughter received both a Touch and a DS for Christmas.
The first thing she did with the Touch was spend 2 days straight downloading FREE games and apps. I did buy her a $50 iTunes card to spend as well. So, after downloading approximately 100 games and apps she proceeded to spend the next month playing every one of them....... the DS was still in the box.
I went to EB to buy a DS game to see if I could get her to play with it some. $30 for 1 game? Ouch!!!!! She ended up not liking the game and spent all of 30 minutes playing it. So, now I'm out $30. I could have bought 30 .99 Cent games on iTunes and she would have played for days and days.
It's basic economics boys. The iPhone/Touch will supplant the DS and PSP. When I can "download instantly" free/cheap games, why would I ever want to spend $30+ on 1 game that my kid may or may not like, that I have to run to the store to buy?
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Synthmeister said 12:12PM on 1-27-2009
You hit the nail on the head. Apple is turning the whole mobile gaming paradigm upside down. The games may or may not be "better" more "immersive" or whatever but they are cheap, cheap, cheap and many, many more people will actually try playing games with the iPhone or touch than with other mobile devices.
Developers also get an end to end development, distribution, advertising, sales, and upgrade mechanism with minimal overhead AND 70% profit margins.
Nintendo and PSP are for avid gamers, and, yes the games may be better, or certain types of games may simply not be suited to the iPhone/touch interface. (although I would withhold judgement for another 6 - 12 months on that.) But it won't matter, the App store is becoming a juggernaut and the other 90% of the population who are simply casual gamers are going to rule the brave new gaming world.
Kai Cherry said 12:50PM on 1-27-2009
The iPod touch supplant the Nintendo DS?!?!
See...this right here is a sure sign of blurred vision: do some research on Nintendo's end-to-end domination in portable gaming and learn why this has happened.
I assure you that the core reasons why the DS, and Nintendo's systems thru the years, have dominated portable gaming are specific, and the iPod touch weakens none of them :)
This last paragraph speaks volumes about what you *don't* know:
"Nintendo and PSP are for avid gamers, and, yes the games may be better, or certain types of games may simply not be suited to the iPhone/touch interface. (although I would withhold judgement for another 6 - 12 months on that.) But it won't matter, the App store is becoming a juggernaut and the other 90% of the population who are simply casual gamers are going to rule the brave new gaming world."
It costs so much money to produce a game that the Cocoatouch platform will be the last stop until the pricing is in line with the industry. Even the Big Players that have shipped games on the platform have "pricing issues".
-K
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Synthmeister said 1:14PM on 1-27-2009
You are flat out wrong. it doesn't take much money to produce a game for the iPod touch or iPhone that earns lots of money, esp compared to the PSP or DS. Try to sign up for their developers program why don't you and see how fast you earn a 70% cut of the price of your game. This guy earned $250K in six months--including development time--all by himself.
Let me know when someone accomplishes that with a DS or PSP game.
Read:
http://www.edubook.com/how-an-iphone-game-developer-earned-250000-in-just-two-months/597/
This kind of news is helping the App store attract more and more developers, big and small. 500,000 downloads in the first 6 months, 15,000 apps. The app store is on a steeper trajectory than the original iTunes store. THAT should scare the crap out of the competition.
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Jocca said 3:23PM on 1-27-2009
My favorite game so far is Astro Tilt. It has a free demo version and it is an excellent arcade type game that test your eye and hand coordination. The early moves are very easy, then it gets harder and harder. I play it with the tilt motion enabled. That is the most interesting way to play this.
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iphonerulez said 3:49PM on 1-27-2009
I don't know what kind of games these people want. Apple's devices are nothing more than glorified cellphones and it appears the people are asking for games of PS3 quality. They weren't designed for ultra-high framerate games and even if they were, the battery wouldn't last for an hour. If I were a developer, I'd hate to have to listen to the crap these people are bitching about over games that cost a few dollars apiece. Some of these complainers ought to try and develop games themselves if they're gonna call other peoples games crap. This platform has been around a half a year and that's about it. Were the PSP and DS platforms all that great when they first started. They also probably had bigger game developers, too. I'd say the current games a fine for the hardware they're running on. Even a game such as Katamari taxes the hell out of graphics processor on the iPhone and Touch. The iPhone and Touch are not dedicated game machines. They're multipurpose cellphone, music/video player that happen to be able to play some games. If the games on the iPhone are crap, I'd hate to hear the griping about games on other cellphones since the iPhone processor outclasses most of the others. Some games on the PSP cost 10X as much, but I doubt if they are 10X better than what's on the iPhone. I really like using my PSP, but to call the majority of iPhone games crap is quite a stretch. The reviews on the App Store certainly don't indicate that lots of people are dissatisfied with the current games. I just don't get some people's arrogant attitude.
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chuck said 1:10AM on 1-28-2009
There's a lot of things wrong with this article. I don't think that the Nintendo DS or the PSP would belong on an independent gaming awards list, as they aren't really open platforms. What's "very, very telling" about this article is that the iphone OS is relatively cheap to develop for, and that it has a wide audience. It says nothing about the quality of the games between the different systems, or any kind of shift in the gaming world. I don't think that anybody is flocking to the iphone as a gaming platform. I think that a lot of people have a very expensive device and want to look at it a lot, and when you plug it into your computer, it tries to sell you things. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I am just pointing out that the software the device uses to interface with a computer has a store built in, as does the device itself, so that could be something that drives the sale of game software on the device, not neccesarily the quality of the game.
I'm also surprised to see that there are ANY DS or PSP games in the Mobile category. Mobile used to mean phone games, and generally the PSP and DS are considered "portable consoles". So should iPhone games be compared?
The new Nintendo DSi in japan is beginning to offer system only games downloadable over the internet, so perhaps we'll see a change in their pricing structure.
My point is I am surprised to see any DS games in the independent gaming awards, since the only way that anybody gets to use them on the DS is through a device that nintendo is actively trying to put an end to in order to stop piracy.
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