There are some useful and innovative apps out there, mostly they're just time wasters though. Totally sympathetic to the notion that game development is being undermined and it's value in the consumer's eye diminished by sheer mass and ease of access. That's not something to mock or blithely disregard with a "Suck it up princess". As a muso I've experienced the shift to mass piracy and the resultant decay of what was a mutually enriching respect and mystique between an artist and his/her audience. It's inevitable, doesn't mean it's good. Nor does the fact Garageband enables 50 year old men to make sexually explicit club tunes and rake it in. Which is a weird way to end this rant.
maroon(slang); bugs bunny popularized it to mean "to abandon intellegence"
Quote:
Originally Posted by fisherman
Fro the Urban Dictionary. A term of derision often uttered by Bugs Bunny when referring to an interaction with a dopey adversary. It is a mispronunciation of the word "Moron".
I guess we are short on fans of Bugs Bunny and his mentor Groucho around here.
In any case, the term fits.
lol
You know what? I've literally never had a conversation with someone that quotes Bugs Bunny! This place must be Looney Tunes central!
At least I understand the reference now, cheers!
I still don't understand the context though, maybe Multimedia could clear that up.
I said the paragraph saying the consoles were heading toward online gaming and have more recently attempted to address the needs of indie developers didn't make any sense since online console gaming has been around since 1998 (cheers Momus ) and XBLA launched in 2004.
Multimedia agreed with me (All of which predate the Apple App Store which started in Summer of 2008 less than 3 years ago) and then said someone/something was maroon. Was it directed at me? (doesn't make sense since Multimedia agreed with my statement) or at Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft for not being as popular as the iOS App Store even though they had a lead (also doesn't really make sense).
Apparently a good many readers here, like the one I replied to, who at first argued against Hawkins' observation but ultimately just offered explanations that reinforce it.
While no one's been able to turn up any URL to anything at all that would suggest that even one-tenth of iOS apps are making more than minimum wage, we have the simple math of development costs to illustrate why most iOS apps lose money:
Feel free to offer any statistics which would prove that a majority of iOS apps are profitable.
Please keep in mind that I'm not saying "Apple is bad" or "I hate freedom" or "the terrorists have won!" or any of the other sort of hyperbole so many posts are mistaken for.
All I'm saying is that no matter how much one might dislike Hawkins' observation, it's more accurate than not.
I'm certainly not claiming that the majority of apps are profitable - and I don't see anyone else claiming it, either. If you do want to go down that path, make sure you include ad revenues.
But since you seem to be unable to comprehend the simple English that I wrote, I'll repeat it. Maybe it will eventually sink in:
"Who cares? it's not Apple's job to guarantee them a six-figure income.
Apple created a marketplace. Just like any other marketplace, people are free to participate if they wish or pass on it if they don't. if they choose to participate, their income will be controlled by how good they are. it would be foolish (and bad for the market) if Apple arbitrarily started cutting apps just so other developers could make more money. If a developer doesn't make enough money to be happy, he's free to drop out (which doesn't seem to be happening, so the evidence is that developers are, by and large, content."
Being a former QA tester at a popular gaming company that has been at both the bottom and top I can see where Trip Hawkins is coming from. He wants the $10,000 foosball table in his $10 million office developing the next $1 billion dollar game.
Gaming is changing. People are sick of paying $60 for a game and $29 for additions when they can have fun for under $10. Developers can now sit at home and write games which hasn't been possible since the early 1980's.
If anyone is greedy, it's Trip Hawkins. I suggest he wake up or he's going to be a middle aged gamer that can't find a job.
This is key. The history of gaming, especially console and computer, is that all titles were relatively close in price. Say $40-$60 and this didn't matter if a game sucked or was good.
So people were forced to sometimes choke down a $40 bad game. Now given the choice to kill some time, people are saying I don't mind paying $1 to play this game that might not be as good as that $20 game but will still be fun and let me kill some time.
We never got to see that before because the $1 game would have been $20.
I think it is changing for the better with opportunity for smaller developers once again, which is something I think most people thought was gone forever. Back in the early days of computing most games were done by individuals or very small companies. Kind of cool to have that spirit back.
If you make a good product you will likely suceed in the App Store. Sure at this point it will take some MARKETING to get you exposure, but you will not have to do extensive traditional marketing to drive all your sales. If your product is good enough and it gets noticed it will be driven to awareness and then take off from there.
The problem is most programs are not that good, and that is what developers have to come to grips with...
I still think there is a market in the IOS ecosystem for big time games that are more expensive. They just need to be really well constructed though, and very entertaining. They can't be twice as entertaining for 20x the money.
Everything I've read shows a very long tail: the top 100 make very good money, the second and third hundred make about as much as many small desktop software companies, and the other 399,700 make somewhere between a minimum wage and zero.
But if you have stats that can show even a tenth of iOS devs making more than they could make doing IT work ($100k-$150k annually) I'd love to read it.
LOL.
You know what percentage of people make 100k-150k a year? You know what percentage of IT workers make that much? You know what percentage of IOS developers who would qualify for those kind of IT salaries?
Of course you do not, or you would not have made your post.
So that represents the entire life cycle of the app for all the years the App Store's been around?
Kinda funny to see you folks take exception with Hawkins on that, and then apologize for iOS revenues by pointing out that every industry has long tails.
Looks like the bottom line here is that in spite of the readers here being uncomfortable with what Hawkins said, ultimately they don't refute his point and instead have merely explained why it's as he described.
The only thing people take issue with is that he tries to paint this as some sort of problem or issue that needs to be addressed and it is not.
Nobody is out there thinking most IOS app developers are getting rich. If you make crappy apps like Digital Chocolate you will not make money... Nobody disagrees with this...
Trip seems to be implying that people who make crap deserve to make more money.
I would also pay for os x to install on my intel box.
So, I read this as: I want premium system software on my bargain basement hardware! I would think you should know by now that Apple doesn't do things that way. Don't hold your breath.
But more importantly, the App Store is a meritocracy, where good apps make a lot while thousands of junk apps make little or nothing.
There is none, unless you're into social justice, where everyone, no matter how good, gets the same thing...
Economics has always been meritocracy. It's the basic of basic ideology in business. Capitalism surely follows this premise. You have the skills, etc, you have a chance of getting the job. Your game has what it takes to win in the market place, you make money. You make junk, you lose.
I don't see that changing anytime soon. Surely, innovative Apple wouldn't even try. What Tripp's criticism is all about is he is mad that he lost his cash cow from the dictatorial monopoly the big game makers once enjoyed.
It is a good moment to start talking about the app store. It is just too big for the functions in the interface. Even if you know exactly what you need you cant always find it.
I wanted to search for an app that I knew Mobile Disc ? USB Hard Drive (By Dominic Rodemer) I tried to find it via category and search by word on both iphone and in itunes. I could only find it by searching for the exact match of the app but couldnt find it via category that I knew it was in.
Category search only brings a few titles and you cant "search more" or specially "show all"
App Store ---> Categories ----> (choose category) ----> Top Paid or Top Free
App Store ---> What's Hot (what others like at the moment.)
Done.
it's not rocket science. The cream make it to the top. Thus, they are listed near the top. First 25, even 50. Either overall or in categories. Use the Search function and type in keyword(s) for something more specific you might be looking for. This while established titles get more advertising than they really need. You dont always know what caegory a good app will be in and sometimes its not even obvious and depends on the categorising persons views.
Ergo: "decent apps" staring you right in the friggin face. All you need to do is open your eyes and rub a couple of brain cells together.
What you discribe is that new apps have a really hard time to get into an established marketplace and might never find themself to top 25 because not enought people find it.
Another thing is that apple says it takes 30% of appsales because it promotes apps. What it actually does is only promote well established titles right now!!! How is it promoting new good apps that arent known??? There is a lot of these and 25 top picks or "apps of the week" doesnt cut it. it just presents like 1% of usefull/good apps.
Economics has always been meritocracy. It's the basic of basic ideology in business. Capitalism surely follows this premise. You have the skills, etc, you have a chance of getting the job. Your game has what it takes to win in the market place, you make money. You make junk, you lose.
This is true but the games market has evolved in an odd direction. The playing field is no longer even.
In the mainstream games market, only the mega-franchise games, with upwards of $40M investment per title are profitable. For a bunch of reasons, smaller titles from new innovative companies can't get a toe-hold. For a new original title, the cost to bring that to market is so great, there is just no possibility of it going into profit.
To use an analogy, it's like a rain-forest where a dense canopy from gigantic trees blocks 100% of the sunlight. No light gets down to the forest floor. Nothing new can grow down there. If you are the holder of a megafranchise, then its great. But I would argue that it's become a barrier to innovation and enterprise.
This is different in the download market, ( XBLA / App Store / Steam ) - Small vendors can and do break in and make profitable titles.
This is true but the games market has evolved in an odd direction. The playing field is no longer even.
In the mainstream games market, only the mega-franchise games, with upwards of $40M investment per title are profitable. For a bunch of reasons, smaller titles from new innovative companies can't get a toe-hold. For a new original title, the cost to bring that to market is so great, there is just no possibility of it going into profit.
To use an analogy, it's like a rain-forest where a dense canopy from gigantic trees blocks 100% of the sunlight. No light gets down to the forest floor. Nothing new can grow down there. If you are the holder of a megafranchise, then its great. But I would argue that it's become a barrier to innovation and enterprise.
This is different in the download market, ( XBLA / App Store / Steam ) - Small vendors can and do break in and make profitable titles.
C.
True. But people like Tripp and the Sonys of gaming have their style and definition of meritocracy. They have been fertilizing those trees for years. Innovation like Apple's App Stores serve to prune those trees until they become irrelevant. Apple restores the definition of meritocracy for the masses.
It's Apple's gift to the world of gaming and software development in general.
Comments
I don't get that either?
maroon
http://www.hark.com/clips/nsvdjzkfdz-what-a-maroon
4. Jokey euphemized form of "moron".
C.
maroon(slang); bugs bunny popularized it to mean "to abandon intellegence"
thats the way bugs Bunny always pronounced it.
Fro the Urban Dictionary.
A term of derision often uttered by Bugs Bunny when referring to an interaction with a dopey adversary. It is a mispronunciation of the word "Moron"
I guess we are short on fans of Bugs Bunny and his mentor Groucho around here.
In any case, the term fits.
Advertise your app in magazines, tele, just like you do your Xbox and PS3 titles. If you believe in your app, why not?
This is the best quote I have seen here as a logical answer to Mr. Hawkins. Time to stop complaining Mr. Hawkins.
HERE HERE!
http://www.hark.com/clips/nsvdjzkfdz-what-a-maroon
thats the way bugs Bunny always pronounced it.
4. Jokey euphemized form of "moron".
maroon(slang); bugs bunny popularized it to mean "to abandon intellegence"
Fro the Urban Dictionary. A term of derision often uttered by Bugs Bunny when referring to an interaction with a dopey adversary. It is a mispronunciation of the word "Moron".
I guess we are short on fans of Bugs Bunny and his mentor Groucho around here.
In any case, the term fits.
lol
You know what? I've literally never had a conversation with someone that quotes Bugs Bunny! This place must be Looney Tunes central!
At least I understand the reference now, cheers!
I still don't understand the context though, maybe Multimedia could clear that up.
I said the paragraph saying the consoles were heading toward online gaming and have more recently attempted to address the needs of indie developers didn't make any sense since online console gaming has been around since 1998 (cheers Momus
Multimedia agreed with me (All of which predate the Apple App Store which started in Summer of 2008 less than 3 years ago) and then said someone/something was maroon. Was it directed at me? (doesn't make sense since Multimedia agreed with my statement) or at Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft for not being as popular as the iOS App Store even though they had a lead (also doesn't really make sense).
Apparently a good many readers here, like the one I replied to, who at first argued against Hawkins' observation but ultimately just offered explanations that reinforce it.
While no one's been able to turn up any URL to anything at all that would suggest that even one-tenth of iOS apps are making more than minimum wage, we have the simple math of development costs to illustrate why most iOS apps lose money:
http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-...ose-money/5187
Feel free to offer any statistics which would prove that a majority of iOS apps are profitable.
Please keep in mind that I'm not saying "Apple is bad" or "I hate freedom" or "the terrorists have won!" or any of the other sort of hyperbole so many posts are mistaken for.
All I'm saying is that no matter how much one might dislike Hawkins' observation, it's more accurate than not.
I'm certainly not claiming that the majority of apps are profitable - and I don't see anyone else claiming it, either. If you do want to go down that path, make sure you include ad revenues.
But since you seem to be unable to comprehend the simple English that I wrote, I'll repeat it. Maybe it will eventually sink in:
"Who cares? it's not Apple's job to guarantee them a six-figure income.
Apple created a marketplace. Just like any other marketplace, people are free to participate if they wish or pass on it if they don't. if they choose to participate, their income will be controlled by how good they are. it would be foolish (and bad for the market) if Apple arbitrarily started cutting apps just so other developers could make more money. If a developer doesn't make enough money to be happy, he's free to drop out (which doesn't seem to be happening, so the evidence is that developers are, by and large, content."
Being a former QA tester at a popular gaming company that has been at both the bottom and top I can see where Trip Hawkins is coming from. He wants the $10,000 foosball table in his $10 million office developing the next $1 billion dollar game.
Gaming is changing. People are sick of paying $60 for a game and $29 for additions when they can have fun for under $10. Developers can now sit at home and write games which hasn't been possible since the early 1980's.
If anyone is greedy, it's Trip Hawkins. I suggest he wake up or he's going to be a middle aged gamer that can't find a job.
This is key. The history of gaming, especially console and computer, is that all titles were relatively close in price. Say $40-$60 and this didn't matter if a game sucked or was good.
So people were forced to sometimes choke down a $40 bad game. Now given the choice to kill some time, people are saying I don't mind paying $1 to play this game that might not be as good as that $20 game but will still be fun and let me kill some time.
We never got to see that before because the $1 game would have been $20.
I think it is changing for the better with opportunity for smaller developers once again, which is something I think most people thought was gone forever. Back in the early days of computing most games were done by individuals or very small companies. Kind of cool to have that spirit back.
If you make a good product you will likely suceed in the App Store. Sure at this point it will take some MARKETING to get you exposure, but you will not have to do extensive traditional marketing to drive all your sales. If your product is good enough and it gets noticed it will be driven to awareness and then take off from there.
The problem is most programs are not that good, and that is what developers have to come to grips with...
I still think there is a market in the IOS ecosystem for big time games that are more expensive. They just need to be really well constructed though, and very entertaining. They can't be twice as entertaining for 20x the money.
URLs?
Everything I've read shows a very long tail: the top 100 make very good money, the second and third hundred make about as much as many small desktop software companies, and the other 399,700 make somewhere between a minimum wage and zero.
But if you have stats that can show even a tenth of iOS devs making more than they could make doing IT work ($100k-$150k annually) I'd love to read it.
LOL.
You know what percentage of people make 100k-150k a year? You know what percentage of IT workers make that much? You know what percentage of IOS developers who would qualify for those kind of IT salaries?
Of course you do not, or you would not have made your post.
LOL
So that represents the entire life cycle of the app for all the years the App Store's been around?
Kinda funny to see you folks take exception with Hawkins on that, and then apologize for iOS revenues by pointing out that every industry has long tails.
Looks like the bottom line here is that in spite of the readers here being uncomfortable with what Hawkins said, ultimately they don't refute his point and instead have merely explained why it's as he described.
The only thing people take issue with is that he tries to paint this as some sort of problem or issue that needs to be addressed and it is not.
Nobody is out there thinking most IOS app developers are getting rich. If you make crappy apps like Digital Chocolate you will not make money... Nobody disagrees with this...
Trip seems to be implying that people who make crap deserve to make more money.
I would also pay for os x to install on my intel box.
So, I read this as: I want premium system software on my bargain basement hardware! I would think you should know by now that Apple doesn't do things that way. Don't hold your breath.
But more importantly, the App Store is a meritocracy, where good apps make a lot while thousands of junk apps make little or nothing.
There is none, unless you're into social justice, where everyone, no matter how good, gets the same thing...
Economics has always been meritocracy. It's the basic of basic ideology in business. Capitalism surely follows this premise. You have the skills, etc, you have a chance of getting the job. Your game has what it takes to win in the market place, you make money. You make junk, you lose.
I don't see that changing anytime soon. Surely, innovative Apple wouldn't even try. What Tripp's criticism is all about is he is mad that he lost his cash cow from the dictatorial monopoly the big game makers once enjoyed.
I wanted to search for an app that I knew Mobile Disc ? USB Hard Drive (By Dominic Rodemer) I tried to find it via category and search by word on both iphone and in itunes. I could only find it by searching for the exact match of the app but couldnt find it via category that I knew it was in.
Category search only brings a few titles and you cant "search more" or specially "show all"
???
App Store ---> Top 25 ----> Top Paid or Top Free
App Store ---> Categories ----> (choose category) ----> Top Paid or Top Free
App Store ---> What's Hot (what others like at the moment.)
Done.
it's not rocket science. The cream make it to the top. Thus, they are listed near the top. First 25, even 50. Either overall or in categories. Use the Search function and type in keyword(s) for something more specific you might be looking for. This while established titles get more advertising than they really need. You dont always know what caegory a good app will be in and sometimes its not even obvious and depends on the categorising persons views.
Ergo: "decent apps" staring you right in the friggin face. All you need to do is open your eyes and rub a couple of brain cells together.
What you discribe is that new apps have a really hard time to get into an established marketplace and might never find themself to top 25 because not enought people find it.
Another thing is that apple says it takes 30% of appsales because it promotes apps. What it actually does is only promote well established titles right now!!! How is it promoting new good apps that arent known??? There is a lot of these and 25 top picks or "apps of the week" doesnt cut it. it just presents like 1% of usefull/good apps.
Economics has always been meritocracy. It's the basic of basic ideology in business. Capitalism surely follows this premise. You have the skills, etc, you have a chance of getting the job. Your game has what it takes to win in the market place, you make money. You make junk, you lose.
This is true but the games market has evolved in an odd direction. The playing field is no longer even.
In the mainstream games market, only the mega-franchise games, with upwards of $40M investment per title are profitable. For a bunch of reasons, smaller titles from new innovative companies can't get a toe-hold. For a new original title, the cost to bring that to market is so great, there is just no possibility of it going into profit.
To use an analogy, it's like a rain-forest where a dense canopy from gigantic trees blocks 100% of the sunlight. No light gets down to the forest floor. Nothing new can grow down there. If you are the holder of a megafranchise, then its great. But I would argue that it's become a barrier to innovation and enterprise.
This is different in the download market, ( XBLA / App Store / Steam ) - Small vendors can and do break in and make profitable titles.
C.
This is true but the games market has evolved in an odd direction. The playing field is no longer even.
In the mainstream games market, only the mega-franchise games, with upwards of $40M investment per title are profitable. For a bunch of reasons, smaller titles from new innovative companies can't get a toe-hold. For a new original title, the cost to bring that to market is so great, there is just no possibility of it going into profit.
To use an analogy, it's like a rain-forest where a dense canopy from gigantic trees blocks 100% of the sunlight. No light gets down to the forest floor. Nothing new can grow down there. If you are the holder of a megafranchise, then its great. But I would argue that it's become a barrier to innovation and enterprise.
This is different in the download market, ( XBLA / App Store / Steam ) - Small vendors can and do break in and make profitable titles.
C.
True. But people like Tripp and the Sonys of gaming have their style and definition of meritocracy. They have been fertilizing those trees for years. Innovation like Apple's App Stores serve to prune those trees until they become irrelevant. Apple restores the definition of meritocracy for the masses.
It's Apple's gift to the world of gaming and software development in general.
So go buy a copy of Snow Leopard and do it yourself right now. Not like it isn't possible.
Completely missed the point of his post...
So go jailbreak your iPhone, install an emulator and run Mario. Not like it isn't possible.
Completely missed the point of his post...
No, I perfectly understood the point of his post. It will never come to pass through Apple, so I told him the only way it would be possible.
So go jailbreak your iPhone, install an emulator and run Mario. Not like it isn't possible.
Identical reasoning behind it. Nintendo wouldn't sell franchises unless they no longer existed.