Comments on: What’s Wrong With Android Gaming?

By: Palm Pre Gaming to Bulk Up Soon

Palm Pre Gaming to Bulk Up Soon — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:59:00 +0000

[...] suffer from a fragmented market of operating systems and phones, so it’s less likely to draw ire from game developers as Palm bulks up its [...]

By: Nic

Nic — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:22:59 +0000

Honestly this whole article wreaks of latent fan-boyism. In particular your note on emulators. Let’s get started: Out of about 20 friends of mine who all picked up iphones and ipod touches, 14 of them “jailbroke” their device to do what they wanted it to do. And what was it that made it so pertinent for them to do so? — Apparently emulators, as all of them immediately installed one, or two, or three…as well as a load of other free applications that should be just that: free. Hmm…if only a device existed that people don’t have a need to hack/mod and could get the best of both worlds, a secure App store and access to third-party software. Oh wait, one does, the Android platform.

Even worse, your invalid point on emulators really falls flat when you speak of it possibly hurting game development and growth. Have you not heard of Apullo.us? I guess not…as all of my aforementioned friends with their jailbroken iphones have been enjoying every single App in Apple’s store for free. That’s right, hacked iphones play hacked iphone apps…what a suprise. Now think about how many jailbroken iphones represent that glorious user-base Apple touts around, because I see millions of users getting their free Apps daily off that site. You might want to re-analyze what is really hurting game-development there Jared.

All of this and not to mention emulators and gaming in general on the iphone sucks. I hate to break it to you but touch screen d-pads and buttons are utterly atrocious and I will never go back to the gimmick that is iEverything. You guys have your head so far up Apple’s a$$ you literally back their walled in community that the industry has spent years trying to disassemble.

By: Coda: Gameloft Loves Android After All! | Technologizer

Coda: Gameloft Loves Android After All! | Technologizer — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:14:06 +0000

[...] than a week after Gameloft financier Alexandre de Rochefort said the company has “significantly cut” investments in Android, Gameloft issued a press release saying, essentially, that it still [...]

By: Justa Notherguy

Justa Notherguy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:47:01 +0000

@Stilgar:

> Valve’s Gabe Newell [...] talks about Apple not taking
> gaming seriously?

Exactly my point, in the response to Tom B. If you meet some guy from Apple who seems ‘really excited’ about gaming, then either (1) that guy is not in a position to do much of anything and/or (2) he won’t be at Apple, for long.

Word is, Mr. Jobs thinks the whole subject is tres déclassé, especially in regard to iPhone. Period. Its just a non-starter – you might as well blow smoke in his face and offer him a chug from your paper-bagged 40.

> Commodore Amiga [...] attracted a great number of game
> developers.

Man, I loved my Amigas. Good times. :)

By: Stilgar

Stilgar — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:45:20 +0000

“The Mac is a SUPERB, rock-stable game platform; the trouble is (historically) there’s been more money to be had writing PC games. Less of an issue now, with so much gone over to consoles…”

Not true. Did you not see the well-publicized interview with Valve’s Gabe Newell where he talks about Apple not taking gaming seriously?
http://archive.videogamesdaily.com/features/gabenewell_valve_iv_sep07_p1.asp

I’m no Microsoft fan boy, but MS has done the right thing with Direct X. OpenGL is okay, but Direct X and it’s fast-evolution really helped solidify the PC as the computer developers platform.

Don’t get me wrong, people will go where they can make money, if Apple had the most market share they probably would have the most games too, but they could certainly make things more attractive for game developers than they have.

Take a look back 20 years at the Commodore Amiga. How much market share did that thing have? Very little, but it attracted a great number of game developers.

By: Justa Notherguy

Justa Notherguy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:00:42 +0000

@Martin Hill:

> [...] no matter how much external storage [...] you’re hosed.

Not necessarily.

> I have 1.88GBs of apps on my iPhone and no management of
> internal vs external storage is needed.

Android Open Source Project are working on a secure solution for native App2SD implementation. That way, devs can do their full installs to SD, rather than just core executables. Could appear by year’s end.

Which would sell better: a pricy, 36Gb phone or a cheaper phone that allows the user to carry a pocketful of microSD cards, holding 36Gb of games? Its an interesting question. :)

By: Justa Notherguy

Justa Notherguy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:41:29 +0000

@John:

> Also, until the droid came out, there were less than
> a million android devices in use.

No. Based on various estimates and press releases, the number was more like 2-3 million handsets. That’s across all manufacturers & carriers. HTC’s Dream/G1, alone, reached the one million mark by 3Q09.

But, even aside from market share (and insecure SD cards), game devs have had good reasons to be reticent regarding Android. All pre-Droid handsets had dinky screens – at least 10% smaller than iPhone – and poor or no implementation for multi-touch gestures. Further, until October’s release of the NDK, devs were forced to code using Google’s version of Java.

By: Justa Notherguy

Justa Notherguy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:23:34 +0000

@Stilgar:

> I find it funny that the Apple touts iPhone as a game
> platform [...] in their commercials [...]

No, that tack is reserved almost entirely for iPod Touch ads.
iPhone, not so much.

By: Justa Notherguy

Justa Notherguy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:20:47 +0000

@Tom B:

> The iPhone’s strength is cheap, casual games [...]

Don’t say that to the guys in Cupertino. A typical reaction is somewhere between staring at their feet and, ‘Just remembered I need to go make a call. Later.’:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8zx3sq

By: Tom B

Tom B — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:56:39 +0000

“I find it funny that the Apple touts iPhone as a game platform at their keynotes…”

The iPhone’s strength is cheap, casual games you can carry in your pocket.

” but the Mac is widely known to be a horrible platform for computer games”

The Mac is a SUPERB, rock-stable game platform; the trouble is (historically) there’s been more money to be had writing PC games. Less of an issue now, with so much gone over to consoles….