Developer strikes it rich with iPhone game

[amigadave]

"Bedroom coders make money from coding Symbian and Windows Mobile applications all the time - and they don't have to pay for the privilege or have their work approved by a committee"

I am sure they do make a few dollars, but show me just one of them that has made $250,000 in two months.

All this jealous crap I am seeing here makes me wonder why I still visit this website everyday if this is what Amiga users are turning into.

The article shows how one coder from his home can still make some decent money if he has an original idea, or just plain luck, and that should be interesting to any computer enthusiast, be they Windows, Linux, Mac, or Amiga users.

I don't own an iPhone, and it is looking like I won't be getting one soon, so I am not biased or spouting any propaganda.  Wayne is right, there was a time, a tiny fragment of days, weeks, or maybe even months, where A.Inc might have been able to get in on the mobile & cell phone market and made a few dollars, but that time is long past.  A.Inc has no future now.

[Lorraine]

/

[arkanoid]

amigadave wrote:
I am sure they do make a few dollars, but show me just one of them that has made $250,000 in two months.

I'm not going to get into an argument, like in the last incarnation of this thread. But you DO realize just how easy it would be for Apple's extraordinary (and I say that with no sarcasm intended) marketing/propaganda department to create a myth of some bedroom coder making $250,000+ selling his s/w through their store?

It's not difficult to conjure such magical illusions, I assure you.

And that's not "jealously", as I could quite easily afford to walk into Dixans on Monday morning and purchase this trendy little toy. I just have no interest in over hyped, over priced fashion accessories because I'm no longer a teenager.

[beller]

I don't really think this is Apple marketing hype.  If you have a large enough market, and a very hot game, it's possible to make quite a lot of money in a very short time.

Trism, which is the name of the game in question, started getting hype from game sites (see google) as far back as February....the hype, it's the next big game.

The iPhone and iPod Touch have been flying off the shelf for over a year and the cost of Trism makes the decision to buy it easy.  

I'll never forget the folks at Play's reaction when they released Snappy to the PC market.  After numerous Amiga products as Digital Creations, Snappy was the first product that really made them serious money. Only because it was released to the PC market and its much larger user base.  

I'm not sure why all the feathers here are ruffled but it appears folks are rather bothered by someone being successful.  Go figure...

[motorollin]

Simple solution: ask the author how much he/she made and then stop whining like children.

--
moto

[bloodline]

I too wish to repost:

15 years ago I would have spent (and did spend) my spare time writing stupid little games for my Amiga, I would slave over the gfx and sound and code to get something that was ok, and I would give a copy to all my friends who would give me feedback while enjoying playing it... I would put a floppy disk into an envelope and send it to a publisher and never hear back... My only option was then to go to my local PD store and put out a Demo in their library and hope that I would get some feedback and requests to buy the full game... Also that my PD library would hopefully share my Demo with other PD libraries.

I never heard anything back, nothing.



Now I can spend the same amount of time writing a game for my iPhone... I can share it with all my iPhone owning friends for free... Then once I'm happy with it, I can pay apple $100 (one off cost, no limit to the number of apps I can put on the store) and it gets published on their app store (to every person in the world with an iphone) with a 70:30 profit split in my favour...

Which is the better deal?


My friend Kris has just released and iPhone app (search for "Gold Price" on your app store). And it's been a surprising success for him, the app took about 10 min to write and another couple of days to debug.

[Hans_]

To be honest, if I had a Mac and an iPhone, I'd download the SDK and try it out, just to see what happens. However, I don't even have a Mac.

Hans

[bloodline]

Hans_ wrote:
To be honest, if I had a Mac and an iPhone, I'd download the SDK and try it out, just to see what happens.

Hans

You don't need an iPhone, the SDK has a built in iPhone emulator to allow quick testing... if you have a "hackintosh", you can give it a spin too... I think as a coder you would enjoy it!

[Hans_]

bloodline wrote:

You don't need an iPhone, the SDK has a built in iPhone emulator to allow quick testing... if you have a "hackintosh", you can give it a spin too... I think as a coder you would enjoy it!

I'll check that out when I have time.

Hans

[AJCopland]

Hans_ wrote:

I'll check that out when I have time.

Hans

If you've got a penchant for silly maths (vector) it's even got a VFPU and theres a handy vector/matrix math library (vfp) for it too :-D

Good for all kinds of 2d/3d gfx processing, animation, physics etc effects!

Andy

[bloodline]

AJCopland wrote:

Hans_ wrote:

I'll check that out when I have time.

Hans

If you've got a penchant for silly maths (vector) it's even got a VFPU and theres a handy vector/matrix math library (vfp) for it too :-D

Good for all kinds of 2d/3d gfx processing, animation, physics etc effects!

Andy

The iPhone (like most new handhelds now) also support OpenGL ES, with direct hardware acceleration via a PowerVR 3D chip :-)

[Hans_]

AJCopland wrote:

Hans_ wrote:

I'll check that out when I have time.

Hans

If you've got a penchant for silly maths (vector) it's even got a VFPU and theres a handy vector/matrix math library (vfp) for it too :-D

Good for all kinds of 2d/3d gfx processing, animation, physics etc effects!

Andy

Yes, I have a thing for vector mathematics, 3D graphics, etc. (have a look at my website). Unfortunately, OSx86 won't work on my Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop, so it will have to wait.

Hans

[Ilwrath]

@Wayne

Unfortunately, it looks like Amiga Inc may have had the right idea (for making money) but has missed the boat long ago.

I don't think Amiga Inc ever had the right idea for making money.  They correctly identified an emerging market (cell phone trinkets) but completely blew the idea for making money from it.

Amiga Inc essentially wanted to do nothing, and just be the shepherds of an API that could be installed on 3rd party devices.  With the high diversity and short lifespan of those 3rd party devices, it made Amiga Inc's business model unworkable.

Apple went the other direction.  They specified and built everything.  They built the phone, the OS, the API, the marketplace, and even dictated the agreements with the service providers!  

We see which business model won.

Now, coming back around to the article... Sure, it's wonderful you can code an app or game and make a few bucks on a handheld platform.  To me, it's interesting to consider why developers can make money on an iPhone app, and not a PC/Mac/Linux/Console, and what changes that might lead to software development, and platforms in general, in the future.

[bloodline]

Hans_ wrote:

AJCopland wrote:

Hans_ wrote:

I'll check that out when I have time.

Hans

If you've got a penchant for silly maths (vector) it's even got a VFPU and theres a handy vector/matrix math library (vfp) for it too :-D

Good for all kinds of 2d/3d gfx processing, animation, physics etc effects!

Andy

Yes, I have a thing for vector mathematics, 3D graphics, etc. (have a look at my website). Unfortunately, OSx86 won't work on my Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop, so it will have to wait.

Hans

Before I was prepared to commit to buying a Mac, I did play with OSx86 a lot!!! So if you need a hand to get it working I might be able to help!

[Hans_]

Ilwrath wrote:

Now, coming back around to the article... Sure, it's wonderful you can code an app or game and make a few bucks on a handheld platform.  To me, it's interesting to consider why developers can make money on an iPhone app, and not a PC/Mac/Linux/Console, and what changes that might lead to software development, and platforms in general, in the future.

Right now, I think that everything is shiny and new, and people will pay a dollar or two for pointless gimmicky things. I remember seeing someone with an iPhone show off little apps that did things such as turn your phone into a fake lighter, complete with a wrist-flick to light up. I also saw people get amazingly competitive with this bubble-wrap popping game in which you basically thump your (or someone else's ;-) ) iPhone to bits with your fingers, trying to pop as many bubbles within a few minutes as possible. You can't do stuff like that on a PC because there's no multi-touch screen, and no accelerometers (for the lighter thingie).

Once people get bored of these things, making money off iPhone apps will probably require more effort. It sounds like the guy that this article talks about did put in a fair bit of effort.

Hans

[bloodline]

Ilwrath wrote:

Now, coming back around to the article... Sure, it's wonderful you can code an app or game and make a few bucks on a handheld platform.  To me, it's interesting to consider why developers can make money on an iPhone app, and not a PC/Mac/Linux/Console, and what changes that might lead to software development, and platforms in general, in the future.

What is interesting is how Google, Nokia and now MicroSoft have all started services that follow the Apple App store service model...

Apple really stuck luck when it decided to use the iTunes iPod content delivery model for digital music... and they are making full use of the infrastructure to try out new concepts... I notice that Apple have tried to apply the same model to Video downloads, and it has not been even slightly as successful as Music and applications...