Gamasutra - PC is not dead and mobile is shit (with Charts!).
Well the article title says it all: PC is not dead and mobile is shit.
Of course I make a certain type of game and the market is more geared up to sell PC copies of those, and indies releasing PC games on Steam certainly find they can do pretty well on there too compared to other platforms. Other developers are having great success on mobile - good for them. But I would urge caution in the mobile market. It's HUGELY over-saturated and hard to get noticed. I got my existing games ported to mobile as a low-risk approach, but there are teams of developers out there spending 6-12 months on mobile games and I personally think that's a recipe for disaster in most cases.
Looking at my numbers, perhaps I'd be best sticking to PC only? Putting all my energy into that and not buying expensive Macs (and constantly upgrading the OS and Xcode, and farting around with provisioning profiles and certificates) and not buying an ever growing army of mobile devices to test on. Most devs have a PC anyway, even if they just play games on it! For me anyway, PC is the clear winner.
NetHead wrote on Jan 26, 2013, 14:14:
The PC is not dead, well thanks for that information.
Seriously anyone who said "PC is not dead" is a moron. It's like running around saying "They sky is not falling on our heads", really thanks for the news flash, now go put corks on your forks before you stab yourself in the face, or not.
InBlack wrote on Jan 25, 2013, 09:44:
This guy is my hero...
Orogogus wrote on Jan 25, 2013, 13:46:
In this specific anecdote the games are $3 on PC anyways. I think the mobile market may be saturated with match-3 games, which are fairly well suited to a touch screen. And I don't know who would want to play them with a gamepad.
jdreyer wrote on Jan 25, 2013, 13:33:
It's a great anecdotal article. If you looked at the entire industry, I think you'd find mobile had a larger share, but that it still would be dwarfed by PC.
There's also the price expectations issue. Mobile gamers only expect to spend a couple of dollars on games, while PC gamers willingly shell out $10-20 for a solid title. PC games might also sell better b/c getting on Steam or GoG is more difficult than getting into the app store, so there are fewer to choose from.
wtf_man wrote on Jan 25, 2013, 10:39:
I'm not sure how a small indie Developer that had 3 games that averaged 53k of revenue... and only *one* of those games were released for the console... is relevant data. And XBLIG may not be the distribution answer needed for indies.
I mean, even in the casual / indie sector, that's kind of slanted against consoles. (Not that I'm complaining... just doesn't seem all that truthful)
As for the PC being dead... we've all heard that before... so I'm not all that worried.
mobile is shit.
InBlack wrote on Jan 25, 2013, 09:44:Just think ... in his article the PC has all the advantages consoles were said to have over the PC. Simple. cheap, easy to use. How has the world come to that! O tempora, o mores!
This guy is my hero...