There’s an interesting bit of info from Gamasutra‘s GDC State of the Industry survey that seems to indicate game developers might be shifting away from iOS game development a bit. The percentage of developers making Android games (that responded to the survey) is 54% (55% in 2016), compared to 51% (54% in 2016) for iOS. This is a small but subtle shift. Note that there might be some noise in the survey – 2% of developers claim they’re making PlayStation Mobile games, and PlayStation Mobile is dead. Meanwhile, 38% of developers responded that they were currently developing games for smartphones/tablets, so it’s possible that the phrasing of the question caused some confusion.

But there’s an interesting thought here. If you’re a developer making mobile games in 2017, the odds are greater than ever that you’re doing a free-to-play game. And while iOS is still a lucrative market, Android has a ton of users across the world. If you were going to drop one platform, you could argue that iOS is the one to drop just based on users alone. As well, while Android still has issues with a wide variety of hardware, after a while, this just becomes a normal part of life for game devs. It’s interesting things to consider, especially in the coming years as the fates of various platforms start to take hold.