I am getting ready to publish my first game. It is an ios game. Trying to decide if I should take the time to code it for android as well or move on to the next ios game. I am wondering how many of you develope exclusively for ios and ignore android, and if so what drove that decision?
Its easier to port games to both iOS and Android if you use a game engine like Unity. I made my first apps with Cocos2d. However, I got disillusioned with it because it seemed like every Xcode or iOS update would break things in my apps. I felt like I was developing on a platform that was as stable as quicksand. When Apple released SpriteKit, I made the switch because it seemed safer for my apps. I haven't had any major problems with updates breaking my apps since making the switch. BUT it does make it harder to port to Android if you have to code for two separate platforms. I've decided to develop exclusively for iOS because it feels more stable to use SpriteKit for the moment, but if one of my apps actually becomes successful then I wouldn't hesitate to make an Android version.
I published my first iOS game earlier this year and it is strictly iOS at this point. I highly recommend reading Amir Rajan's book "Surviving the App Store", as he writes very candidly about iOS and Android in terms of differences between the two. The short story is it seems that it depends on the pricing model of your game. Premium games don't appear to do as well on Android because their user base expect games to be on the F2P model even moreso than iOS gamers. I'm probably over generalizing his message but that's my takeaway for the most part. In the end it's up to you. Good luck!
I personally think you'd be crazy to not release on as many platforms as possible. You're reducing your potential market by so much, and picking a winner in this industry is getting harder and harder to get right. It may be your game or app bombs on iOS, it might work really well on Android, and vice versa. Android can cover more than the google play too. I've seen games that make very little money in app store or google play do really well on Amazon Underground. Try to pick an engine that works well cross platform, and put in that small amount of effort to keep both working through updates.
Stencilsmith, Yes at the moment I think I will go with the premium model, which means I am leaning towards ios only. I have read that piracy on Android is rampant.
Don't fool yourself, if you come up with an idea worth stealing, it will be stolen on iOS as well and probably brought to Android on top of it. I wouldn't let concerns of others taking your idea and running with it determine which platform you choose. Good luck!
By piracy I didn't mean other developers cloning my game, I'm referring to players who steal the game and don't pay for it. I'm not worried about cloning.
We have a game that's premium on iOS and ad-supported on Android, and this ended up working quite well.
Call me naive, but how would one steal an iOS game? Are you referring to activity related to jailbroken devices?
A tiny percent of users pirate a tiny percent of games. They should be seen as users who never would have paid for your app, so you're not losing anything, per say. What you are losing is access to the largest app market, definitely not a rational reason to avoid releasing on Android. A little like saying 'I turned down a large pay rise at work, because I don't want to pay more tax'.
I see report after report of 90% or above piracy for Android games (for example Monument Valley). It seems likely that the majority of Android users who play premium games steal them. I'm not interested in f2p or ad driven games so Android does not seem worth it to me.
I think you do need to jailbreak on ios to steal a game, so it is not a big problem on ios because only a small percentage jailbreak their phones, and even if they do ios users seem more likely to pay. On android you can side load apps so it is very easy to pirate games.
We've never found piracy a problem in any of our releases. Almost every article you read, and I mean really 90% of them, are all citing one tweet. Which isn't necessarily based or proven. They also claimed extremely high levels of iOS piracy in the same tweet (60% of iOS installs illegitimate). For developers who are worried about it, we have looked into services that can help and hope to have them integrated into our tool soon. http://tapcore.com/en/ looks interesting, although I haven't seen anyone discussing this on this forum before.
It's an older article, but I haven't noticed much, if any, change in the last few years. There is still a significant percentage of people spoofing iTunes receipts with billions of in app currency in my games. I think the reason why people don't talk about it anymore is because we've all resigned to believe what you posted earlier:
Interesting. I might reconsider releasing on Android. But I'm wondering if this is an issue of paid vs f2p games. Which type of revenue model do you use? I know the tweet you are talking about but it seems there is more evidence than that. Recently some developers have released there game paid on ios but f2p on android (for example "Alto"). If a developer is only interested in making paid games then android seems less accommodating.
Just take a look in the google play store top selling chart. There are paid games listed from smaller studios and indies that sell for a couple of dollars, that have had a million+ installs. If people think that isn't possible, or that their app isn't likely to make it to that level of success, I love the idea of having an iOS premium and an Android f2p model, with rewarded adverts and interstitials etc, then an IAP to remove ads for people who are happy to pay. That way you appease every possible situation. Ultimately, app developers are business owners, and it's no ones job but your own to make your product as profitable as possible, by any means necessary! If a developer wants to exclude a market so they don't have to invest the hours making it compatible for the worlds largest app market, then IMO you're valuing your time above your products value, which is bad news! I was just writing to chime in on the subject, but interestingly, if someone has an app with no adverts, and they want to easily add adverts in different places, that is pretty easy to do using our SDK injector - "Enhance". We aren't an ad network, but we have included the largest ad networks and ad mediators in our injector. Using our tool , if you happen to have built your app in a framework that is easy to package as iOS or android, you could probably have an advert version of your paid iOS game within a couple of hours, literally.
Monument Valley piracy rates were 95% on Android, while 60% for iOS. It's high on And, but especially given how folks would keep saying "iOS users pay for apps", majority case is still being pirated. http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/05/monument-valley-developer-only-5-of-android-installs-were-paid-for/ To be fair, you probably should be, or at least look into it. A developer who basically just copies your idea is also stealing your idea. If they release their title into the App Store, it's (they're) taking away sales from your game. Extra so given how some users won't know which one's the real deal. However, I attended a seminar where going after those who steal your ideas can be very difficult, like with dealing with piracy, as some of these people who clone games are in other countries. In the end, it may not be worth dealing with?
The thing is, even though jailbreaking is a hurdle to installing unsigned iOS apps (which allows for pirated apps), it's still something that can easily be overcome. True, most users won't bother jailbreaking, but those who do pirate games most certainly won't let something like having to do that stop them from getting free games. When they're pirating stuff on other platforms, they've shown they're willing to put in the time and studying to learn how the process works. And given how some of the nicer things are still iOS exclusive, that's another thing that makes the platform more attractive to pirate.
