EDIT: Whoops picked the wrong one. Now it's the 1st one. ) I say that one. Seems more realistic. That's what they did with Snood.
Well, how much did we bet, because its 5 days later and still no sign of it. According to apple (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/) they have 40 or so app reviews and 8500 apps a week to review, so if their reviewers are working 50 hours a week that works out to 15 minutes per app. If they are actually taking their time to really review their apps, I would imagine that their queue of app to be reviewed is getting a lot longer every week. Even if they rush through two-thirds of them in ten minutes, and do the rest in an hour, that still leave several thousand apps a week they never get to. And even an hour is not very much time to really test an app. Face it, Apple wanted to be the gatekeeper for this all, but they haven't bothered to staff up enough to do a good job. I predict that one of four things is going to happen. 1) Apple is going to staff up a lot. 2) The app process is going to really break down with several month delays on app submissions. 3) Apple is going to come up with a way of not testing the majority of the apps, either by letting other distribution methods loose or by allowing some apps to get out untested. 4) Apple is going to start charging developer a lot more for app submissions to get down the number of submissions. I suppose its possible that the problem will get solved by developers just migrating away from the App store, but i think that too many app-spammers wills show up to really ever fix the problem. My guess would be a combination of 1 and 4. Michael
I agree that this could be a case of Apple being picky with a popular title. Now that they've named GD as one of their favorites, and considering that they will most like "Feature" the app, they need to exercise a high level of quality control with GDS, especially since it will have Openfeint and DLC. I'm sure Apple is planning to cash in big-time with the GD franchise, so I wouldn't slam them for taking a little longer. If their review takes over 3 weeks then it will be reasonable to fault them. So far their track record with both GD and its update has been very good. How they have been with other apps is irrelevant to consideration of how this one app is being treated. Any complaining of delays is just other people jumping on the hate apple bandwagon. I wonder how long it takes Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft to approve games and apps for their respective platforms. Anyway, GDS was completed fairly quickly considering that the GD franchise is reportedly a second job, bedroom operation. If that self-proclaimed "wrathful god" David wanted an earlier release date for GDS, he could have always quit his day job with those second-rate games and worked full time on GDS in order to submit it sooner. BS whiner. He never had it so good.
So today, its just jumping on the bandwagon, but Wednesday its perfectly reasonable to complain. I can't tell if you are trying to be funny, or if you are a moron. Looking over your previous posts, I still can't tell. Hmmmm. Michael
If you insist on looking at it from a sheerly pedantic point of view, then you would be correct. Complaining by itself does not constitute jumping onto any hate bandwagon. When it is driven by anger, as when nsxdavid tweeted "...anger...growing...," then that is beginning to jump on the bandwagon, which is not warranted unless he has hard evidence to justify what seems to me like paranoia. Three weeks is nothing in the corporate world. To what other company besides Apple would nsxdavid take Geodefense that would approve it any sooner? Hmmmm? That's OK. I won't fault you for letting off a little heat in the form of shallow sarcasm, since you're obviously so addicted to Geodefense that your sense of reason disallows any objective view of the delays, which at this point in this discussion are negligible.
Actually, Paranoia would be if he thought they were singling him out for delay. What he has said, and what almost everyone else on this thread has said, and what you can't seem to understand, is that the review process seems to be breaking down in general. We are all excited about this game, so here is where we are talking about, but the bigger problem is that there seems to be a problem with the review process. So today, delays are "negligible", but day after tomorrow they are a problem. Wow, you really have short window there. And speaking of "objective", your posts in this thread have called him enough variations on "whiner" to make me doubt your objectivity. Michael
Name one platform for games such as Geodefense on which the review process period is shorter than 3 weeks. If you had read my last post in its entirety, you would have noticed that I already quoted and responded to your same question. Either that or you intentionally disregarded my reply in order to not have to address it since it exposed foolishness of your general argument in this thread, which is that Geodefense's treatment so far has merited any expansion of this particular case of *potential* delay (i.e. only 19-20 days so far) to a general diatribe thread and series of developer tweets concerning Apple's process. This is an upcoming game announcement thread. You, like nsxdavid are perfectly at liberty to exercise free speech in any way you so choose, but I'm also at liberty to disagree and identify the invalidity of your general argument, which seems to be that Geodefense Swarm is somehow a poster child for app store review process inadequacy, when there are no known alternative platforms capable of capitalizing on the Geodefense franchise that compare favorably with that of Apple's portable line. Where else would the developer go? If you really were looking at the issue objectively then you would be agreeing that it is unreasonable to angrily hypothesize about everything causing a delay which hasn't happened yet. You are attempting to use the example of a "probable" delay of an app that was submitted less than 3 weeks ago as a basis for saying that the developer and consumers of Geodefense Swarm are justifiably angry. That makes no sense whatsoever. The fact that you put me down directly just shows that you know I'm right and that if GDS came out tomorrow, you'd be praising the developer left and right and still be hating Apple for the delay that could have been. They're not doing such a bad job. Even Nsxdavid himself tweeted recently that more high quality games are coming out all the time. Given how there is not precedent for anything even remotely on the scale of the app store, in terms of both diversity of offerings and extent of distribution, no analyst is in a position to say whether they have adequately "ramped up" their review process, as as been your main contention in this thread. Neither Nsxdavid nor anyone posting in this thread have enough knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes at Apple to conclude such. It's all misplaced conjecture with a specific anti-corporate bias.
I had a long response to your long response written, and I decided not to bother posting it. You obviously aren't reading my responses anyhow. I wish there was an "ignore user" function on this board. I guess I'll just have to do it manually. I notice you added this after I posted, which I will respond to: According to Apple, they have 40 app testers, and get 8500 app submissions a week. If all 40 work 24 hours a day 7 days a week with no sleep time, that gives them about 45 minutes per app. If any of the 40 want any time off or a bathroom break, god help us all. On a 50 hour work week, its less then 15 minutes per app. I leave it to you to decide if that is enough. Michael
Wow, when you guys are done with you 1203470150460347029181 character long posts.......we'll get back on topic lol
I'm definitely done with the epic posts and eagerly awaiting GDS. I'm down to checking the app store about 3 times daily.
edit: Sorry. THIS is the last longish one I agree, it's not enough. One thing to consider, however, is that a very large percentage of those submitted apps is made up of iterations of the same app . One example is the long string of "Whack a [sports team]" apps that came out today. I'm sure that each of those counts as a separate app for the purpose of tallying the figure of 8500 apps submitted weekly, yet Apple most likely does not allocate an equal amount of review time for each of those. An even better example is that of the mass of game apps submitted under the same name but with a different amount of "points" or "respect points," such as the world war series, mob games, vampires, etc. Each of those is listed as a separate purchase in the app store, but the apps are the same executable code with point differences redeemed on the level of the game server. So it is unlikely that every substantial app is allocated only 15 minutes of review time, although I do agree Apple ought to ramp things up.
Doesn't really help. If half of the apps take just 5 minutes, it still only leaves about 25 minutes each for the other half. If 75% take no time at all, it still only leaves 45 minutes per app for the other ones. And remember, more then 1700 new apps are showing up every day. To put it another way, every day, every developer has to process more then 40 apps. Its no wonder they are getting further and further behind. Michael
While I am really looking forward to this game, I am much more concerned about the direction the App Store review process is going then I am about how long this is taking to come out. Three months from now are we gong to be talking about the good old days when it only took three weeks for an app to be approved? I hope not, but given how long Apple has been working on the problem of ordering apps both by the number of sales and the total revenue, or the two plus years it took them to add cut and past to the iphone, or the two plus years it took them to add a way to scan through audio titles. Or the fifteen years it took them to add a second mouse button. Apple moves at their own speed, and the iPhone is a big enough success that even if they drive away all the little developers, that might have enough of a marketplace left to be happy. They might even decide that things are better with a lot less developers submitting apps. Michael
I for one am glad... that it's not out yet. I have a busy week, and good TD games have a way of devouring my time. Please, Apple, wait until the 1st.
