As I predicted, GTA3 has enough muscles to beat Infinity Blade 2 and went all the way to the top paid app download list and #1 at top grossing chart as well. This is extra impressive given the fact that Rockstar has NO IAP like Infinity Blade 2 to pad their numbers. Great effort and greatly rewarded by Apple's super ecosystem! Hopefully this will mean much more to come from big developers! 4S and iPad 2 already has more muscles than PS2 (higher graphic quality GTA3 for sure), in two years we will have PS3 grade hardware in our pockets and games like Skyrim or Modern Warfare (may need to be shorter but just as sweet style like EA's Dead Space) is very doable with A5 as minimum hardware requirement IF the developer sees enough profit potential. What about Android? Not only way more device incompatibility issues (can't run it on 2 of the 3 Verizon flagship phones) and bad bad reviews, but the game also sold EXTREMELY poorly. There were multiple versions of the game, none of them on first page of top paid, none of them on first page of top grossing. The highest selling version is stuck between 10000-50000 copies (other versions are 1000-5000, ouch) sold TOTAL, while we all know to be top 5 on paid list of iOS store, you have to score at least 100000 copies on your opening day alone. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rockstar.gta3&feature=apps_topselling_paid#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLG51bGwsImNvbS5yb2Nrc3Rhci5ndGEzIl0. And of course, the game is not released on Amazon apps market so #1 selling Android tablet users are out of luck, fragmented ecosystem, fragmented hardware, and piracy! Given the way the game is advertised across every tech blog, I am sure more than 50000 Android users are playing the game. Rockstar should see it is not worth their time and focus all of their energy on iOS going forward. They probably lost a lot of money on the Android side of this development. Gameloft tried to feed Android with old iOS ports but even they have slowed down. Modern Combat 3, Gangstar Rio etc are all iOS only for now. Same with EA with Sims Freeplay and Need For Speed Shift 2 just to name a few. Google needs to clean up their act for Android ecosystem to be worthwhile. Like Microsoft did with DirectX Google needs to provide a unified API. Can they do it? Unlike Microsoft with Windows, Google does not make money from Android directly and has very little experience with hardware support. An iOS user is still using Google search. Until this happens iOS will continue to pocket 90% of the apps revenue AND 55%+ of all mobile phone revenues, Apple making more money from iPhone alone than Google's whole business. I LOVE the huge 4.5" screens (Galaxy Nexus screen + everything else 4S = perfect phone for me). But it looks like it is much easier for Apple to offer a bigger screen than Google to ever clean up their ecosystem. Apple already offers screen size choices for iMac/Macbook, time to do it for iPhone!
This all sounds like a monologue by someone looking to rationalize their decision to overpay for an Apple iPhone. I like Apple, but the fact that you go out of your way to attempt to compare sales numbers between the two platforms is downright hilarious. Who are you to demand from developers what to focus their resources on? Yes, the Android ecosystem is fragmented and that makes sales tracking more difficult, so what? You think some iOS developers aren't dealing with piracy and poor sales too? In my humble opinion, your entire rant was unnecessary and reeked of Apple fanboyism. And this is coming from an iTouch owner.
And you have no clue wtf you're talking about. With 500,000 apps available and 10 billion downloads as of this week, the Android market is fine. Let's talk about piracy on the iOS, you pathetic douchebag. That's the major complaint from devs on this forum. If you actually like Android as you say, you would know that Google is doing just what you said with ICS. Now crawl back under your rock. And BTW Google only has 1 flagship phone, the Nexus and the only reason that wasn't supported is due to it having ICS, something Rockstar couldn't have developed for since it wasn't released then.
ditching development for RIM products I can understand at this point. But ditching development for Android could/would still be a loss of a large chunk of potential customer base.
The answer lies in your own words. You say there are multiple copies of GTA on the Android market and each gets 50,000 sales. That's not just 50,000 sales, that's 50,000 multiplied by X amount of versions of the game they have on offer. That's why none got to the top - because they each had modest sales individually, but probably accumulated sales are very worthwhile.
I checked all four versions, the other versions were 1000-5000, non-factors. Combined they would not be more than 50000, and on iOS, that is going to be less than the sale of the first 3 hours.
As long as Rockstar is still making a PROFIT off the android, it's worth it for them. Because that means they've gotten back every cent they put into the game on those devices and then some. I'm not saying devs shouldn't focus more on iOS, but as long as you are turning a profit, it's plain ignorant to ditch the entire platform...
There is no way they can turn a profit with the Android sales numbers. The support/development cost is MUCH higher for Android with the fragmentation as well.
I am sure it cost Rockstar a couple of millions to produce a port of this quality. Nothing compared to GTA 4 budget of course (100 million), but you gotta hire programmers, artists to re-touch the images, product manager's time, QA team's time, marketing, etc etc etc. Then there is on-going support/update. The collective amount of resources spent is a lot higher for a company like Rockstar than say, Mika the indie developer (I love the guy, but the reality is when you are small you can do more with less because of lower overhead, you can work 100 hours a week if you want to, etc). And keep in mind those are opening day sales numbers. Like movies, a weak opening at the box office is almost impossible to recover from.
Ask yourself's this: What will you (the consumer) gain from a discussion of developers ditching the android platform because of mere sales?
Heh, I only disagree with the thread starter on the " a bit better than ps2" graphics based on gta3 comparisons .Games like galaxy on fire 2 hd, shadow gun, dead space ,infinity blade 1&2 are borderline xbox360 games . Other than it's apple all the way when it comes to mobile devices , I once bought a fairly high end Sony mp3 player and it was a bad experience ,when it comes to ease of use .
40 out of the top 50 grossing apps on the US Appstore are either 0.99c-1.99, or freemium. 28 are freemium. Over half. That's what most major, multi-platform console developers see when they look at either the iOS appstore, or at the mobile gaming market as an industry. Most serious developers also believe that their precious IPs, if fully developed, are worth significantly more then $4.99. Obviously, Rockstar would not have developed a full-fledged, build-from-the-ground-up original GTA for iOS devices and then sold it off for $4.99, or $9.99. There is a large marketplace within the realm of iOS gaming for ports. Companies like Rockstar and Square-Enix have certainly realized that ports allow them to maximize their profits with a minimal amount of risk. Don't think that whatever success GTA 3 has managed here will do anything more then spurn more ports, which, by the way, I am not opposed to. I actually like the direction we've seen with Bard's Tale and GTA 3. It beats the heck out of Freemium. 0.99c apps, ports, and freemium titles are, collectively, the future of iOS gaming, in my opinion. That and a small handful of most indie-developed premium apps. Android owns a much higher percentage of the overall mobile base then Apple. Nobody wants to simply kiss away the opportunity to reach a user base that is the collective size of Android.
Well. When it comes to the work ethic part, go look up an article from around when ANY rockstar game is released. Their studios that just finished a game always almost fold at first because of how unhappy everyone is by the end, the people at Rockstar work 100 hour weeks during development. (and elsewhere too, its the dark side of programming that is known by people who know people who do it professionally and have worked on anything before) And as for how much the Android side cost, you never know, they could have had a separate smaller team work on it and have it cost less for them that way. And its not like GTA3 is gonna leave the store its going to sit there and sell copies.
