Been noticing it recently that most games that I got these days don't perform as well as I like on my iphone 3g. Sure it might just be because the games were v 1.0, but this has got me wondering, why aren't games optimized to iphone 3g anymore? I still think the majority of iphone owners own 3g until there 2 year contract is over next year, so it should be the lowest denominator. So getting the game to perform well on that should be most important. Kinda disapointed that the current highest selling iphone game ( tap tap 3) performs so poorly on 3g (impossible to perfect a song)... Sorry if this is worded weird, little hard to word for some reason (probably because of only getting 3 hrs of sleep xD).
We at Rapid Turtle Games develop and optimize our games for iPhone 3G. And this will not change for a year or two.
We at Studio UFO focus on developing apps for iphone/ipod touch users to have any chance to play. With all the 3D features of recent games, I guess it is getting harder for 3G iphone users to experience those new games (however, i think it's kinda inevitable for oldies to be forgotten...)
I've got a first gen iPhone, a second gen iTouch, and a 3GS... I still target the first gen iPhone and 2.2.1 There are still lots of people who don't have 3.0, but I'm already seeing apps(like canabalt) that require 3.1? Wth?
Target at Ipod Touch 1G running 2.2.1, test on iPhone 3G 3.x, beta test on as much variation as I can get.
First gen iPod Touch, as it is the slowest and weakest of all of them. It's a pity that only the newest generation suppost Open GL ES 2.0...
I develop on a 2nd gen iPod Touch. I think targeting 2.X is a must. I'd guess a majority of the market for games are owners, all of whom must pay $10 (or $5 now) to get 3.0. I don't know what the #'s are, but you could potentially alienate a large segment of your target audience by targeting 3.X, if you don't actually need to.
We aim for having 55-60 fps on 1st gen devices for our next game. There is still a lot that can be done on OpenGL 1.x and optimizing your game loop so that both CPU and GPU are not waiting for each other.
I just upgraded to Snow Leopard, and noticed that suddenly in my "Active SDK" dropdown, I can only build for Simulator 3.0, 3.1 and 3.1.2. 2.XX targets are gone entirely! (Oddly enough, I can still build for a 2.2.1 device.) Anyone have any tips/pointers/links for how to re-install those targets in the simulator?
Last time I looked, the percent of iPod Touch users who've upgraded to OS 3.0 is around 17%. Considering iPod touches take up almost exactly half the iDevice market, you're excluding a huge number of potential customers by not developing for 2.2.1. I recently contacted a dev about his game requiring OS 3.0 and he's made a slight change to the game that makes it compatible with 2.2.1 in the next update. I think a lot of the time, devs aren't even considering iPod touch owners who have to pay for the updates. However, Apple recently succeeded in lobbying for an exemption on the SOX law allowing their accounting procedures to change, so technically they'll now able to give the iPhone OS updates to iPod Touch owners for free, so if that does happen soon, hopefully all developers will be able to take advantage of the 3.0 features.
I don't think you can build 2.x.x for simulator in Snow Leopard. It was only recent that Apple added 2.2.1 device to build after xCode update. (You could't build for 2.2.1 before!) If you can find any information on simulator, let all of us know!
This is a tricky question. I would recommend to ask Apple this question. I do not know if they are going to disclosure the number, but you should ask the percentage of 3.x owners vs other OS. Another way to have a good aproximation is to figure it out the sales of the devices. It is not hard to do. I would say that to target first gen device could be a wrong move because big companies (Gameloft, EA to name a few) are investing in quality. Tha being said, you will be a way behind them in terms of quality. Cheers, Bruno
I have a game in its very early stages but my team and I have decided to optimize it for the iPhone 3G. We'll do some testing on older hardware (iPod touch 1G) but we won't spend any extra time optimizing for it. If it runs smoothly on the iPhone 3G and above, we'll just release it like that. As far as the OS goes, we're aiming for 3.x.x due to features such as Push Notifications and access to the user's music library. Seeing as I'm running XCode 3.2 on Snow Leopard, I'm not entirely sure I can build it to run on 2.2.1 as well, but I'll probably give it a try.
Admob publish numbers about the OS iPhone and iPod touch owners are running… "Analysing global ad requests from its network, the company has found that just 1 per cent of the ones from iPod touches are coming from the 3.0 OS - 78 per cent are coming from v2.2.1." http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Apple+iPod+touch/news.asp?c=14050 http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/AdMob+news/news.asp?c=15781
Given how many iPod Touches are out there, I think your main development device should be, at minimum, a first gen device running 2.2.1. It is possible to get great framerates on the older devices; if you have any doubts, just play "Real Racing" on a first gen. As for the 3GS, it is possible to target both armv6 devices running OS 2.x and the armv7 3GS within a universal binary - you just won't be able to upload the binary to iTunes Connect unless the minimum OS is 3.0. I believe this is a policy decision, and it sucks because there are a lot of cool things you can do with the NEON chip on the 3GS.
I recently read a technique to build 3.0 features into a 2.2.1 app (the 3.0 features are disabled for anyone on 2.2.1) - http://gamesfromwithin.com/targeting-2-x-with-3-0-features-trouble-ahead Maybe there's some way to build this 'universal binary' incorporation with this method. Unlikely, but I thought I'd mention it for anyone interested.
we (Mobile 1UP) target iPhone OS 2.0 as our minimum. we keep track of the operating system in use with our high score submission system and we can see the trends of which devices are being used. for 2009-09; here is the trend: 2.0 - none 2.0.1 - none 2.0.2 - 0.1% 2.1 - 0.5% 2.1.1 - 1.0% 2.2 - 3.9% 2.2.1 - 20.9% 3.0 - 23.4% 3.0.1 - 17.9% 3.1 - 22.3% 3.1.1 - 10.0% 3.1.2 - not available in 2009-09 so; as you can see, 94.5% are using 2.2.1 or higher.
At Eurocenter we are targeting first gen iPhone and iPod but are enabling more triangles, textures, OpenGL shaders etc. on newer generations. This can mean a lot of additional work but improves reviews etc. It's sometimes weird to see that some bigger publishers don't care about the old devices anymore though. We are however setting iPhone OS 3.0 as minimum because it's much more stable and we use a lot of from 3.0 (OpenGL shaders, voice chat, in-app purchases).
