Premium titles don't sell enough anymore; not enough to justify the overhead. There's too much risk, despite the occassional success. But games like Chrono Trigger and GTA 3 are ports and obviously don't require unique built-from-the-ground-up assets. It's hard to justify original premium material. Indie developers, to an extent, have no other choice but to forge onward and try anyway. Major developers, like EA and Gameloft, do have a choice though. I would expect few, if any, games from either of these companies that are not Freemium from this point forward. Chair has a unique advantage, because they own the Unreal Engine. To everyone else, it's pretty much a "good luck, you're going to need it" situation. Ports, .99c apps, Freemium. That's the future. A few indie developers will continue to forge onward with premium gaming.
I hope the new racing game they're developing is a real racing 3 or new and improved nfs shift, as long as its realistic i'll be good.
EA CANCELED GAME !!! info for facebook oficial for EA https://www.facebook.com/eamobile "EA Mobile will not be launching Need for Speed: The Run on iOS. These decisions dont come easily, but in the end our focus on fewer, bigger, better experiences necessitated that we focus resources on another exciting new Need for Speed experience for mobile users coming soon. Well share more about that in the coming months."
Gameloft goes freemium with poor titles & EA Mobile cancels a premium title but releases the Free Sims... There are really disappointing marketing choices when you like to buy a (good) game to support the devs. In 2012, I'll probably save my money for indies.
The game bombed on consoles: EA is cutting it's losses. IMO the decision has nothing to do with the iOS market.
What might not be popular on the larger consoles or PC could be HUGE on the phones/tablets. These markets are much hungrier for solid gaming experiences and it clearly shows when games like GTA3 jump instantly to the top of the charts even though its a 10 year old game . Love GTA so not dissing on it but just stating the obvious. Im sure this game would have been successful enough no matter what form it showed up in . The name alone sells these titles and after the horrible Shift 2 i was really hoping they would redeem themselves with something abit better. They said coming soon so it literally must have been in the final stages or completed entirely and they just yanked the plug . Ah well.
These big publishers hate nothing more than failure. They'd rather write off the development of the iOS version than keep reminding folks that a well known IP performed poorly. Interestingly, they used the terms "fewer" and "bigger and better" to describe their future efforts in iOS. That's an overall industry trends (which is why so many mid-list titles have been cancelled recently.) They are also seeing how well Activision, Epic, and Rockstar have been doing by limiting themselves to a few high-profile, high-quality titles, instead of throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. I guess we'll see what happens.
You know, that would be awesome. Thanks for bringing up the silver lining in this dark cloud If they focus on bigger and more quality titles like those companies then it would be awesome! Imagine Dead Space 2 coming to iOS!
I'd rather have another iOS exclusive dead space than ds2 . Ports of console titles is not the way to go , this hurt the psp a lot . Unique ultra polished experiences like the infinity blade games is what iOS devices need .
No doubt. Personally, I was thinking about a sequel to DS on iOS. Though I wouldn't mind seeing the on-rails Wii one on iOS.
I agree that they could release a small handful of Dead Space-quality games and it might work. I believe it was Activision who said that they would never release a full-fledged Call of Duty game on the AppStore because the market was over-saturated, and it is. When you release 20 titles a year, you are both spreading yourself too thin and competing with yourself. How many sales did Gameloft lose when the released 5-6 premium games during last year's Christmas release window? People who had to decide which Gameloft game to purchase, because they could not afford all of them at once? With that said, scrapping this whole premium model entirely and just releasing a bunch of half-assed Freemium games, like Glu Mobile, is the easiest and cheapest way to go. I hope EA maintains a semblance of their integrity and doesn't pull what Glu has done. I can still remember Glyder 2. What happened to you, Glu? Why did you sell your creative, artistic souls to the capitolistic devil?
Indeed! iOS needs more original and big name titles, less of the ports of yesteryear. A shame to hear EA pulled the plug on NFS run, especially as I'm after a new arcade racer for my new iPad, so much so that I've bought Asphalt 6 again.
