Almost everywhere we see people complaining about f2p and saying that mobile is doomed, since we don't have many games anymore. I think it is far from the truth. Just some games released this year: Severed! The Quest HD, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Teeny Titans, Rush Rally 2, Human Resource Machine, Hatoful Botfriend, Final Fantasy IX, Crashlands, Heroes of Normandie, Tormentum, Lost Frontier, Romancing Saga 2, Imbroglio, Titan Quest, Warbits, 9th Dawn II, Adventures of Mana, Y's 2, Momoka, Guild of Dungeoneering and many many many others. Just this week alone we got Leap of Fate, Hero Generations, Legend of the Skyfish, Reigns. And we got some big releases planned like Death Road to Canada and Jade Empire. We have a lot of trash? Sure. But the way people talk one might get the impression that we don't have many more games being released that we can play on a lifetime. I am puzzled why people complain a lot, really.
I have seen several people stating that premium games are almost nonexistent, the way they talk. I think that is pretty hard to keep up with the number of premium games that are being release. Even if almost all games are horrible of f2p done wrong.
People like use a lot of hyperbole. When I first got involved in the mobile gaming scene premium games were king. Over time the percent of premium games has shrunk while f2p has grown at an exponential rate. But the premium games are not dead and I think they still have a solid place in the mobile gaming scene. What is dying is games costing more then $10 US dollars. That market had become a very niche one.
August will have so many premium releases I won't be able to buy all the ones I want. So if that is dead, I'm not sure what alive looks like. For sure, ftp & iap games rake in much bigger profits, I don't think the room for premium dev is getting smaller.
That's my response too. While there are definitely still some premium games, they appear to be mostly f2p/freemium. Also, many of the games that folks liked that either went freemium, or had sequels that went to freemium probably didn't help either. IMO, there should still be plenty of premium titles for those of us who like them, but if not, or there's a game that's traditionally handheld, console, indie, or PC title that didn't make it over, I'd consider supplementing your premium experience with consoles and PC/Steam. For Steam/PC, I got a solid 19 hours of enjoyment from Lovers In A Dangerous Time Space, and 30 from Castlestorm (of which I much preferred this to the grinding of the freemium, iOS version). I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii for many weeks on and off now, but am still only halfway through the game. There's some really great value to go back to on other platforms. Mobile is still more geared towards casual gamers.
Not at all dead. The recent weeks alone provided us with fantastic premiums... Deus Ex GO, Riptide GP Renegade, Leap of Fate, Eisenhorn Xenos, Space Marshals 2, Severed, Necrodancer, Legend of the Skyfish, Journey Below and a lot more. Sure the number is overshadowed by freemiums, but it is far from dead.
I totally buy premium games and only play them, Freemium games are like slot machines in casinos. i don't want to waste my money because of them. I never support freemiums. I even don't have time to play them , and that's enough for me. Buy there is something most premium games such as Gameloft , EA and Capcom are dead. I wish EA could make new titles same engine of Dead Space and Mass Effect, even a new title for Battlefield.
For me it's that I played Dungeon Hunter 1 and 2 and thought they were awesome but then all of them since then have been freemium. I bought a controller because I was waiting for a large number of involved RPGs, platformers and other games to be released. But most of the games that have come out are just ports of games I've already played on other platforms. Nothing new. But it's not just premium vs freemium, it's that the few original premium games that are released have very little depth to them. They are puzzle games that are designed to play for 5 minutes at a time or endless runners. I know when I first got my iPhone, I saw how awesome it was and I kept waiting until the 3DS died because all the games that were made for it would also came out for iOS and no one wanted to carry around 2 devices. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Most serious game developers either cheap out and release ports of 10+ year old games or they say that serious gaming doesn't happen for the iPhone and release "mobilized" versions of their games.
"Severed! The Quest HD, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Teeny Titans, Rush Rally 2, Human Resource Machine, Hatoful Botfriend, Final Fantasy IX, Crashlands, Heroes of Normandie, Tormentum, Lost Frontier, Romancing Saga 2, Imbroglio, Titan Quest, Warbits, 9th Dawn II, Adventures of Mana, Y's 2, Momoka, Guild of Dungeoneering and many many many others." Those have little depth and cannot be considered "serious" gaming? Those are from 2016 alone and many more announced.
I think a big part of the problem is that it's VERY hard to find and decide whether to buy games using the App Store the top 100 'free'games are usually majority Freemium (instead of demos leading to paid for premium games). And an average browser doesn't want to chance paying $4.99 for something that might be crap pushed up the charts by fake reviews. That's why I love TouchArcade, I can find my kind of games and get a proper review.
This is so true. Anybody who buys iOS games based on the charts, free, top-grossing or even paid, is going to be extremely underwhelmed 90% of the time. Maybe 98%. However, you don't need to hang around this site very long to realise that there is an incredible of library of games out there, to suit nearly every taste. At least, until iOS 10 breaks them...
As I said, I'm talking about games that weren't released on other platforms first. That excludes a lot of those games. I don't want the sloppy seconds of other systems. I'm a big enough gamer that I've either played them on the other platform already or I decided they weren't for me and already decided to skip them. I don't know about all of the rest of them, but most of them are fairly short and shallow compared to most PC or console games. A couple of them are fun...but, frankly, are cheaper copies of already existing games. I started playing Teeny Titans but it always feels like I'm playing a lesser copy of Pokemon simply because no one will make a real Pokemon game for iOS. Most of the rest I haven't played yet, mostly because I don't have enough time. But partially because I see previews and my thoughts are almost always "That looks like a really poor version of X game that game out 10 years ago." Almost every game released for iOS feels like it's an Indy game with no budget. That's because 95% of them ARE. I understand the reason for that: People don't want to play 60 dollars for a iPhone game so no company wants to make a game with the same quality they would make a Playstation game with. That's the reason we get ports of old PC games, because it's a cheap way of taking something they already had laying around and putting it on the iPhone where they can justify only charging 5-15 dollars for. Take, for example, the newly announced Mario game. It is an endless runner because a full fledged Mario game is considered to be "too complicated" and "not the right kind of game" for mobile. Making a full fledged Mario game would require on screen controls (which no one seems to like) or require you to own a control, which no one does. Instead of that, companies will make simple games that you just have to tap your screen at the right time since they can tap the large number of casual gamers who don't want anything more complicated.
My other problem is that I can't trust reviews either. a 5/5 review will be given to endless runner number 12045 even though it is a near exact copy of every other endless runner ever created while a port of a really great RPG will be given a 4/5 because it has on screen controls. There's really no way to tell how deep a game is by reading the reviews. Partially because how deep they are seems to be compared to other iOS games. So the phrase: "This is an extremely long and deep game" in an iOS review could mean that it lasts 5 hours. I kind of gave up reading them because of how many 5/5 reviews I read, then bought and then played for 2 hours or so and got bored because the gameplay was so repetitive and shallow that I didn't feel like playing anymore.
