Hi, I'm interested to know other developers thoughts on GREE(formerly OpenFeint), are you still using it? still have any benefits? what happened with free game of the day?
I read about the revenue OF made from FGOTD and worked out how little they were making. Since the default OF deal was a revenue share with the developer, it made very, very little sense to go that route. At that point, I knew it was dead. It appears FGOTD is now defunct. The site redirects to GREE.
GREE messed up everything? Thanks for the info MrBlue, when I made my first game I had high expectations on openfeint helping to promote my game, FGOTD, featuring in their new apps, the possibility of being sponsored, etc. when it went live it only appeared in the new lists like one day after and not in the first page, and that was all, not exactly what I had expected. Now that they are GREE I don't know that they have to offer over gamecenter.
I've talked to people at Gree several times over the past 6 months and what they have to say is always the same: they've stopped development on OpenFeint, will close down the legacy OpenFeint tools by the end of this year, and are working on a new platform that will be amazing. I'm sad that OpenFeint is going away, but see no reason to believe they won't carry through on that promise. But point #3, that the new Gree platform will be great, is highly suspect. Gree and DeNA both enjoyed some built-in advantages in their home market, Japan, due to feature phones and carrier deals. Their pitch in the US is that they'll build a "social" platform that will do for mobile what Facebook did for web games. My feeling is that they'll try to force success with a huge spending spree around the platform, but that the basics of what they're selling is not what consumers / gamers want. You'll also see them putting less effort into iOS and more into Android, since all the service companies have figured out that Android is where they can funnel the most cash into their own pockets. But you can be sure that where that money is coming from will be developers' pockets, and the tradeoffs may not be worth it. Long story short, we only have plans to integrate Game Center for the foreseeable future at my studio, especially since Gree reps actively discourage us from using OpenFeint.
A question regarding gree, are they a publishing partner as well that you can discuss publishing deals with? Dont get what they actually do for a game, if they do anything more than give you a platform? As you can hear, im a bit confused
We got "featured" by OF a long time ago and our sales didn't spike at all. And I mean nothing. Getting a spot on their site was something they'd dangle in front of you to get sign-ups, but they neglected to mention that clearly nobody was looking at the said site. Now that gree just cut OF off at the knees, I will not be trusting them with future commitments either.