Here's the thing though: you seem to think you are the target demographic for iPhone game publishers. You aren't.
90,000 units is easy on the app store if you have a good game with good visibility and good reviews. How much does the programmer of a big company actually get after everyone gets there cut? I think good programmers will be dealing direct with the app store just like music artist are doing bypassing the big labels and making more money doing it. Enough of this lets get back to the game.
Is it so hard to understand that if a developer (note: quality developer) does not earn enough to generate a profit, then they would quit developing on this platform and ultimately it is us, the iphone market consumers, who suffers the most? The $.99 bubble will be bursting sooner or later. It's only a matter of time for the developers to quit developing quality titles on the iphone platform if most people keep on spending only $.99 on apps. Back on topic, this game is freaking awesome! Well worth the premium price and I'm glad that id and escalation software brought this title to the app store!
So, if I'm distilling what you're saying properly, you're suggesting all developers should go out and get real jobs and keep developing great games as a hobby in their spare time so they can keep costs low and sell them for $0.99? Brilliant plan. Let me know how that works out for you.
I to worked for a game studio or studios if you count name changes due to buyouts. When i worked for Iguana Studios and Acclaim it was grueling 80 hour work weeks looking at a screen with free lunch and dinner being the few things to look forward to. I know I worked on some good and bad games as a 3d modeler and hated crunch time when we slept at the offices(which had some sweet ass leather couches in the boardroom) for a few hours and jumped back into working. I agree with you man some people just don't understand how much time or money goes into making a game and if some people feel that they are entitled to .99 cent games then so be it. I will say this, as the iPhone's hardware gets better it is going to cost more and require more people to make these games.
Yup. Been there. I remember working straight through 9am to 3am on a night we were prepping for a tradeshow that I didn't even get to go to. And I didn't even like that particular job. (Dull utilitarian work designing grid and TCP/IP libraries. I did my own thing designing games after work to alleviate the boredom. ) No, most people don't understand the sheer amount of work that goes into designing a game from the ground up, much less a good one. Games are these things which just appear on the App Store after developers blow some fairy dust and mutter a few incantations during commercial breaks from Law & Order. Sorry, but I ain't crippling my fingers and wracking my brain 12 hours a day for $30k a year. The $0.99 bubble will burst eventually. Then we'll start to see what the market will properly bear, as it should be.
God. For one thing, quoting games that started as 6-10 dollars and dropped to one months later is just stupid. Who knows what this will cost at that time. ID software could not justify the development costs of this game selling it at one dollars its entire lifetime. If its the choice between no game at all and a 10 dollar (10 dollars!??! oh my) for a while that drops eventually... uh, the latter please. This is a premium IP game made specifically for the iphone, its not going to be a dollar. Half the games on my iphone cost at least 5 dollars when they came out anyway.
1 million copies (at least) for 1 dollar - it's $1 million - and I'm sure that they will cover development costs. But I'm not sure that they'll sell 100 000 copies for 10 bucks.
You're right; the mass casual audiences are. The vast majority of iPhone users rarely play/purchase games. Most of those that do buy cheap ones they play casually.
I don't understand how this can "work out for me." I'm not a developer, and I'm certainly not a developer for a platform whose audience is primarily phone users who occasionally play games casually. The game is not going to be a massive success regardless, as I doubt the vast majority of iPhone users would have any interest in this game, let alone at $10.
Honestly, I don't even need to play the game. It's on-rails with training wheels, so I'll just do the following the get basically the same experience: I'll just wait until someone out there uploads a video of the game from start to finish (I'm sure there'll be plenty of people finishing this $10 game in an hour or so). Watching that will basically be just about the same as playing it, seeing as it's an on-rails shoother. I'll just tilt my Touch around pretending it makes a difference. There's $10 back in my pocket.
The thing I will never understand about people who will endlessly rant about pricing on the App Store... Your money is so valuable that spending $10 isn't "worth" it, yet your time seems to be almost worthless to you. Everyone who has bought the game is enjoying it. Are you just trying to rationalize not spending $10 by convincing yourself the game is terrible?
Ha. Exactly. People are way too cheap sometimes and we don't need to hear them complain about it. If you want to wait for a Price Drop on an app be our guest but you don't have to be an annoying prick about it you know? Hodapp, you sir are a smart guy. All people on TA with that kind of view that you have are good in my book. I can perfectly understand not thinking something is worth something but people don't need to try to convince others that they're views are right. Lolz.. isnt that kinda whats wrong with the world right now?
Well this is a shame. Doom taking an on-rails approach? No on-rails game can ever have good replayability unless the paths taken are randomly generated, which I doubt is possible anyways. I played House of the Dead series before and loved it, however Doom is just not suited for a no-movement scheme. Furthermore no on-rails game should be $9.99 especially for iPhone, because it has much much less replayability, and is much easier to program. You don't have to design an entire virtual world for walking around for an on-rails shooter, it's like making a short movie at most. It doesn't matter what the production costs are, does that have anything to do with the buyers? Customers are concerned about quality and replayability, not about how much it costs for them to produce the game or how much hype its "predecessors" have. If Starcraft came out for iPhone and took millions to produce, definitely has lots of hype, and turns out to be some really crappy game, is it worth $9.99?
