Gaming dead before it gets a chance to live?

[PowerPlayGraphix]

This is NOT a good thing:

Gameloft Reduces Android Investment, Predicts Other Developers Will Follow MTV Multiplayer

Just as I get on board and buy the Droid, it looks like at least ONE developer and maybe more, are planning on abandoning the platform. I think we all need to buy what we like from them and contact them and encourage them to stay on board since there are new handsets (Droid) that bring the game to the next level and they don't need to jump ship now.

It's just getting good, I'd hate to see it die before it has a chance to explode.

 

[LordKastle]

This has already been posted but it is simply propaganda. It depends on what the masses want. If the masses support Android then developers will want to bring in money.

What is the bottom line when it comes to developers? If the majority of people on Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T (without iPhone) want Android apps and games and there is a market for it...do you think developers would ignore it?


It's like the video game console genre. If the masses support a system, the developers will follow. Look at many of the Japanese gaming companies that always supported Sony. What happened with Square-Enix and many others that were exclusive to Sony? They jumped ship to XBox...why? Support. The masses will decide.

 

[cereal killer]

Keep in mind this decision was not made on a whim. Probably already were looking to make that decision early this year. As things heat up with Android, and they are, you will see company's staying on board. Gameloft will probably jump back into the game when they see Android gain steam. It already is (see below)

They won't ignore things like this..this is huge and just a small taste of things to come.

iPhone and Android now total 75% of U.S. smartphone web traffic

 

[lemodular]

I the key is processing power. The faster the processors (and perhaps more ram) will unlock the developer's potential. The higher resolution games will prevail in the future just like it is now with PC computing. If Android wants to fight this, they will need a large user base and fast hardware.

 

[keiichi25]

Don't forget also that right now, the cellphone 'gaming' potential is still a little weak at the moment. While iPhone has the largest market share right now, it, and the Android phones are suffering from the failed attempt of the Nokia N-Gage fiasco. The gaming phone that didn't seem to hold up so well and having enough problems that it is about to be abandoned.

Also, with Open Source, the venue of actually getting money from developing isn't going to be as strong, as Open Source allows for everyone to see the code and work from it. Only the old style games and the cheap ones will be done because of the simple ease and legacy issues behind old style games that doesn't make developing those games seem expensive and worth the time to make.

What makes most software developers make more money is the fact that their code is proprietary, no one can use it. Open Source is meant more that it is code people can look at and emulate and use to develop other code. The drawback of Open Source code is that it is not a definitive source of income to base a company on.

Further more, from the article, note this:

Rochefort stated that Gameloft is selling "400 times more games on iPhone than on Android," prompting a revised set of business priorities.


"It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone," Rochefort said. "Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,."


The iPhone's early entry to the market undoubtedly gave it a head start on getting into consumers' hands and creating potential App Store customers, but Gameloft's confidence in Android's ability to grow its user base and turn its own app store into a money machine sounds nearly non-existent.

From the above mentioned, 400 times more games on the iPhone than the Android. When you also look at the graph from cereal killer's link... the 75% web traffic from mobile phones, 20% is Android and 55% is iPhone and this is after the release of the Motorola Droid, where 24% of that 20% (basically, 5% of the web traffic) is the Motorola Droid after 2 weeeks of being out... The numbers favor the iPhone still at this time for 'popularity of use'.


Now if you look at the fact that currently, what is the preferred Computer to make games on? The PC. The Mac has very few and far between games available on it because the mainstay focus is on the PC having the largest marketshare at this time for computers. This is now getting offset by the simple fact that Microsoft put out the X-Box which is competing against Sony's Playstation and Nintendo's current Console, the Wii and most people gravitating towards console games as they don't require a computer, they are cheaper than a computer and now stepping into the one realm Computers have had a monopoly until the last 4 years, Internet Multiplayer Gaming. Consoles didn't blossom as strongly until Playstation 2 and X-Box started getting internet gaming play going, and that was a strong thing back in Japan that has hit the rest of the world by storm.


Network Head to Head play has been a big thing since the 90s with the older generation gamers... And again, the focus was more towards the platforms that tended to have the largest marketshare.


Gameloft is currently siding more with iPhone because it is 'the popular smartphone' and also had the longest standing. The Droid phones, imho, were relatively 'eh' due to not Google's lack of pushing, but more of being a 'dark horse' in general. Remember, there are other groups pushing their version of smart phones, Microsoft included, but given the number of times changes or abandoning of it has made people side with iPhone for the standard consumer Smartphone, and Blackberry for the Company/Corporate design phone. Palm was way too wishy-washy on their PDA attempts and Microsoft has played too many different variations on their PDA/Smartphone technology that the First Gen Droid phones were treated with just as much skepticism as Palm and Windows Mobile by many phone companies.


Also, when you look at one other thing... The Blackberry is trying to hit the normal consumer level market, but in all honest opinion, it isn't going to do well simply on the fact that it's own app market is even WORSE than the Droid. Finding apps or games for it, along with the OS just not designed for how standard consumers have come to expect things, namely a zippy internet browser and easy to use functionality, you will be hard press to find developers making decent stuff for it as well.

 

[wuyanks]

good insight by all. but to be honest, taking Android as is, i don't think we will see the same games from the iPhone onto Android in the near future, except for a few outliers. it is a valid point that game companies don't want to open source their games...

i hope i'm wrong, because the iphone has very good games, with great graphics, and decent controls

 

[Bully]

This is NOT a good thing:

Gameloft Reduces Android Investment, Predicts Other Developers Will Follow MTV Multiplayer

Just as I get on board and buy the Droid, it looks like at least ONE developer and maybe more, are planning on abandoning the platform. I think we all need to buy what we like from them and contact them and encourage them to stay on board since there are new handsets (Droid) that bring the game to the next level and they don't need to jump ship now.

It's just getting good, I'd hate to see it die before it has a chance to explode.

I might be wrong but even tho the operating system...android is open source...the developers game/code would still be proprietary.

 

[moneymatt]

WHATEVER -- GameLoft is just a bunch of whiny *****es with 3 star games.

With Verizon firmly behind the android developers are going to flock to where the users are at.. and that's exploding right now.

$Matt

 

[LordKastle]

There was actually a post today saying how Gameloft is back on board.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...46-wtf-gameloft-now-making-android-games.html

 

[JonKyu]

There was actually a post today saying how Gameloft is back on board.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...46-wtf-gameloft-now-making-android-games.html

Oh the Irony... Really makes me think twice about Gameloft now.

 

[Tekmazter]

Network Head to Head play has been a big thing since the 90s with the older generation gamers... And again, the focus was more towards the platforms that tended to have the largest marketshare.

Then I must be really old! Before network head-to-head, I used to dial my friends house and go modem-to-modem while we played the original Command & Conquer at 33.6Kbps!

Needless to say, things have gotten far better since then. :motdroidvert:

 

[dpw2atox]

I just saw this and wanted to share it with anyone worried about Android Gaming development


Paris – Gameloft®, a world leader in the publishing and development of downloadable video games, plans to launch High Definition games on next generation Android phones like the Motorola Droid and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.
“The arrival of this new generation of phones will allow the development of High Definition games that make the most of the technological capacity and the speed of execution offered by the new Android phones. Consumers will benefit from a top quality gaming experience,” says Gonzague de Vallois, vice-president of Publishing at Gameloft.
Gameloft also continues to support the current generation of Android phones and announces the imminent arrival of titles such as Assassin’s Creed. These titles will be accessible on the Android Marketplace and Gameloft internet sites and will further strengthen our catalogue of Android games already available.
​

 

[andjarnic]

Lol.. after I put a comment on MTV about their post.. then I read this thread and see they recanted their post.. at least somewhat.

There seems to be a big misconception that because Android is OS, that everything put out for it is OS too. That is not the case at all. I write my code, it's mine. I don't have to open source it. Even better, I can not only post it to the market to make money, I can run my own site and sell it there as well.. although I don't think I would do that right now because then anyone can simply copy the .apk file to a torrent site and it's free.

I am curious tho, as a developer, for any of you that read this and care to reply, if you were to buy a game for a buck or so off of the market, and it required you to "register" that game to be able to play it, thus using wifi/3G (which you have to have anyway to have android phones work.. so it wont cost anything extra to do it), is that a big deal? I am trying to think of some way to avoid the .apk file being copied off of the SD card (when that becomes possible) and just given away for free to anyone wanting to download it off of a torrent site. I think this is the main reason SD cards do not allow apps to be installed... to avoid getting .apk files and running them illegally. I haven't dug deep enough in the android processes to understand how all that works yet. I do know I sign my app, but that won't prevent it from being given away freely. It would be nice if there was some way to tie an app to a device and user, so that it only ran on that one device.. with of course there being some ability if that user upgraded to a new device, to get all their apps again without having to repay for them.

Thanks.

 

[PowerPlayGraphix]

There are several apps in the Market that won't run the first time until they've been registered. You can install it from the .apk but you can't run it unless you log in and register/pay for it. If you don't, it won't launch. Once activated, it runs just fine.

 

[Dave12308]

TBH, most of the Android stuff i've seen so far from Gameloft hasn't impressed me at all. Basically ports of J2ME cell phone games, not taking advantage of the additional capabilities of Android smartphones.

The best games i've seen on my Droid so far have been from smaller devs. Speed Forge 3D is pretty impressive (especially given its filesize)

I also like the Super G stunt plane game from OmniGsoft. Kind of pointless, but it has nice colorful graphics and is rather relaxing. It's also iphone-eque in quality and framerate.

And I really think the gaming genre that the Droid excels at is retro console gaming, with the plethora of emulators out there. And 16GB is a huge amount of space for ROMs.

EDIT: Okay looking back thru the thread, the "High Definition" games for the new Android devices (Droid! Yay!) thing sounds good. I'd assume these will install a stub app in device memory and copy the datafiles to the SD card. I hope so, considering some of their iPhone games are ~100MB or so. I really hope they are accelerometer controlled like on the iPhone (especially the racing games)

EDIT2: Looking at some info on the web about Gameloft's announcement and subsequent 180 degree turnaround on the issue, i'm beginning to wonder if the fact that there have already been up to 800,000 Droids sold in such a short timeframe has something to do with them changing their minds?