Greetings everyone, Being a currently unemployed designer and someone who also has some game dev experience, coupled with living in a country and state where by designers are abundant. The contemplation of starting up a 2-man studio has crossed my mind. Obviously though if I had the money to start up my own studio to work on any console or PC development, then I wouldn't need to be looking for a job. So at the current time one of the avenues that seem to be all the rage is developing on the iPhone. Or at the very least in Australia. "Develop for the iPhone! You need only a few thousand dollars, a good idea and you'll turn a profit!" Is the sentence mused around the Australian indie and small-scale dev community at the moment. Believing that this development platform is the magical ticket into starting your own games development business. I'm admittedly a bit sceptical of the premise. The promise of viable game development with only a small start up cost sounds fantastic. But I have some questions. These include: 1. The price point to which people want products on the iPhone rests around the $1 mark. Therefore any large-scale iphone development that you plan to sell for more then that amount seems risky to me. Your left with a small scope for development. 2. The number of games & apps currently available is huge. And it's growing fast as many small developers all over the world are striking their claim into the marketplace. 3. Where is the iPhone going to be 2 years from now? If I started up a studio today and over a number of months found some small success. What other avenues can development on the iphone lead to? What would the credential of indie iPhone development look upon to a publisher if I were pitching a downloadable PC game for steam when I want to expand the business past 2 people? These are the questions that run through my head when I think of iPhone development. Are my scepticisms misplaced? Is there much more to consider? What do you think is the current state of the iPhone and its viability?

The days of making a fortune from iphone apps are over. Too much saturation with programs & games has made finding a good game tough. But if you're looking for just a little spare cash, it should work (ie: you already own a mac & iphone).

One thing to consider though is that apps are so cheap, people will have fewer second thoughts on picking up an app if it's really good.

The impression I get is that the iPhone market is extremely hit driven. If you can get your app into the top 10 sellers, it can sell well. But if it drops off the radar at the Apple store you will be lost in the crowd.

And as you pointed out, the fact that everyone expects the apps to cost a single buck isn't helpful.

My gut feeling is that it could be worthwhile to make iPhone games in addition to some other money earners (like traditional downloadable PC games) if it's something you can do quickly and easily. But I'm not sure it's viable enough to be dedicated to the platform.

But that's me. And I really need to more into the Melbourne indie scene, 'cause I'm completely out of the loop. [sad]

(BTW, thanks for pointing out Freeplay 2009 to me; next week I'll be there).

Quote: Original post by DesignerWatts
1. The price point to which people want products on the iPhone rests around the $1 mark. Therefore any large-scale iphone development that you plan to sell for more then that amount seems risky to me. Your left with a small scope for development.

Ignore that and price your game realistically. I bought EA's Need for Speed: Undercover for iPhone a few months ago, US$10, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it worth every penny. While $1 is thought of as the "megahit price point," considering the saturation of the App Store you might as well price your product realistically. $4.99 for a side-scrolling platformer or elegant 3D puzzler sounds appropriate.

Quote: 2. The number of games & apps currently available is huge. And it's growing fast as many small developers all over the world are striking their claim into the marketplace.

Don't rely on the App Store alone for exposure. You're going to need to advertise, and to be creative with your advertising. Building small Flash demos of a reasonable approximation of what your game entails to run all over the web, then linking people to the full app in the App Store will probably become standard practice.

Quote: 3. Where is the iPhone going to be 2 years from now? If I started up a studio today and over a number of months found some small success. What other avenues can development on the iphone lead to? What would the credential of indie iPhone development look upon to a publisher if I were pitching a downloadable PC game for steam when I want to expand the business past 2 people?

The iPhone is going to be around for a while, considering how profitable it is for Apple. If you're building iPhone applications and advertising them, then you can build variants for PC and Mac OS at a marginal additional investment to see some additional revenue (always making the iPhone version the lead platform).

As for whether being an indie iPhone developer is a worthwhile credential, yes. Any independent game development that is self-sustaining as a business for a good length of time is a solid credential, but it really comes down to whether your games are any good. If they are, then you should easily be able to expand in markets that you have sufficient capitalization to develop for - Steam, yes, but also Nintendo DS and later Wii.

I say go for it, but make sure you have a business plan. Good luck! [smile]

Don't forget if you can develop for the iPhone it shouldn't be too difficult to develop for other similar platforms and increase your chance of getting sales.
Whilst not as popular as the App Store it is still possible to generate revenue from Android Marketplace, Nokia OVI Store and Blackberry Marketplace. Porting to these handsets shouldn't be too difficult providing you arn't using iPhone specific features (like multitouch).

Also even if your apps don't generate a huge amount of cash you can still make money developing other peoples apps and games for them and use your own titles to show that you can produce a quality product.

Unless you can consistently get your games in to the top 10 I think you would have a hard time making enough to do iPhone games as your only source of income. Seems to be pretty hard in general to make a living just doing indie stuff. Think the best bet might be to keep the games simple in graphics and get Unity so you can have PC and Mac ports to bring in more money.

Quote: Original post by jtagge75
Unless you can consistently get your games in to the top 10 I think you would have a hard time making enough to do iPhone games as your only source of income. Seems to be pretty hard in general to make a living just doing indie stuff. Think the best bet might be to keep the games simple in graphics and get Unity so you can have PC and Mac ports to bring in more money.

I don't know. A small team of dedicated developers, say 10 or less, should be able to develop good, high quality games at a reasonable speed that they can become well known for their good, quality games. This in turn will mean that they can develop not only games, but a following for their games. New releases, or new episodes of their games can then fuel the business as customers look forward to the next installment from them.

You can price slightly higher, $4.99 or $9.99, and have people still buy it because they KNOW the next game is going to be good. Not some half baked clone of an idea they've seen a thousand times before sold for $1. Make games that aren't commonly seen on the IPhone. Make them easy to play anywhere. I've seen a lot of 'cool' demos that involve a lot of wiggling of the IPhone, but you look like an idiot playing in public, and you sure wouldn't want a client to see you playing like that.

Interesting post on the topic of software pricing: Software Pricing: Are We Doing It Wrong? I don't know if I'm convinced by some of the data (I think Valve cutting the price on titles that started full price on Steam is not necessarily useful evidence for the effect of launching a product at the lower price initially) but it's food for thought.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
I don't know. A small team of dedicated developers, say 10 or less, should be able to develop good, high quality games at a reasonable speed that they can become well known for their good, quality games. This in turn will mean that they can develop not only games, but a following for their games. New releases, or new episodes of their games can then fuel the business as customers look forward to the next installment from them.

You can price slightly higher, $4.99 or $9.99, and have people still buy it because they KNOW the next game is going to be good. Not some half baked clone of an idea they've seen a thousand times before sold for $1. Make games that aren't commonly seen on the IPhone. Make them easy to play anywhere. I've seen a lot of 'cool' demos that involve a lot of wiggling of the IPhone, but you look like an idiot playing in public, and you sure wouldn't want a client to see you playing like that.

I think this goes with having consistent top 10 games. I don't want to say its impossible, because you got games like Flight Control. Full budget AAA games would like to have sales like that. I hope my forthcoming game has a tenth of those sales.

Guess maybe really it depends on your standard of living. A two or three person team putting out three or four games a year with some modest sales could at least keep you from living in the streets.

from another topic here

http://www.nimblebit.com/2009/06/nimblebit-numbers/

some hard iphone sales data, none of the games appear to be major hits

game + how much a single developer made working on it(*) (though final numbers will be higher cause they havent stopped selling)

Hanoi Plus - $4,500 a week
Scoops - $35,000 a week
Textropolis - $4,625 a week
Kyper - $110 a week
Sky Burger - $1,062 a week

as u can see this 1-3 person company has had a reasonable run so far, without having any big hits.
But like I mentioned I feel the hey day of the iphone is nearing its end.
2 reasons
A/ the typical hype with tech life cycle
B/ as in with lots of things, some ppl make money then everyone goes thats a good idea + starts doing it, resulting in a flood of new competition.


(*)dont know if this is before tax

edit - just saw this 'unemployed designer and someone who also has some game dev experience'
so whos gonna actually make the games?