I'm sure many people have heard about this by now:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32070/Apple_Confirms_January_6_Launch_For_Mac_App_Store.php

I think this could be a big deal for independent game developers. It provides a distribution platform for PC-like games that's presumably easier to get on than Steam. I say PC-like because while it obviously doesn't have the same number of potential customers are you would have on Windows, it lets you create games for PC-level hardware which can be played with mouse/keyboard controls rather than having to constantly work around touch screen limitations like a lot of mobile games have to do.

With Steam on Mac as well (hopefully driving electronic sales of games on the Mac), and the number of people familiar with buying things from places like the App Store I wonder if there could be a pretty decent potential market here.

What are people's thoughts here?

I think the more retail options for developers the better. My main concerns are:

1. Getting lost in the catalog. It's bad enough on Steam with ~1,200 games but if you're just one of 250,000 apps it's going to be hard for anyone to notice you.

2. The race to $0 is going to hurt the bottom line. Price wars are going to lead to revenue reduction unless you're a top app.

Basically the fears are the same as on the iOS store. The winners will win big but they will be a small percentage of the developers.

My thoughts are:
First of all getting your application on an app store doesn't neccesarily mean you're going to get sales, or exposure. There's going to be lots of apps on there. You have to do publicity/advertising as well.

Secondly while it might be easier to get an app published than it is on steam, you still (probably) have to go through rigorous approval process. They have the right to reject your app if its too violent, too rude, uses public figures, uses non-published library functions or smells a funny colour. My iOS application took two weeks to get approval, and it may take the same amount of time for every update I do.

That said, you're right. There will be decent potential market here - but you need to have a product that stands out from the crowd.

Quote:

Original post by Mike Bossy I think the more retail options for developers the better. My main concerns are: 1. Getting lost in the catalog. It's bad enough on Steam with ~1,200 games but if you're just one of 250,000 apps it's going to be hard for anyone to notice you. 2. The race to $0 is going to hurt the bottom line. Price wars are going to lead to revenue reduction unless you're a top app. Basically the fears are the same as on the iOS store. The winners will win big but they will be a small percentage of the developers.

Thats a false idea man.

In the app store there might be 300k+ games but there are only so many games that are worth anything. Let me give you an example my game Gatsby Golf is making it in the top 500 of some of the stores and that is with sales like 3,4,13 sales each day. There are around 20 categories and only the top 500 games in each will sell anything at all. Now if you break that down we are at max 10k games that are selling anything. Now lets be honest my game Gatsby golf is grossing 260 in sports in the US store (with a total of 7 sales). What that means is that if you are not in the top 100 you are (at least) its not worth talking about. If we say 20*100= we are now down to 2000 games that you are really competing against (if its even competitive at all).

http://www.appannie.com/gatsbys-golf/ranking/