[quote name='spooderw' timestamp='1322965238' post='4890289']
I can't speak for IOS.

That's exactly my point.

MineCraft is the top selling indie game on your list, with about 3.5 million units sold. By comparison, Angry Birds has over 500 million sales - and that is jut one of the many successful indie games on iOS.

(and yes, Rovio *is* an indie company, at least up until the financial success of Angry Birds - it was formed by 3 college students with no funding or prior business experience)
[/quote]

That is ONE game. The average indie game on IOS does not make enough money to buy a week of groceries.


I can think of maybe 10 successful indie games on IOS, and I can easily think of 100 games with as much or more success on PC and consoles.

Statistically speaking, I can almost guarantee that every single person who reads this post would do poorly if they made an IOS game.

That is ONE game. The average indie game on IOS does not make enough money to buy a week of groceries.

Nor does the average indie game on PC. Far from it - the handful you listed are the exception to the rule, elsewise everyone would be rolling in money. Developing a financially successful game (indie or not) on any platform is a long shot. You have to make it into that 1% that captures the popular imagination - otherwise you'll be lucky to nickel & dime back your development costs.

But this is all very tangential to the question of whether one should use an engine. You and I could probably spit out counter-examples all night, but it wouldn't be very productive. The bottom line is that there are successful games built on 3rd party engines, and successful games using in-house engines.

There's no hard-and-fast rule as to which you should go for: it's a tradeoff of time/effort required to roll your own tech, versus the time/effort to learn someone else's tech.

This discussion is all over the place.
Career choice, how to prepare -- those are the purview of the Breaking In forum.
Doing business as an indie developer -- that's a Business topic.
This discussion doesn't happily belong in either forum now, and it also doesn't belong in For Beginners (a technical forum).
I think it's best to close this, therefore, and anyone wishing to continue discussing any aspect of this discussion can easily start a new thread in the appropriate forum.