Pachter: Apple 2013 Console

There are a few AAA games on the IOS devices eg Inifinty Blade (unreal engine 3), batman etc. True not as many as other devices, but they are other there.

OK I think the Ipads ok to play games on (obviously not as good as something with controls) but the other 3.5" devices are far too small, I might ask a question about that later. Also I'll note WRT Ipod one of its main reasons ppl buy it is its a gameing device.

If you're going to count horse armor and what not, its probably not more than any console game. You could easily spend hundreds of dollars on gears of war if you bought all the crap.
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different gameplay models, the farmville (or whatever they are) games are all designed primary for you to buy stuff to go forward with gears of war etc, whilst you can the majority of ppl dont.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
. FIFA 12 sold 900k copies on iOS in its first week, out of 3 million across all devices (PC, XB360, PS2, PS3, Mac, Wii, PSP, 3DS). That's a large piece of pie for iOS in these early days..
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not when adjusted for revenues!!

2,1x50=10,5 millions

10x0,9=9
 
zed said:
There are a few AAA games on the IOS devices eg Inifinty Blade (unreal engine 3), batman etc. True not as many as other devices, but they are other there.
.
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How are they AAA?

Infinity blade is a tremendously short game (1-2 hours to go through all maps, then you can "respawn" forever).

It has nice gfx tho
 
Yeah, low game price is a stigma and real challenge. It will have to be adjusted with more meaty games, and follow-up "chapters". If Apple's $15 textbook effort sells well, hopefully the consumers will get more used to premium titles. Afterall, they know they can play the same game on multiple devices, both phone and pad.

On iOS/Android, I suppose developers can take the bottom-up, lower risk approach. Do a small entry-level title to gauge interest and then follow up with more complete and advanced version.
 
I'm still waiting for a full, true rpg game from Square Enix or Namco to appear for iPad.
A touch UI would be just perfect for a new Final Fantasy game as those rpg's are mostly navigating menus and an analog stick wouldn't really be missed as much as in most other games.
That would be a true AAA game for iPad. No games thus far have been such I'd buy an iPad for. Infinity Blade looks nice, but controls very very badly, as do most games other than puzzlers and such.
 
Cheezdoodles said:
not when adjusted for revenues!!
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Uuuuh, yeah, as my next line said. ;) And my other contributions in this thread where I'm not currently seeing a market for AAA titles on iOS. But it is moving in that direction which is what FIFA shows. That EA could charge $10 for a game on a platform where the upper limit has been $5 means, perhaps, that the pricing can be pushed. If they get up to $20-25 then they'd possibly be getting as much revenue as disc based titles. Either that or double sales of games, so what sell 20 million on consoles sells 40 million on iOS just because there's so many of them. But I really doubt the majority of iOS owners would buy those sorts of games. iOS is like a TV IMO - there are so many tastes, the install base isn't any kind of target. If the majority of iOS owners are soap-opera fans, it doesn't matter how much you spend on your new sci-fi series. However, if Apple court the gamers and expand the device, it's a possibility, not an impossibility.
 
Something that was never mentioned here after the Apple conference call, was the total number of iOS devices sold last quarter - 62 million.
Thus, in one quarter alone, they grew their installed base with pretty much exactly the same number of devices as the total number of XBOX360s sold since introduction.
Provided for perspective.

As regards pricing of software on the App Store, it should be far cheaper than typical retail games. Not only do you get away from licensing/royalty costs to the platform holders, you also cut out an awful lot of distribution/packaging/publishing/retail rents and wages costs. Small wonder if the large number of people involved in those aspects of the game industry feel threatened.
 
Mobile software is only going to grow. I remember perusing EA's earnings a while back and I can fuzzily recollect EA's calendar third quarter showing that its mobile division is already outpacing it's handheld net revenue. EA is pulling ~200 million a year in net revenue from its mobile division and has been for a couple of years now.

While companies like Activision or Ubisoft doesn't seem to really have a strong presence in the mobile market. I don't think it will be long before a number of big pubs either start up a mobile division from scratch or do what EA did and that is buy a mobile pub like Pop Caps.

And once the big pubs become heavily entrenched in the mobile market you will start to see bigger titles. We going to see alot of Vitaware makes its way to iOS and Android in the future when it will be easier to port because the advancement in hardware performance moves at a faster rate than handhelds. This will be especially true for iOS where new Apple products will have a userbase of 40-80 million easily within their first 18 months if Apple keeps moving products at its current pace.

Android/iOS is already dominating revenue for the US portable market with a ~60% marketshare. Android/iOS went from $500 million in 2009 to 1.9billion in 2011 and Android/iOS userbase is still growing and will dwarf the 3ds/Vita userbase even if both portables have healthy sales. Publishers aren't going to ignore that reality and even if AAA games don't show up on iOS/Android then don't expect many to show up on Vita either, because any non first party AAA title that appears on Vita is a prime target to get ported to Android/iOS unless Vita AAA games have huge footprints and take up too much space to be viable.
 
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Entropy said:
... Not only do you get away from licensing/royalty costs to the platform holders...
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Apple gets a 30% cut.

Sony/MS typically get $10 of the $60 retail box, a far cry from the $18 that Apple WOULD get with $60 IOS games.

Sony/MS would be just as happy getting their $10 cut from $30 games sold Digital, but by no means is Apple giving developers "free" access to the IOS marketplace and their current arrangement is not an advantage over Sony/MS on consoles.

There are savings to be had by cutting out the manufacture, distribution and retail money, but by no means does that preclude MS/Sony from getting their cut of software sold on the platform they invested in and developed, just as APPLE does currently.
 
TheChefO said:
Apple gets a 30% cut.

Sony/MS typically get $10 of the $60 retail box, a far cry from the $18 that Apple WOULD get with $60 IOS games.

Sony/MS would be just as happy getting their $10 cut from $30 games sold Digital, but by no means is Apple giving developers "free" access to the IOS marketplace and their current arrangement is not an advantage over Sony/MS on consoles.

There are savings to be had by cutting out the manufacture, distribution and retail money, but by no means does that preclude MS/Sony from getting their cut of software sold on the platform they invested in and developed, just as APPLE does currently.
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Of course apple gets a cut of App Store sales. You can see in their balance sheets how much that earns them vs. operation cost. Their cut is very reasonable.
At this point in time, only 30% of the retail cost of a game goes back to the publisher. If a third-party is behind the game, less than 10% goes to the developer, or 25 per cent of the publisher's revenue after deductibles.
Getting 70% of retail is an awesome deal for game development houses.

As I said, App Store prices should be much lower than brick and mortar retail, because the savings involved are enormous.
 
Entropy said:
Of course apple gets a cut of App Store sales. You can see in their balance sheets how much that earns them vs. operation cost. Their cut is very reasonable.
At this point in time, only 30% of the retail cost of a game goes back to the publisher. If a third-party is behind the game, less than 10% goes to the developer, or 25 per cent of the publisher's revenue after deductibles.
Getting 70% of retail is an awesome deal for game development houses.

As I said, App Store prices should be much lower than brick and mortar retail, because the savings involved are enormous.
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The publishers don't actually do nothing. IF a developer wanted to make a large budget title and sell it through the itunes model, they'd need to do all of their own advertising and localization. Do a different language version for Angry Birds might not be a big deal, but if you want to do an RPG, or FPS in a different language, you need translation and voice talent etc. Which is far from free. There's also things like getting the product esrb (or whatever other services and requirements various countries have) rated. There's a lot of things these publishers keep staff for that a developer wouldn't have any use for 99% of the time, so they'd wind up outsourcing and perhaps not getting it done right or for the same cost. So it might look a lot better on paper, but the developer might not wind up any better off in the end, and winds up actually taking a lot more risk, because Apple in the itunes model, is taking none and really doing very little.

Even Brick and Mortar stores provide significant advertising.
 
Entropy said:
Of course apple gets a cut of App Store sales. You can see in their balance sheets how much that earns them vs. operation cost. Their cut is very reasonable.
At this point in time, only 30% of the retail cost of a game goes back to the publisher. If a third-party is behind the game, less than 10% goes to the developer, or 25 per cent of the publisher's revenue after deductibles.
Getting 70% of retail is an awesome deal for game development houses.

As I said, App Store prices should be much lower than brick and mortar retail, because the savings involved are enormous.
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Yes, but your previous statement of "Not only do you get away from licensing/royalty costs to the platform holders" is false.

They don't get away from licensing/royalty costs. In fact, the platform licensing/royalty percentage of the retail cost of software is even bigger on IOS than it is for Sony/MS.

What they DO get away from is manufacture, distribution, and B&M retail costs.
 
AlphaWolf said:
The publishers don't actually do nothing. IF a developer wanted to make a large budget title and sell it through the itunes model, they'd need to do all of their own advertising and localization. Do a different language version for Angry Birds might not be a big deal, but if you want to do an RPG, or FPS in a different language, you need translation and voice talent etc. Which is far from free. There's also things like getting the product esrb (or whatever other services and requirements various countries have) rated. There's a lot of things these publishers keep staff for that a developer wouldn't have any use for 99% of the time, so they'd wind up outsourcing and perhaps not getting it done right or for the same cost. So it might look a lot better on paper, but the developer might not wind up any better off in the end, and winds up actually taking a lot more risk, because Apple in the itunes model, is taking none and really doing very little.
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On the App Store, independent development houses can still choose to go via the publishers, if they so desire.

But even from the perspective of, say, EA, publishing via the App Store brings great savings. Selling at a third of the price of retail will still bring equivalent levels of profit per copy, (or better, dependent on how their operating costs are distributed).

It's not those involved in production, but the distribution line (manufacture, transportation, importers, local agents and distributors, e-trailers and retailers) that is cut out of the loop.
 
The 30% accounts for the hosting of the apps as well as the fact that the App. Store attracts a lot of traffic.

The $60 retail box has manufacturing and distribution costs, which may include payments for favorable shelf space. Then there are things like inventory costs for unsold goods.
 
Without being featured, the traffic generated is almost meaningless. There's just so much crap to sift through.
 
Yeah but the kind of games we're talking about would get plenty of publicity and advertising.

People would just go search for them.

If COD was on the App. Store, I think people would have no problems finding it.
 
Yes, but a publisher pays for that advertising to generate that interest. COD has a huge following because of hundreds of millions invested into making it a known quantity, that includes midnight launch events at Brick and Mortar locations, special edition packages with art books and the like that generate buzz on the internet.
 
Apple also market select iOS games:
http://www.develop-online.net/features/1450/Mike-Capps-on-finding-the-next-Cliff-Bleszinski

We’re learning, we’re experimenting with the project, looking at things like microtransactions and piracy. So I wish we had a playbook for marketing our iOS games, but really it was Apple that’s really carried the sales. I have no idea how much they spent on advertising Infinity Blade when it came out, but the game was everywhere. That was the first time my mum actually saw an advert for one of our games.

...
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Epic's perspective:

Epic doesn’t believe mobile games need to be sold cheap in order to succeed
http://www.vg247.com/2011/09/23/epi...es-need-to-be-sold-cheap-in-order-to-succeed/

Sweeney pointed to Infinity Blade as an example as it sells for £3.99 and $5.99 and has netted the company over $10 million in revenue.

“Infinity Blade has proven that iPhone owners are hungry for high-end games with cutting-edge graphics,” Sweeney told Forbes.“For a long time, the market was seen as a ‘race to the bottom’ with developers being squeezed into releasing apps for 99 cents or even free. Infinity Blade’s success shows that premium-quality apps can sell for more.

“We’re making significant profit here and, as a result, we’re doubling down on triple-A mobile game development with Unreal Engine 3′s graphical advancements at the centre of our strategy.”
Click to expand...

At the moment, I think we will just get a mix of dual sticks and touch gaming, expensive and cheap games targeted at different segment of users.
 
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