Why there are so many iPhone games
New data from ComScore showing that 32.4% iPhone owners have downloaded at least one game — compared with only 3.8% for the average cell phone owner – sparked some fresh analysis of the booming iPhone (and iPod touch) game market.
As of Tuesday morning, according 148Apps, there were 18,737 applications on the App Store and 4,078 of them — nearly 22% — were games.
Why so many?
The obvious first answer is that games are very popular. Six out of the top 10 paid apps on Apple's (AAPL) App Store are currently games or entertainment programs, which makes those categories particularly attractive to software developers.
On Monday, MacRumors dug up some back-of-the-envelope calculations done in mid-January for Byte of the Apple by Jeff Holden, CEO of Pelago software, who calculated that the 17 million-plus iPhone users had downloaded as much software as 1.6 billion other cell phone users.
"To a developer," he wrote, "what this means is that if he launches an app for non-iPhones (assuming he has deals with all carriers and has ported to every handset in distribution on which people can download apps), he needs to have a reach 94 times as large as the reach he needs in the iPhone community (which does not require any carrier deals and is via single platform, so no porting) to achieve the same number of downloads.
"Why," Holden concludes, "would I ever build for anything but the iPhone?” (link)
But there are even deeper reasons for the iPhone's popularity among game developers, and over the weekend Prince McLean laid them out in a thoughtful post for AppleInsider.
McLean cites an easy-to-use software store, attractive pricing, a nearly-invisible DRM scheme to ward off pirating, a Mac OS-like application development environment and particularly lucky timing (the iPhone 3G launched and the App Store opened six months before the economy officially tanked).
The result is a software ecosystem that produces real gaming value at bargain prices.
"Combined with the sophisticated iPhone hardware platform, with hardware accelerated 3D graphics and a decently powerful CPU," McLean writes, "Apple's App Store games even give dedicated handheld gaming devices a run for their money." (link)
To illustrate his point, McLean posts screen shots — reproduced below — of Sega's popular Super Monkey Ball as it appears on four platforms (and at four price points):
- Nokia's NGage version for smartphones ($20, top left)
- A dumbed-down mini-game version for the Nokia N95 ($10, top right)
- The iPhone version ($10, middle)
- The same title on the Sony PlayStation Portable ($40, bottom).
See the difference? There's your answer.
See also:
I'm a developer, and have 20 apps currently on the iPhone app store. While the platform is easy to write for, and extremely easy for users to find the app, my experience has been that people are mostly interested in the free apps.
One typical month for me was 800,000 downloads of my free aps, and about 4,000 for the paid ones. If my ratio reflects the rest of the app store, you will quickly see that while 500 million downloads sounds like a lot, the lions share are probably free apps.
Wrong, graphics are better on iPod than on PSP. Look at the water in the two shots. Totally unrealistic on PSP, much closer on iPod. And there is no comparison between iPhone/iPod and the other, wanna-be 'smart' phones.
On your other comment below, I am not sure where you are getting your info. but next time someone tells you that Blackberry Aps are selling as well as iPhone apps, don't believe them. And you are listening to WALLSTREET as to technology? You are joking, right?
>>>Let me add that in my opinion, the graphics on the PSP look smoother than the graphics on the iPhone/iPod Touch judging from looking at the comparison of Super Monkey Ball in those screen caps. Less jaggies and somewhat better shading. Most articles seem to compare the iPhone platform to the PSP and DS, where as other cellphones are compared to other cellphones and not to pure gaming platforms.
Yes, the PSP is clearly devoted mainly to game playing but not only are the games more expensive but you have to CARRY EVERY game with you that you want to play … The RIMM is NOT "nearly selling as well as the iPhone let alone the 25 MILLION iphone/ipod touch marketplace … plus, good luck with your IT guy letting you buy apps to load in the RIMM store if it ever gets launched … with the iphone/ipod touch, you can buy games/apps over WiFi and who is goping to design a better user experience – RIMM? Palm or even Google (ever ty to navigate any of their non-search pages?). Contest is over.
I'm not sure iPhone screen resolution is such an issue when you move it around so much to control the action. I'd also try figures from a central apps store over a market census any day
McD
Let me add that in my opinion, the graphics on the PSP look smoother than the graphics on the iPhone/iPod Touch judging from looking at the comparison of Super Monkey Ball in those screen caps. Less jaggies and somewhat better shading. Most articles seem to compare the iPhone platform to the PSP and DS, where as other cellphones are compared to other cellphones and not to pure gaming platforms.
A few things still don't add up to me. If you go to youtube and check out comments on many games, people say that the iPhone/iPod Touch variants aren't that much better than some of the other platforms such as the BlackBerry or Palm or WinMo devices. Secondly, if you go to the App store, there are so many complaints that $3 – $5 games are TOO expensive. I'm puzzled by that TOO expensive statement. I don't know if these comments are written by elementary school children or what. But even so PSP games are certainly more expensive, so I can't imagine what they are comparing it to. They must think that developers are overcharging for development on the Apple Mobile platform. Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that games for the PSP are currently better than the ones on the Apple Mobile platform (at least for the time being). I don't believe people complain that much about the cost of PSP games even though they're way more expensive than those from the App Store.
One more thing. I've seen articles that said BlackBerry and iPhone/iPod were running very close together in games sales and BlackBerry doesn't even have an App Store. I wonder if Apple really does have all that large an edge in game sales or is this Apple gaming platform lead just an exaggeration. Wall Street is clearly not impressed by App Store sales, so I tend to think Apple Mobile gaming is being blown out of proportion. It's definitely not promoting increased iPhone sales for sure.
I'm noticing that although the PSP is initially less expensive than the iPod Touch, if you purchased a half a dozen similar games you can somewhat say they are a lot closer in price since games for the PSP could cost three to four times as much. Of course, I hadn't heard any mention of PSP or PSP game sales deteriorating. Just iPod Touch sales dropping due to it's higher initial cost.
There's another reason – it's much easier to find games for the iPhone than for any other phone. With other phones, you may need to know the model, the screen size, or possibly even the operating system version in order to find compatible games. For the iPhone, all that is solved in one step.
Ease of entry to the market! Apple supplies all you need to work with, cost of entry is virtually nothing. Great returns, no investment! Any game programmer can play, with no need for investment from some company to separate programmer from bulk of profits.
The main stat dividing the 17 mil iphones is flawed b/c it doesn't add any 1st and 2nd gen ipod touches. Together still much more likely to d/l apps as a group, but no where near as likely as the flawed stat would have one seem.
The other factors:
*Accelerometer
*Almost the entire device is screen
*The purchase transaction takes almost no time
Apple is no satisfied to simply take over the smartphone market. They clearly want to take on gaming as well. If I were in the business of selling games that have physical distribution, I would be very worried. Sony, with its complacent and unresponsive technology management, will be the first victim.
hey Elvis, see the quote one below you…
FREE
FREE
FREE
ding ding ding! you get plenty of downloads when it's FREE! get it????