Apple's App Store: How to make a quick $1.5 million
By all reports, one of the most useful panels so far at this year's South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, was Saturday's iPhone: The New Gaming Platform, where some of the device's most successful game developers shared secrets of their success.
The star of the panel, judging by the detailed notes filed by TUAW's Victor Agreda, Jr., was Austin's own Brian Greenstone, whose Pangea Software has racked up an impressive series of iPhone hits, including Enigmo, Cro-Mag Rally, Bugdom 2, Nanosaur 2 and Otto Matic.
Enigmo alone scored 810,000 downloads between July 2008 and January 2009 and cleared $1.5 million in profit.
No wonder Greenstone — who started out writing shareware games for the Apple (AAPL) IIGS and made his first fortune writing Mac games like the original Nanosaur, Bugdom and Cro-Mag Rally — has abandoned the Macintosh platform altogether and is now developing only for the iPhone.
For those who aren't in Austin to see the panels or experience first-hand AT&T's 3G overload problems, The Guardian's Aleks Krotoski has kindly posted a 7:30-minute interview on guardian.co.uk's Games Blog in which Greenstone tells us how he made his second software fortune on the iTunes App Store. We've pasted the video below the fold.
As Greenstone tells Krotoski, he actually stopped writing Mac games a year ago, when the iPhone SDK came out.
"That wasn't the plan," he says, "that's just how it turned out. We were going to do some apps for fun, next thing you know they're making the Mac stuff look like a joke. I mean the Mac stuff, that's like lunch money compared to what the iPhone does." (link)
Below, the guardian.co.uk interview:
For more of Brian Greenstone's wisdom, see the segment about Pangea on KXAN's Austin News here.
"Funny thing is, I’ve had a Mac for a year and never heard of Pangea"
LOL. All free games bundled with Macs for the last 9 years at least, have been from Pangea. And Otto was on my G3 iBook when I bought it in 2002!
Funny thing is, I've had a Mac for a year and never heard of Pangea. I dare say that the problem is one of marketing — the App Store puts his app in everyone's face. While there are similar websites and services for the Mac, they are no wheres near as ubiquitous and all-encompassing as the App Store.
I don't own an iPhone, but I'm thinking about getting a copy of Otto, now that I know it exists for the Mac.
Funny thing is, I've had a Mac for a year and never heard of Pangea. I dare say that the problem is one of marketing — the App Store puts his app in everyone's face. While there are similar websites and services for the Mac, they are no wheres near as ubiquitous and all-encompassing as the App Store.
I don't own an iPhone, but I'm thinking about getting a copy of Otto, now that I know it exists for the Mac.
The guy seems like a jerk, to be bagging on the Mac in favor of the iPhone. That attitude makes me think twice about buying anything from Pangea.
The guy seems like a jerk, to be bagging on the Mac in favor of the iPhone. That attitude makes me think twice about buying anything from Pangea.
First, if you guys are so bored by these blog entries, then why do you keep coming back to look? What do you expect out of an APPLE blog?
Second, I wish I could code.
First, if you guys are so bored by these blog entries, then why do you keep coming back to look? What do you expect out of an APPLE blog?
Second, I wish I could code.
yeah and the you tube link doesn't even work. thanks for this "great" piece of news
ex ped: Well, it's a Flash movie, so it certainly won't work on an iPhone. Take that up with Apple.
yeah and the you tube link doesn't even work. thanks for this "great" piece of news
ex ped: Well, it's a Flash movie, so it certainly won't work on an iPhone. Take that up with Apple.
i dont see how this is such a big deal. "make something original"…wow ..well that's pretty obvious. most of it is him talking about the history of his company.
i dont see how this is such a big deal. "make something original"…wow ..well that's pretty obvious. most of it is him talking about the history of his company.
wow. you must get paid by the article. 'here is a you tube interview, watch it' I'm a journalist. apple is great. whee
wow. you must get paid by the article. 'here is a you tube interview, watch it' I'm a journalist. apple is great. whee
"Funny thing is, I’ve had a Mac for a year and never heard of Pangea"
LOL. All free games bundled with Macs for the last 9 years at least, have been from Pangea. And Otto was on my G3 iBook when I bought it in 2002!