Some people have asked me about iPhone development, and I’ve said that it’s a field I know pretty close to zero. I’ve never done any iPhone development, nor iPhone promotion… but I did find this newbie iPhone developer story.
Worth checking out me thinks.
(Interesting bits of info also for those who aren’t going to get into iPhone development)
tonic: "well… applying the same logic, why would you consider X360 since it doesn’t play old XBOX games? and yeah, first model of PS3 had extra HW to..." 1 hour 50 minutes ago. 
Juuso: "Russell: it’s the amount of junk in me house I dislike… I don’t like the idea of owning seven thousand different consoles connected to a tv. :)" 6 hours 39 minutes ago. Juuso: "Jake: what about stealth/assassinations - are they interesting as in Thief (=cool) or interesting as in Assassins Creed I (=pretty okay)?" 6 hours 41 minutes ago. 
Jake Birkett: "Shame. The PS2 played PS1 games but they looked funny. Can anyone 100% confirm if the PS3 games are really region free? If so I might buy one in Canada..." 9 hours 49 minutes ago. Jake Birkett: "@Juuso: Yes, it’s very good. I’m impressed. It has great graphics and a great atmosphere of 15th Century Italy (I actually feel like..." 9 hours 51 minutes ago. 
GamingHorror: "Besides the already mentioned points, backwards compatibility seems not to be a big issue. It’s definetely not a system seller." 13 hours 38 minutes ago. 
Lumooja: "It’s production costs. The old PS3 had a chip which could run PS2 games, so it didn’t need to emulate them. It also had bigger harddrive, more USB..." 15 hours 29 minutes ago. 
mikeful: "Original model supported PS2 games. For some reason backwards compatibility was dropped from newer models. PS1 games are software emulated on all models...." 16 hours 24 minutes ago. 
Russell: "Actually, I believe that the first-generation PS3s did support PS2 games, but are only compatible with 92%-98% of them. You can check which models are..." 17 hours 52 minutes ago. 
February 17th, 2009 at 12:48 am
good thanks
February 17th, 2009 at 10:56 am
This one is pretty amazing, and people should expect to match his result. But it is impressive….
http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/28229/Lone-iPhone-dev-earns-600k-per-month
February 17th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Great Thanks
We are now developing for iphone this is really useful
February 17th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Yes, that’s a good article. A nice balanced counterpoint to all the iShoot stuff doing the rounds. iShoot did great and should be applauded, but the story tells you very little about the life of the average iPhone game, or about what you can expect from it. Those articles always focus on the (mightily impressive) total and it’s best sales day ever. There isn’t a linear line between #1 in the charts and #100, and with 20,000+ apps contending for attention, most games will never break into the top 100.
Doesn’t mean it’s not a good market to be in, we’re enjoying it, but you still need to approach it like any other business or market. Taking any kind of gold rush approach won’t work in most cases.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Yeah I saw that 600K one today too, awesome!
February 17th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I also wonder if thinking that your game will be “average” is actually a flaw and you need to gun for it being THE BEST otherwise it probably won’t happen :-)
February 18th, 2009 at 2:39 am
Lol… nicely twisted Jake, thanks for that ;-). It’s a good point though… reminds me that I need to convey more positivity in my tone when writing, I’ve always had a problem with that.
Making an average iPhone game seems pointless to me. If you get featured in any of the App Store lists, you would probably still make tens of thousands of dollars from it, but that’s like waiting to win the lottery. Outside of the iTunes lists you’ll have to fight for every sale, and you’ll have to be good to do that. And if you have a Lite version and your game sucks, it won’t convert at all.
I don’t think our game is average, and it’s performed better than average, but it’s been an experience of constant effort and realistic sensible numbers/growth. Based on how we’ve done, and on how many other good games I’ve seen come and go in the last 3 months, I can guess with reasonable confidence at how badly some of these games might have been performing… and it’s not a nice thought.
Aiming to be THE BEST is great advice for anyone making a game, and if you pull it off on the iPhone, you might be able to make a living from it… which let’s face it, makes it a very nice market to be in :).
But it would be irresponsible to send someone into the iPhone market banking on making anything like iShoot money… the numbers at the top of the App Store are the peak of a very steep curve.