Here's some news that should make Apple fanboys happy: Gameloft says that it will be scaling back its investment in games for the Android platform, and that other development companies are doing so as well. The French game developer, who makes most its money off of mobile games, says that many other companies are following suit thanks to Google's lack of promotion of the games on their platform and the service not being as well put together as the iPhone's.
This was all revealed at a recent shareholders meeting in which Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said, "We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like... many others." He then went on to state that Android's app store is "not as neatly done as on the iPhone." Following that statement up by slamming Google themselves for a lack of support: "Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue."
I've seen that new Droid phone and played around with it a bit, and I must admit he is correct about the service not being as neatly done, but the phone is just out of the gate and there are a ton of other models that use Android set to hit. I doubt it will hurt Gameloft too much since they are still developing for Android, but they might be kicking themselves over this decision in a few months time.
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site
Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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Contest:
12:00 PM on 11.21.2009
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Saying that, I wouldn't ever trade my Hero for an iPhone. I'm not really a fan of these Apple thingies. If I seriously want to game on the go I bring my DS.
Gameloft half asses Android, doesn't make revenue compared to their AAA development iPhone strategy.
SHOCKING.
Admittedly, the fact that there are many different Android phones doesn't exactly help with development, though... it's like developing games for a PC circa 1986, sorta.
Clearly its nothing they've been putting on DSi or WiiWare. If that's how they treat Nintendo, then iPhone users must be getting far more shovelware than Nintendo fans have had to endure.
They have ~70% of the mp3 player market thanks to people buying a lot of iPods. I don't see how that is bad for the mp3 player market.
@ The Silent Protagonist
Modern Combat, Hero of Sparta, and Assassin's Creed are all highly-rated, big selling games on the App Store. Far better than the few games available on DSiWare.
That sounded fanboyish by accident. I meant to say "Better than most of DSiWare games available." I don't personally think they're very creative games (Modern Combat and Hero of Sparta are heavily influenced by MW and Chains of Olympus), nor do they feel unique to the platform.
Problem solved.