It Pays To Follow Trends: iPhone Dev Makes $37,000 In One Day

In the world of game development, everyone wants to make it to the top or at least sell their game and feel a mild bit of success. Developers jump into this industry to express their passion for games and not always to make a million dollars. However, one developer is on the road to a million bucks.

ishootEthan Nicholas, developer of a tank artillery game called iShoot, told Wired.com he quit his job the day his app rose to No. 1 in the App Store, earning him $37,000 in a single day. (wired.com)

Now here is a career choice made for you! He goes on to say that he’d be a millionaire right now if it wasn’t for taxes. We’d also remind him to check out Apple’s cut of the profits too, that might be slowing him down. However, if it wasn’t foir the little iPhone he’d still be working his day job. He’s expecting to hit a million by the end of the year, not too shabby for an iphone shooter game, eh?

He created a ‘lite’ version of the game, much like other developers have, but iShoot Lite shot itself to #1 on the apps charts and his little marketing message “buy the full game for $3.00” was the key he needed. Once people got a taste of the free application they went back for more and now he’s going to be thanking himself for the marketing position he put himself in.

It’s been a few years since a single developer has been able to find gold so quickly, but he did work hard to get to this point. Hustling at night with his one-year old and a dream, he is a self-taught iphone developer who spent hours on the computer desiging the title. Granted, thousands of developers have tried the same move for PC gaming and other such mediums, Ethan Nicholas has proven there is great potential in the iphone along with a few other developers who have found success in the hand-held sector of casual gaming.

Congrats, hope you make it to a million and beyond!

0 thoughts on “It Pays To Follow Trends: iPhone Dev Makes $37,000 In One Day”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

TD Gaming Podcast Kickstarter Fundraising DriveTD Gaming Podcast Kickstarter Fundraising Drive

Well, we hinted at it in the last few podcasts, and now it is live: TD Gaming Podcast is now looking for listener support through Kickstarter.

It’s very easy to donate: just visit our Kickstarter page and click that donate button. The goal is pretty modest, a mere $1500. If all our listeners each donated even just $5, we’d blow by that amount.

What will we do with the money? Make sure we can keep old episodes without having to delete them due to limited server space, and get pro mics for every podcaster. The more money, the longer we can go without worrying about server subscriptions.

We have a few fun reward tiers – our most hardcore fans will definitely want an MP3 of one of the crew or any of the crew recording a voice mail or answer machine outgoing message, or the entire podcast bantering for a few moments. There’s also the requisite T-shirt, which will have the awesome Gaming Podcast logo.

And if you’re in the NYC area, or plan to be, Jonah Falcon will have dinner at a nice restaurant with you. If you’re going to plop that much dough down, how could we refuse a free dinner?

Keep the TD Gaming Podcast alive – donate. We’re counting on you.

Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?

A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.

Jacobs says $100-million dollars would be needed to start competing against the giant subscription generator that is World of Warcraft. Although few developers are sitting on $100-million USD, it’s a bit more realistic an investment for a studio to scrape up compared to a billion bucks! A billion dollars is a scary number when you consider that’s the start of an investment that may, or may not, pay off in the end.

Kotick may not be using complete scare tactics, he may be working off experience when dealing with MMORPG’s. A startup MMO isn’t a cookie cutter system, there is a lot of development efforts, $100-million dollars worth, but MMO developers slip dates many times. When you start slipping your dates you’ll start burning more money and, before you know it, you’re a billion in the hole. Jacobs thinks $100-million will cover development costs and messing up, so a billion is still way over budget.

Perhaps this is a bit of a scare tactic, assuming a developer will fail and slip their dates isn’t really a great way to start quoting prices. However, shooting too low isn’t always the best method of building your development assessments. The end result, scream ONE BILLION and you may scare off any potential startup MMO developers.

Warhammer Online lead designer did mention one big barrier to entry: the need for “at least half a million subscribers to be successful.”

(Thanks, 1up)

Trials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry OneTrials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry One

“The One Ring”

It’s been a year since my last addiction. I jumped into World of Warcraft a year after heavily playing Guild Wars (roughly 2005), I left WoW a year later due to boredom with leveling and grinding. There were so many other games I could get into that didn’t involve the time investment into this MMORPG.

Then, in 2007 I returned on the eve of Burning Crusade. Blizzard had me… they put out an expansion and drew me back in even though I never had a character (“toon”) that could leverage the powers of the new content. I had two characters at level forty four but most of my friends left for other adventures once I quit the game. I started over yet again, only now on a PvP server instead of the “too easy” PvE server everyone abandoned. This time I made it to level eighteen with one character and level twenty with another but I left not long after because of time issues and managing my life around other games (and my kids).

Here I stand now, a third attempt at World of Warcraft with little to no expectations but a small goal: be ready for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion due out later this year. If I can reach those goals I’ll have also conquered the Burning Crusade content I’ve never achieved. Not even three hours into gaming I’ve re-rolled another character which my distract from my goal.

(more…)