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!

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Sony’s PS3 Real 10 Year Plan: Home Entertainment TakeoverSony’s PS3 Real 10 Year Plan: Home Entertainment Takeover

The PlayStation 3 is the slow seller in the United States but Sony still holds belief in their “10 year plan.” Many of us consider this to be the same style of plan Sony used with the PS2, sell your console through multiple generations and own the market share. The PS2‘s launch was much more graceful when compared to its 7th generation counterpart. Perhaps the PS3 has a different destiny… perhaps they want to remove all other media boxes from your living room.

Imagine a life without a cable box or Tivo and you’re probably envisioning Sony’s road map for a media distribution empire. First, remove Tivo from the situation with a DVR style box using their PlayTV technologies, wired up to the PlayStation 3 using a USB connection. The United States hasn’t seen a launch of PlayTV, more than likely because the PS3 isn’t a huge console here yet and Tivo is partnered with many cable and satellite providers already.

Senior director of the PlayStation Network, Susan Panico said Sony “looks aspirationally at HBO, the way they have Sex and the City and other shows” (gamespot) after admitting Sony wants to replace cable boxes in the home. Tivo has already done a great job removing the need for a cable box, allowing you to rent a “cable card” to insert into a Tivo and gain access to all their content for your DVR needs. DirectTV offers (or has in the past) a Tivo or Tivo-like DVR solution. Cable and DirectTV offer the ability to rent their DVR or offer a solution to purchase your own at a retail outlet What if Sony decides to partner with one or more of these providers to offer an all-in-one solution. PS3 owners wouldn’t have to purchase additional equipment and could be up and running immediately with hard disks big enough to handle HD content.

Sony could offer you a graphically appealing gaming experience, a high definition BluRay solution, media distribution for renting movies, an iTunes style online store for purchasing and playing music all wrapped up in a DVR solution. All this content for a $400 price tag is a value when all the offers are combined into one tiny black box.

Looking at today’s Tivo Series3 HD DVR you’ll notice the ability to play music directly from iTunes, browse and play Youtube shows, watch Disney offerings and even high definition NetFlix playback. The Tivo DVR’s can also talk with other DVR’s in the household making it easy to share TV records across systems. The only thing missing in the Tivo solution is a high definition gaming platform and the BluRay hardware.

We’re all sitting here poking fun at the small PS3 game library and telling people that BluRay is going to lose out to HD downloads yet we may be missing the bigger picture: an all-in-one media empire solution. The PS3 may not carry the largest game library compared to the Xbox 360 or the sales records of the Wii but if Sony finds a way to become a reliable and required media set top box they may realize their true “10 year plan.”

Trading Used Games, Like Fraud?Trading Used Games, Like Fraud?

David Braben, founder of Frontier Developments, says retail outlets that buy and sell pre-owned games are “essentially defrauding the industry.” Although multiplayer gaming might not be a huge threat, the single player experience in games may die out because gamers play the game quickly and resell it back to places like GameStop for others to buy.

Developers don’t get a dime when a game goes traded, many gamers will “share” the single player experience with a single copy of the game by reselling it over and over. The end result, retail outlets make a good penny for marking up old games while developers see nothing. This is really how game retail outlets survive because the margins on video games is so damn low.

The story has been heard before, developers want a piece of the action so they’re taking steps to entice people to keep the game with renewed downloadable content on old games; you can’t experience the new content without keeping the game around longer. In the world of low margin games, high cost development and short-lived story lines the solutions to this problem aren’t exactly obvious.

Braben’s idea of a solution is to offer two versions of the game, a not for resale/rental version at a high price, say $160, and a low priced version that cannot be shared (heavily DRM’ed?) for $50. In essence, gamers would no longer be able to trade in games because the idea of spending double for a game so you can resell it makes no sense to most gamers (including myself.)

(more…)

Game Publishers Hate RiskGame Publishers Hate Risk

It’s clear publishers like Electronic Arts hate to take risks on video games. They’re not alone in their opinion, look how many sequels we’ve got for the holidays compared to new creative titles like Little Big Planet, or how publishers push out sequels to hot titles until we can’t take it anymore; how many Guitar Hero titles will arrive before we scream “enough!”?

Speaking to rocking music, Electronic Arts may pass on the chance to pickup Brütal Legend, a title originally being published by Vivendi Games prior to the Activision Blizzard merger. The title was left without a home when the merger was complete along with other dropped titles.

Why would EA not take the chance with the game? Risk factor. Brütal Legend is a game title developed by Double Fine Productions and has been designed by Tim Schafer, with past games like Monkey Island, NES’s Maniac Mansion and the fantastic title Full Throttle. With such sweet titles under his belt, why wouldn’t a game designed by Tim Schafer be a hot commodity in the market?

The game brings music and action adventure together in a creative twist. No, it’s not Rock Band and it’s not Guitar Hero, thus, MTV and Activision don’t care about it. However, the game plot and storyline are music related and, supposedly, the main character is voiced by Jack Black, vocalist of Tenacious D and popular actor (School of Rock anyone!?)

Creator Tim Schafer has said that roadies have long fascinated him. Schafer originally thought of the game’s title over fifteen years ago. “I was riding a bus, thinking about a game that would be the complete opposite of what we were working on, The Secret of Monkey Island. And Brütal Legend leapt into my head. (wikipedia)

It appears a series of publishers have walked away from Brütal Legend without much hesitation. “I have seen it,” EA CEO John Riccitiello told Gamasutra. “I am well aware of what the game is. It’s a very significant creative risk.” (joystiq)

Where would the game be without significant creative risks? In many ways, World of Warcraft was a risk… it’s only got 9 million or more players.