This week’s episode is very long to make up for the crappiness of last week’s episode, and the crew have fun with the trolling of Target critics this past week.
The news this week includes:
This and Listener Feedback.
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.
Ethan 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!
This year many gamers will open new consoles for the holidays and many of those same gamers are going bring their console “live” on Xbox Live the same day. Traditionally we’ve found Xbox Live falls under the weight of the holiday rush much like Apple’s iTunes. Will we repeat history again?
Although a fully loaded Xbox Live service is money in the bank, how much money will Microsoft lose when gamers login for the first time to a service in a state of destruction? People say first impressions are extremely important, but Microsoft makes a poor first impression every holiday. Xbox Live’s Jerry Johnson told Eurogamer:
“I can tell you that when Robbie Bach is on the phone on Christmas Day calling people asking what the hell is going on, and that’s coming down from Steve Ballmer… that’s the kind of attention it got last holiday.
Many things have changed since then, and we realised [sic] the kind of growth trajectory we were on and had to prepare for it.” (Kotaku)
It’s obvious the top executives at Microsoft want to give customers a great first impression and, after a few repeated holiday down times, this year is the chance to change it all. By now, Microsoft should be fully aware of the holiday flash crowd and have a system ready to cover the load.
Plenty of gamers login because their console automatically signs in on startup, but a handful of those gameres will be shopping for Xbox Live Arcade games to see what Microsoft is now offering them and their new console. Many XBLA games the current 360 crowd is bored of will be fresh and new to holiday adopters so it’s very important to keep the system online.
Much like Amazon, sales will decrease when the service is busy or under heavy load. Hopefully Microsoft is ready to make a great first impression to new buyers and give them the option to buy high valued (high markup) electronic downloads.
This week follows the stunning announcement over the closure of Telltale Games and the repercussions of the shuttering of one of the most influential companies in the industry. There’s also Scott continuing to gush about Dragon Quest XI and Jonah enjoying the 2008 version of Prince of Persia again. That, and Fallout 3 headlines the Gaming Flashback.
News of the week include:
Let us know what Telltale Games you were hoping to see in the future.
Hi Guys, Good Episode. I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while as I have been busy with my newborn son William. I like that you have now expanded to include other game types other thank video games. To Paul’s infamous comment Story is Game Play’s Bitch… I HATE THIS… I really only like games that have stories or enable me to make a story… I hate games that are pointless grinding. I need progression otherwise I stop paying attention and generally stop playing. I still play game from the 90s because back then they had good stories. As for the Steam Machine’s suspend feature, I like the fact they recognize the risk and disable the feature, nothing would piss me off more than suspending the game and expecting it to start back up and finding that the session had expired/become corrupt. It would be great if they can fix it but I don’t think that would change my buying decision. As for the steam machine, I don’t mind the idea if the boxes are cheaper and outperform my gaming PC… otherwise they don’t really make much sense. If I want to play my PC games on my TV I would connect my PC to the TV. Otherwise… keep recording and I’ll keep listening.