I have been now thinking about this whole issue for a couple of hours, I am a business man, actually we alll are. But here goes.
GS needs a defined business plan. They need to make a product that allows its developers to do everything that the ios will allow. If they can keep the nightmare of me coding for a living and let me concentrate on art and ideas then I am with them.
You do get what you pay for, and in order to get this software someone has to pay someone these people at GS have lives and they need to be able to proper.
I am sure that the folks who enter the company with money are going to look at the holes and say, we need to fill these holes with real answers. If not then they will fail. EOS.
The reality is that Apple started this whole mess, anyone can do it, pay a piddly 99 bucks and you can make the next 1000000000 seller app, Hogwash.
A lot of the crap apps from GS are also directly related to people not knowing how to do things to make the game or app better. And they dont have all the tools they need to make them better.
So if GS is going to give me a robust tool, in the same basic way as it now works, then I am 100% behind them, however if they come with some lame excuse and say it will be months and blah blah blah then I am off to a new and better platform. I have learned this program, it is not that easy, and its certainly not for everyone, but now I know it and I just want to make games and get better, if they dont sell then it comes down to art, sound, use of IOS and design. Most of that is on me, not GS, but some of it, is on them. Are they going to deliver. That is the only question left to answer.
synthesis said: The suits that implemented this are basically doing a low stakes gamble (for them) to see if they can corner a portion of the app store market and peel revenue off of Apple...since they are the only ones in the black right now in this economy. They are sitting on billions in cash and see a small chance of success here against the paltry $1M they threw at it. If it succeeds (long shot) then they carve out a slice of Apple's big pie. If it fails...no big deal...to them. But GS disappears as a result.
This is a small venture for them. And their move is not in line with the principles of Indie Game Dev. The numbers of people out there with the desire and/or talent to build marketable games willing to accept such a subscription model are limited...and therefore I just cannot see a clear profit coming from this for them...and I suspect GS will be gone within 12-18 mo.
The sad thing is, they were already in dire straights before heading this way. They were screwed from the beginning.
But this is entirely the wrong plan, and the wrong direction to take this company.
If they want to drive it into the ground completely, they should keep their current plan, because that is exactly what will happen.
They will scare away all the good developers, and have craptard apps like you said.
They're already poor reputation will be driven further into the ground, to the point of no return.
Polygame!!! THEY WON'T FILTER OUT THE CRAP!!! IT JUST WON'T HAPPEN!!! How do you tell a 12 year old their app isn't up to par or a teenager that makes the game "Put mustard on a hotdog."
80% of the games generated will sell less than 10 per week for maybe 4 months. Those user will generate about 15 apps per year at most. So that is an average of 40 downloads per month per user. Their take is .40 per unit so they will earn about $16/mo per user plus the $10 per app published.
So that is about $25/mo per user. Even if they had 30,000 users (about 100 times more than they do now)...were talking about $750,000/mo in revenue...or about $9-10M per year. The dev staff and overhead will cost about 25% of that so that leaves about $7M. Half to the government and you are left with $3.5-4M annually...split between the founders and the investors...a 200% ROI. Not bad...but not great.
But can they get 30,000 users locked in before competition arrives? Can a bunch of teenagers and non-programmers build apps that the market wants to pay for? Is Apple willing to hold a blind eye to the $3M they just lost to dev licensing? Do you think GS can double the number of devs developing iPhone apps single handedly?
I'm sorry...I see a total flop of a business plan here. But oh well. Its not my money they are wagering.
synthesis said: Polygame!!! THEY WON'T FILTER OUT THE CRAP!!! IT JUST WON'T HAPPEN!!! How do you tell a 12 year old their app isn't up to par or a teenager that makes the game "Put mustard on a hotdog."
80% of the games generated will sell less than 10 per week for maybe 4 months. Those user will generate about 15 apps per year at most. So that is an average of 40 downloads per month per user. Their take is .40 per unit so they will earn about $16/mo per user plus the $10 per app published.
So that is about $25/mo per user. Even if they had 30,000 users (about 100 times more than they do now)...were talking about $750,000/mo in revenue...or about $9-10M per year. The dev staff and overhead will cost about 25% of that so that leaves about $7M. Half to the government and you are left with $3.5-4M annually...split between the founders and the investors...a 200% ROI. Not bad...but not great.
But can they get 30,000 users locked in before competition arrives? Is Apple willing to hold a blind eye to the $3M they just lost to dev licensing? Do you think GS can double the number of devs developing iPhone apps single handedly?
I'm sorry...I see a total flop of a business plan here. But oh well. Its not my money they are wagering.
Good point on the $3M apple lost to dev licensing... hadn't even thought of that.
synthesis said: Polygame!!! THEY WON'T FILTER OUT THE CRAP!!! IT JUST WON'T HAPPEN!!! How do you tell a 12 year old their app isn't up to par or a teenager that makes the game "Put mustard on a hotdog."
80% of the games generated will sell less than 10 per week for maybe 4 months. Those user will generate about 15 apps per year at most. So that is an average of 40 downloads per month per user. Their take is .40 per unit so they will earn about $16/mo per user plus the $10 per app published.
So that is about $25/mo per user. Even if they had 30,000 users (about 100 times more than they do now)...were talking about $750,000/mo in revenue...or about $9-10M per year. The dev staff and overhead will cost about 25% of that so that leaves about $7M. Half to the government and you are left with $3.5-4M annually...split between the founders and the investors...a 200% ROI. Not bad...but not great.
But can they get 30,000 users locked in before competition arrives? Is Apple willing to hold a blind eye to the $3M they just lost to dev licensing? Do you think GS can double the number of devs developing iPhone apps single handedly?
I'm sorry...I see a total flop of a business plan here. But oh well. Its not my money they are wagering.
lol... good points. Glad it's not my money either.
Yeah, you'e right... they probably won't filter the apps... wishful thinking on my part, though it would be kind of mean to shoot down some young kid who'd just spent months working on something that at least he/she should be able to show friends and family on the iPhone. Taking away that is kind of going against what GS stood for in the first place...
Let's get real. They are definitely not going to filter out the crap. They won't have any choice, they will scare away EVERY SINGLE good developer with this strategy, and all they will have left is craptard games.
So basically it will come down to:
Marketing the decent family friendly games compared to the really poor family friendly games.
So we can agree that GS will become a giant sausage grinder that churns out amateur hour at an astounding rate...pissing off serious devs...stealing income from Apple...turning the app store into even more of a log jam of crap...and watering down a the single most profitable product resource Apple has...the app store. The app store drives sales of devices (Apple gravy train) and the quality is what sets it apart from the Android app store disaster.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Even if this thing did start to gain traction...Apple is the wild card. When will they shut it down through their TOS?
synthesis said: So we can agree that GS will become a giant sausage grinder that churns out amateur hour at an astounding rate...pissing off serious devs...stealing income from Apple...turning the app store into even more of a log jam of crap...and watering down a the single most profitable product Apple has...the app store.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Even if this thing did start to gain traction...Apple is the wild card. When will they shut it down through their TOS?
lol it's not going to gain any traction, I would bet money on it.
But one thing's for sure. Apple can sure as hell shut them down at the bat of an eyelash.
It would have been nice if they would have at least put out a more stable software build then what they currently have and then screwed us over. I swear this thing has been in beta almost as long as Gmail was in beta :-) and those damn memory leaks...arghhhhhhhhh! Restarting the software every 10 to 30 minutes is a KILLER.
On another note I am currently reading "The Facebook Effect". In the book the author points out many companies that were give VC funding that went down the drain and or lost direction. I have sinking feeling GameSalad, in taking the money (even if it was needed), has sign their own death.
@Gregr209: Yes, I think we all have that sinking feeling. There are so many people against this plan, I really don't see how they can recruit people, let alone, succeed as a company moving forward!
synthesis said: 80% of the games generated will sell less than 10 per week for maybe 4 months. Those user will generate about 15 apps per year at most. So that is an average of 40 downloads per month per user. Their take is .40 per unit so they will earn about $16/mo per user plus the $10 per app published.
So that is about $25/mo per user. Even if they had 30,000 users (about 100 times more than they do now)...were talking about $750,000/mo in revenue...or about $9-10M per year. The dev staff and overhead will cost about 25% of that so that leaves about $7M. Half to the government and you are left with $3.5-4M annually...split between the founders and the investors...a 200% ROI. Not bad...but not great.
That's some crazy maths right there that I can't quite follow.
synthesis said: So we can agree that GS will become a giant sausage grinder that churns out amateur hour at an astounding rate...pissing off serious devs...stealing income from Apple...turning the app store into even more of a log jam of crap...and watering down a the single most profitable product resource Apple has...the app store. The app store drives sales of devices (Apple gravy train) and the quality is what sets it apart from the Android app store disaster.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Even if this thing did start to gain traction...Apple is the wild card. When will they shut it down through their TOS?
Not quite sure why Apple would do that... wouldn't they have to shut down all publishers?
Maybe they won't...but the question is...do you want to risk it? We don't personally which is why we are pretty much moving on from GS.
We just don't see the value in GS anymore with this new fee structure...and definitely are NOT willing to give up our independence. Its bad enough using a 3rd party compiler...but now a publisher?
Its ludicrous if you are at all serious about app development.
synthesis said: Maybe they won't...but the question is...do you want to risk it? We don't personally which is why we are pretty much moving on from GS.
We just don't see the value in GS anymore with this new fee structure...and definitely are NOT willing to give up our independence. Its bad enough using a 3rd party compiler...but now a publisher?
Its ludicrous if you are at all serious about app development.
Corona has a 3rd party compiler too. They could just as easily follow the same path as GS.
And if they do...they too will lose 90% of their users. Doubt they will though.
Eventually we will mature into Unity3D...we just wanted to start simple and we picked up Corona at $100 instead of $2000 for Unity (we have to buy pro versions).
I'll start off by saying that I, like you, was pretty peeved when I read the plans for the new version of GS, but after doing a lot of thinking, I've come to the conclusion that this really could be a step in the right direction.
Most of you seem to have the number one concern/complaint of not being able to publish under your own name. At the end of the day, does this matter? All of the top games utilise a publisher. AND, if GS put some decent quality control in play (they will HAVE TO for the success of their business), being associated with GameSalad could be an absolute bonus. If all goes to plan, GS will establish themselves as a quality publisher and the only publisher that provides the means to create the games! And you can always throw in your own credits and splash screens... just like every production house in the history of videogames has done when dealing with publishers.
I realise that this would mean there'd be a lot of people out there who would only be hurt by GS having their app rejected but at the end of the day, that's a good thing! They will simply have to try harder... at the end of the day, quality will always win over quantity and we all know how painful it can be wading through the crap in the App Store.
The other thing that you seem to be worried about is the royalties. Yes, this is a bit out of the blue but compare this to any other form of publishing.... 50% of the total profits is STILL massive and you don't have to pay for your creation tools or maintain your dev account. I for one am actually for this. My dev account just ran out and I'm not going to renew... Max Vector only made me $300 while it was paid (over a period of a month). Take away the $99 for GS, the $99 for Apple and I'm left with $102. I would have had $150 if the new GS was in play. So for smaller devs, who only release the odd game every few months, the new system will be more than likely be beneficial. Obviously with runaway successes like Bumps, the royalties would be nice to pocket, but for most of us, that isn't going to happen... if it does, you'll still have a heap of coin and a nice, warm fuzzy success feeling.
Of course, things could go HORRIBLY wrong if GS don't filter the filth from the fantastic.
At the end of the day, I think we just need to wait and see. The update should be good and this new business plan really does make it easier for newcomers to get their own creations out there. All this "serious devs won't use GS" is moot. GS ISN'T FOR SERIOUS DEVS. It's for people who can't, or don't want to code, and for now, GS is the only option.
I think that GameSalad Direct is making things much more user friendly and I'm looking forward to the update so I can test the whole thing out properly. Obviously there are down sides but, on the whole, I think this could work out very well for a lot of us.
Why are you a moderator if you don't like what the company is doing. You should terminate your abilities since you are showing that you do not like them.
I know there are tons of threads already about people discussing what is to come. I was just wondering:
- It's mentioned that with the new system, all features of pro are unlocked?
Doesn't that mean that people who are going to publish under the new system *won't* have to have the mandatory GS splash since that is one key factor of pro accounts?
My two cents here... A lot of my friends who download apps for their iOS have absolutely no idea (and do not care) about who publishes it. They never notice or even remember or bother with the company names. The only thing they remember (and socially and virally share) is the name of the app. Most would not know the name of the company that made Angry Birds, and they probably won't care if it really was traced back to some forgettable company or name, because they are buying the app, not technically investing in a company.
The app essentially stands on its own two feet.
If there's no GS Splash or another other mandatory need to declare the publisher's identity "in the user's face", the strength of the app will lie quite squarely on the perceived quality of it, and a good and memorable name.
TymeMaster said: Why are you a moderator if you don't like what the company is doing. You should terminate your abilities since you are showing that you do not like them.
Did you actually read my post? Or is it opposites day where you live?
TymeMaster said: Why are you a moderator if you don't like what the company is doing. You should terminate your abilities since you are showing that you do not like them.
Yes TymeMaster lives in opposite world. A world where Tshirt booth is an evil tyrant who helps no one. Where actually praising something means your against it. Where a person with no games and no tutorials and provides no help whatsoever somehow makes him feel important about himself.
The day that I can send TymeMaster my game to check out for issues with nothing but helpful intentions as a reward, is the day he will get respect. Until then he's a dork.
Funny thing is I thought of this kind of plan a year ago when I got into GS. I thought for those who didn't want to get a developers account and deal with all that, what if I become the publisher and share royalties and such. Guess I would have lost out on that now with the change!
Funny thing is I thought of this kind of plan a year ago when I got into GS. I thought for those who didn't want to get a developers account and deal with all that, what if I become the publisher and share royalties and such. Guess I would have lost out on that now with the change!
LOL. I think it could work. I'm re-releasing Max vector (with added upgrades etc) under the GS moniker. Less for me to worry about
Comments
GS needs a defined business plan. They need to make a product that allows its developers to do everything that the ios will allow. If they can keep the nightmare of me coding for a living and let me concentrate on art and ideas then I am with them.
You do get what you pay for, and in order to get this software someone has to pay someone these people at GS have lives and they need to be able to proper.
I am sure that the folks who enter the company with money are going to look at the holes and say, we need to fill these holes with real answers. If not then they will fail. EOS.
The reality is that Apple started this whole mess, anyone can do it, pay a piddly 99 bucks and you can make the next 1000000000 seller app, Hogwash.
A lot of the crap apps from GS are also directly related to people not knowing how to do things to make the game or app better. And they dont have all the tools they need to make them better.
So if GS is going to give me a robust tool, in the same basic way as it now works, then I am 100% behind them, however if they come with some lame excuse and say it will be months and blah blah blah then I am off to a new and better platform. I have learned this program, it is not that easy, and its certainly not for everyone, but now I know it and I just want to make games and get better, if they dont sell then it comes down to art, sound, use of IOS and design. Most of that is on me, not GS, but some of it, is on them. Are they going to deliver. That is the only question left to answer.
Waiting but not patiently.....
But this is entirely the wrong plan, and the wrong direction to take this company.
If they want to drive it into the ground completely, they should keep their current plan, because that is exactly what will happen.
They will scare away all the good developers, and have craptard apps like you said.
They're already poor reputation will be driven further into the ground, to the point of no return.
This in no way is good.
THEY WON'T FILTER OUT THE CRAP!!! IT JUST WON'T HAPPEN!!!
How do you tell a 12 year old their app isn't up to par or a teenager that makes the game "Put mustard on a hotdog."
80% of the games generated will sell less than 10 per week for maybe 4 months. Those user will generate about 15 apps per year at most. So that is an average of 40 downloads per month per user. Their take is .40 per unit so they will earn about $16/mo per user plus the $10 per app published.
So that is about $25/mo per user. Even if they had 30,000 users (about 100 times more than they do now)...were talking about $750,000/mo in revenue...or about $9-10M per year. The dev staff and overhead will cost about 25% of that so that leaves about $7M. Half to the government and you are left with $3.5-4M annually...split between the founders and the investors...a 200% ROI. Not bad...but not great.
But can they get 30,000 users locked in before competition arrives? Can a bunch of teenagers and non-programmers build apps that the market wants to pay for? Is Apple willing to hold a blind eye to the $3M they just lost to dev licensing? Do you think GS can double the number of devs developing iPhone apps single handedly?
I'm sorry...I see a total flop of a business plan here. But oh well. Its not my money they are wagering.
This just keeps getting better!
Yeah, you'e right... they probably won't filter the apps... wishful thinking on my part, though it would be kind of mean to shoot down some young kid who'd just spent months working on something that at least he/she should be able to show friends and family on the iPhone. Taking away that is kind of going against what GS stood for in the first place...
So basically it will come down to:
Marketing the decent family friendly games compared to the really poor family friendly games.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Even if this thing did start to gain traction...Apple is the wild card. When will they shut it down through their TOS?
But one thing's for sure. Apple can sure as hell shut them down at the bat of an eyelash.
On another note I am currently reading "The Facebook Effect". In the book the author points out many companies that were give VC funding that went down the drain and or lost direction. I have sinking feeling GameSalad, in taking the money (even if it was needed), has sign their own death.
It's completely wrong.
We don't personally which is why we are pretty much moving on from GS.
We just don't see the value in GS anymore with this new fee structure...and definitely are NOT willing to give up our independence. Its bad enough using a 3rd party compiler...but now a publisher?
Its ludicrous if you are at all serious about app development.
Doubt they will though.
Eventually we will mature into Unity3D...we just wanted to start simple and we picked up Corona at $100 instead of $2000 for Unity (we have to buy pro versions).
I wish it had particles and a map editor
Its the additive filter most are begging for.
- It's mentioned that with the new system, all features of pro are unlocked?
Doesn't that mean that people who are going to publish under the new system *won't* have to have the mandatory GS splash since that is one key factor of pro accounts?
My two cents here... A lot of my friends who download apps for their iOS have absolutely no idea (and do not care) about who publishes it. They never notice or even remember or bother with the company names. The only thing they remember (and socially and virally share) is the name of the app. Most would not know the name of the company that made Angry Birds, and they probably won't care if it really was traced back to some forgettable company or name, because they are buying the app, not technically investing in a company.
The app essentially stands on its own two feet.
If there's no GS Splash or another other mandatory need to declare the publisher's identity "in the user's face", the strength of the app will lie quite squarely on the perceived quality of it, and a good and memorable name.
The day that I can send TymeMaster my game to check out for issues with nothing but helpful intentions as a reward, is the day he will get respect. Until then he's a dork.
Funny thing is I thought of this kind of plan a year ago when I got into GS. I thought for those who didn't want to get a developers account and deal with all that, what if I become the publisher and share royalties and such. Guess I would have lost out on that now with the change!