Pricing & App Features

luddite1811

I recently found your application which I find amazing! Although I really enjoy how fast games can be created I find some of the other forum posts regarding the pricing for iPhone apps and other stuff troubling. I am an iPhone developer but am not familiar with opengl es. All I've created are some task manager apps and other stuff using objective-c and cocoa touch. I would really like to use this app to get into game development but there are a few things I would need to have more information before I invest time, etc into developing with this app.

1. I've seen in other posts that you haven't decided on the pricing structure yet. This troubles me because why would I invest time and resources into developing with this only to find out the total cost to get it on the app store will be a high amount. I would prefer to have the export to .app built into the IDE and pay for the software.

2. Another thing I find weird is that we would need to upload our apps to you to get it converted into a .app file. This makes no sense to me especially when some of us don't want to make a web game and only want to make it for the app store. Again I think having this in the IDE as an export feature would be better.

3. If you look at other software packages like Unity iPhone Basic/Advanced or Shiva they have that feature built into the app to publish to iPhone. I do find there software WAY OVERPRICED but they don't have to make users upload anything to them. I think your software would be awesome and greatly sought after if you put a price tag on it like the others except lower maybe around $100-200. You would be getting a lot of site exposure and could increase your revenue by using advertising or something. Another thing you could do is require the GameSalad logo appear on the first screen when loading similar to SIO2Interactive does which would draw more traffic to your site for advertising and purchase of the software. Another thing I've been messing around with is cocos2d which seems to be working well but it requires simple coding and they don't have a drag and drop editor or anything like your application does.

Please review some of these ideas and get back to me. I would LOVE to start developing with this just don't want to get stuck a month from now with a 100 level game and not want to publish it due to cost or something.

Thanks

superNES

Hi Luddite. Thank you very much for your candid response. We are very aware of the interests of our audience and are doing our best to match our business plans with customer expectations. While we are not yet ready to elaborate on these at this time, that is our primary focus. We thank you for your patience and hope you continue enjoying GameSalad Creator.

butterbean

I agree with luddite and hope GameSalad releases a pricing structure soon.

I too don't want to invest too much time into a project not knowing the costs to use your software

I also feel that customers are aiming at wanting a "flat fee" charge per game or pay for the software up front with no additional costs, and be able to use it for games.

I don't feel that charging royalties would go over well, and I recall being emailed that royalties won't be charged when I first inquired about GameSalad.

That's my biggest need!

But above all, knowing sooner would be best given the time investment I've made and probably other potential customers have made with GameSalad

Thank you! Loving your program so far!

quantumsheep

As far as I know, you don't have to upload the game to the website for public consumption to have it converted.

EDIT:

Thinking about it, I'm very grateful that GameSalad is free. I would not have invested the time and energy I have into it if it wasn't. It's given me a chance to learn how it works, figure out any issues I have in my own time (unlike timed demos of other paid for software) and is surely a good way of encouraging new users to use it.

You are looking at this from a business perspective, and I respect that. I may be paranoid, but this system is in BETA at the moment. I hope that the gamesalad crew have some money behind them, so that this software continues to thrive, sees launch and becomes a success for them and their customers.

I'm not relying on it though, as the future's never certain.

Like I said, paranoid android here :O

butterbean

Quantum

It didn't even cross my mind that there's always a possibility that a company won't launch.. I'm an optimist

I think (knock on wood) they will launch, but my worry is will it be by summer?

Any GS guys lurking the forums have any answers....?