Minimum iOS... What do you publish as?

ChunkypixelsChunkypixels Member Posts: 1,114
edited January 2015 in iPhone and Android Publishing

I'm in the process of publishing a number of games. I test on a number of devices, iPhone 4, iPad 1st gen, iPad mini Retina, iPod Touch 5, iPhone 5. I tend to test using the minimum iOS 5, so I can test on the iPad 1st gen.

I make my games as universal builds, based on an initial iPad resolution in the creator and with overscan enabled. Everything works well on all my test devices. I'm not really interested in supporting the old (non retina) phone and ipod touchs... So I'm looking at iPhone 4 onwards. What minimum iOS do people recommend publishing with?

From research, it looks like ios7 is the minimum version that doesn't support one of the older non retina phones (3GS can run iOS 6).... But that then loses some of the iPad line, particularly the 1st gen.

What are people's experience with limiting to ios7 and above? My games run well on lower iOS, and on the older devices, but they're not optimised for them... It seems a shame to cut off a section of potential users, but are they in such a minority now that it's just easier to just abandon them?

Looking for others experiences and thoughts on the matter :)

Cheers...

Comments

  • jonmulcahyjonmulcahy Member, Sous Chef Posts: 10,408
    edited January 2015

    funny you post this, I was just reading about iOS distribution this morning:

    Back in June apple announced there have been over 800 million iOS devices sold. So you are still looking at 32 million devices on a pre iOS7 OS, but considering 768 million devices are iOS7 and newer, I think you can safely do what you want.

    Now, why can't just 1% of those people buy my games??

    http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/07/ios-8-68-percent/

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  • ChunkypixelsChunkypixels Member Posts: 1,114
    edited January 2015

    Cheers for that piechart Jon

    Yup... From that chart.... It's just easier to ditch the iPad 1st gen in order to not have to worry about the old phone and iPod touch devices.

    I do so reluctantly, as she's been a good device... But as its maximum supported ios is 5, it just means I'd have to support some of the older phones and touches too... Which I don't really want the hassles of.

    Goodbye IPad 1st gen....

  • ChunkypixelsChunkypixels Member Posts: 1,114
    edited January 2015

    So I decided to go with minimum iOS7... however, after selecting that in the publishing portal, and submitting my game to Apple... it went from submitting, through waiting, to approved and on sale in a crazy total of 9 hours... but now shows compatibility of iOS 5 or above on the App Store.

    I did some publishing tests, and whenever I try to generate a build with anything over iOS 5, it does the build but immediately reverts back to showing iOS 5 once the build has finished generating.... so wondering if its a bug.

    So it looks like the publishing portal possibly made the decision for me in the end...

    Looks like I may have an issue with Game Center updating scores properly...so could be doing a quick update/bug fix... but wondering now if I'd now have to keep it as iOS 5 for updates, or if it would still be ok to try make the update iOS 7 and above?

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