no major games or apps

[sonyfan919]

You ever notice that their aren't any I don't want to say good but I guess big games on the android market. Like there are HUGE games on the iphone like my friend has Sims on his iphone now if you ever played that game you know its a big game. Also why do so many companies make apps for iphone only like there is a call of duty nazi zombie game on the iphone. Or like gamefly has made an app only for iphone as much as I love android this just bothers the crap out of me!!

 

[sonyfan919]

Oh ya and also I have to say phones like the droid or nexuse one ect have great proceesors and it have a butiful resolution why not use them

 

[gwlaw99]

Have you tried Raging Thunder 2, Asphalt or ExZeus

 

[Mrstickball]

iPhone gaming is much, much larger than Android currently.

Last year, iPhone developers made between $400-$500 million USD in revenue. Android developers made about $1.7 million. Big differences like that tend to change which systems get what games.

However, as time goes on, that margin will diminish, and Android will get bigger, better games. Lets not forget there are ~80 million iPhones/iPods out there that people play on vs. 10 million Android devices. Most developers would much rather go with the former (for now) rather than the latter.

But by the end of the year, that will change. Android will offer a much better value proposition, and Android will catch up in terms of size and scope of good games.

 

[Leedaddy29]

I know everyone is saying with time developers will come over to android, but i don't understand why we have to wait. The phones we haave are much higher spec wise and android has a much more open app market. What can we do to get these major developers to understand there is a large market out here for them. Like the developers who came out with I AM T-PAIN emailed me and told me they didn't think android was profitable for them when i asked when we would get our app. Where is our NAZI ZOMBIES!?!?! or Marvel Comics? and the list goes on

 

[utinni]

I agree. The market has been open for a while and we havent seen what I consider some of the big name apps/games available. You would think, being a new market, someone would be trying to get a monopoly on it first.

 

[Quboid]

Obviously the iCult popularised the app concept and so has more members so I can understand why they are out in front. Still, there's good reasons for doing Android development:

- Lack of competition for titles with high production values.
- Higher specification devices (Droid, Incredible, Nexus One, X10, Legend, Desire and probably others out perform the iPhone 3GS).
- Develop your way without having to plant one on Jobs' rear end and hope he doesn't revoke your privileges (see Unity Engine!).

I wonder if there's any assumption of Android = Linux = People Don't Pay For Software. Hideously wrong - although trying to sell games on PC Linux has never been popular, Android is a general consumer platform and not a geek OS. There are legitimate reasons, mainly regarding fragmentation:
- There's 3 different resolutions on that list of higher spec phones, which isn't as convenient, plus others (Tattoo's QVGA for example).
- Not all Android phones outperform the iPhone. G2/Hero, Tattoo, G1/Dream, Magic and others.
- There's all kinds of different Android versions in use. 1.5, 1.6 and 2.1 dominate and are quite different.
- Some have hardware keyboards, some don't. Some have trackballs/optical eyes, some don't. Some have multitouch, some don't.
- Limited storage space on the phone, so large apps need to download assets when run, meaning you need the network infrastructure, bandwidth and error checking. Sticking the whole thing on the Market would be a lot handier.

All of these mean you've either got to handle numerous different combinations or cut off potential customers. None are a deal breaker, but none are ideal, especially for a bedroom coder who can't buy loads of phones for testing on each. Google really need to let apps be installed on the SD card (or at least let apps downloaded from the market store 99% of themselves on the SD card and the program logic on the phone if they want to pretend they're stopping piracy...)

I'm confident Android will take over eventually and the iPhone will be a niche product like Apple's desktops.

For now, I think creating the logic and art assets for an iPhone game would mean you could port to Android quite easily. The code would need rewritten and retested and neither is a trivial task, but the design, logic and assets are done. The same goes for porting to lower priority OSs like Symbian/MS Phone/other.

 

[Skyfall]

The other thing you have to remember is that developers have to do a lot less work delivering apps to a locked down os running on a few devices all at the same resolution whereas Android has to deal with many different processors, GPUS, form factors, screen resolutions, memory etc...

All in all developing for iPhone is much more alluring than developing for android.

 

[Joe294]

the android has a gameboy emulator a nes emulator and snes emulator the games on there will trump any game on the iphone

 

[Quboid]

I tried Gameboid and hated it. Touch emulation of D-Pad was bad, games were blocky and primitive, I don't see what the fuss is about.

Is it people who owned Game Boys who enjoy the nostalgia, or am I seriously missing something.

 

[Flaring Afro]

^ Quality of games has little to do with graphics. Most games out right now suck and aren't fun to play multiple times. My computer can play crysis on very high settings but I still rarely play it, haven't even beaten it twice.

Most gameboy advance games will stay fun a much longer time than games quickly made for cell phones. As for the blockiness, I played games on an eris full screen in stores and it looked pretty good even though it was a different aspect ratio than a gba screen. Also, just use the optical joystick and buttons over the onscreen ones if you have that much trouble with it.

 

[GAMEVIL]

Hey we're committed to Android too, so plz check our games out.

ZENONIA and Baseball Superstars were both a Top 10 game on the App Store, and the exact same version is now available on Android too.

More games to come!

 

[strategy]

Quite simply, the market isn't there yet on Android - for reasons which are all related to how poor the market is from a developer's standpoint.

• The for-pay coverage of the market is terrible. Sure, the main countries are covered, but that still leaves significant swaths of territory without the ability to pay for apps. It's been over a year Google!
• Copy-protection on the phone is so poor as to be non-existent. Combined with the lack of pay coverage, this contributes to the rampant piracy of android apps. The worst thing is that you actually have sites openly selling for-pay apps on a subscription basis - with no action apparently being taken against them.
• Google Checkout is a terrible system for selling games - especially combined with the lack of effective copy-protection. 24hrs return is nice from a user viewpoint; it is hopeless from a developer/publisher's viewpoint when the price point is as low as a few dollars.
• Credit-card requirement for purchasing apps. See point above about Google Checkout being a poor system.

There are other, more technical points (some of which Quboid has covered), but I think the seeming lack of effort put into making the Android market attractive to developers as well as purchasers is the main reason why many iPhone developers don't want to commit to Android.

 

[gwlaw99]

Just played the demo and it is a lot of fun if you like JRPG/Zelda games. Controlls are not that bad.

 

[USofPlutarchy]

Hey we're committed to Android too, so plz check our games out.

ZENONIA and Baseball Superstars were both a Top 10 game on the App Store, and the exact same version is now available on Android too.

More games to come!

Your games are awesome!

 

[hood420]

One company that would be great to see on Android would be PopCap, they said they were developing apps for Android almost a year ago and they still aren't out.

 

[dcomnimda]

Hey we're committed to Android too, so plz check our games out.

ZENONIA and Baseball Superstars were both a Top 10 game on the App Store, and the exact same version is now available on Android too.

More games to come!

Thank you for the games!, best games on the android imo.

 

[dvdivx]

You want the big hurdle it's one word - java. Java really really sucks ass. Guess how many games are written for Brew. At least if Flash 10 gets on Android simple games would be a no brainer. I can see 2.2 having more hardware access (i hope) and that should help alot.

 

[mrmojoz]

You want the big hurdle it's one word - java. Java really really sucks ass. Guess how many games are written for Brew. At least if Flash 10 gets on Android simple games would be a no brainer. I can see 2.2 having more hardware access (i hope) and that should help alot.

The native C++ SDK was already released.

 

[hippy247]

The biggest drawback is low memory storage but google has said that Apps2sd is coming soon, so bigger games will be coming, especially when flash10 is here. Hopefully both flash 10 and Apps2sd will be with us in the next couple of months.

 

[El Blacksheep]

You ever notice that their aren't any I don't want to say good but I guess big games

ahem; just today I was playing:

Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Super Mario World
Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Mike Tyson's Punch Out
Duck Hunt
Mega Man X
Golden Sun
Mario Kart

I'll take those over the Sims any day of the week.

 

[byron_hinson]

I'd guess a big reason has been the lack of space to install games. Lots of iPhone titles are over 30mbs and until we can install to SD cards without the need to root then companies won't bother

 

[necosino]

I found the GBA and SNES emulators to help a LOT, lol...

Then I found games like Zenoia and ExZeus which are great. I can't wait for apps2SD though. Then we'll get HD games like Bubble Breaker HD, Asphalt HD, etc.