VN Viability on the iPhone?

[dstarsboy]

Hey guys,

I'm sort of working on a VN idea and I want to make the main platform the iPhone. I was just wondering, do you guys think that's a viable market? Does anyone have any ballpark sales figures on any ports that they've done?

[jack_norton]

I ported one of my games, not a VN, but sales have been ridiculously low. I think iphone is one of the worst platform right now since there's insane competition, low exposure (your game gets buried in 10 seconds) and totally zero control over everything.

Oh, and check this too:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/30/ip ... -payments/

[dstarsboy]

Yeah, I've developed around a dozen stupid little games for the iPhone (in my spare time over the last year) and am making almost no money at all. I thought maybe I just haven't found a niche yet.

Another thing is the fact that a VN can sell for $19.99 (example, Summer Session) on the desktop but you'd have to sell the same game for around $1.99 to be even remotely competitive on the iPhone. Same amount of work but 10 times less money. Couple that with the iPhone being a Western device and VN's being an Eastern pastime, I guess that about sums it up.

iPhone = bleh

[gekiganwing]

Yeah, I've developed around a dozen stupid little games for the iPhone (in my spare time over the last year) and am making almost no money at all. I thought maybe I just haven't found a niche yet.

I was surprised to hear this, especially after reading an article in my local paper last week about how game developers were making squillions from their iPhone games and apps. The same article suggested that Google Android might be another place where indie game designers could soon succeed.

...But then again, the article did mention a lot of competition. So it might not hurt to create a game or app that is conceptually simple, as well as "meme-tastic." If it doesn't need much explanation, and it has some gimmick or aspect that makes it easy to sell, then maybe...

What might be memetic on the iPhone or Google Android? I'm thinking... perhaps a romance novel that uses the platform in a new way. That's rarely been done before in electronic form. Or if you want to be more cynical, see if you can produce a game which lets the player hold hands with NPCs, or perhaps touch bishoujo/bishounen. Hmm...

[papillon]

I was surprised to hear this, especially after reading an article in my local paper last week about how game developers were making squillions from their iPhone games and apps.

And some of them are owed large amounts that Apple just isn't bothering to pay them... there are mumblings of lawsuits and bugs in the system.

[Jake]

I was surprised to hear this, especially after reading an article in my local paper last week about how game developers were making squillions from their iPhone games and apps.

I wasn't surprised to hear this, especially after reading an article about how game developers were making squillions from iPhone games and apps. It's a gold rush, nothing less.

[Guest]

All that being said I think that exposing VNs to the iPhone might be a good idea. It's a relatively unknown medium but it's actually quite fitting for the iPhone. I think more people might be willing to try a VN on an iPhone, especially if you release a free game first to pique the public's interest. You certainly wouldn't make a ton of money off a commercial product (especially with Apple's crazy royalties), but I'd be interested in seeing the download counts for both ($5.99-9.99 would be my recommendation). A free game could also be a good advertisement for longer PC games from the same company.

[jack_norton]

A game at $5.99 won't sell much at all (I've direct experience on this). It's a race to the bottom. For the game I ported, I make more in 1 week of pc/mac sales than 2 months (so far) on appstore. And the game is 4 years old on pc/mac while is brand new on appstore. And is a game that sell
Those articles about people making millions looks quite suspicious to say the least I believe a much better market could be the XNA creators since at least there you have a decent screen size and the port wouldn't take too much time, and there's less competition. Something people doesn't seem to get is that is much better a smaller market with 0 competition than a bigger market with EVERYONE jumping on it.

[killdream]

Those articles about people making millions looks quite suspicious to say the least I believe a much better market could be the XNA creators since at least there you have a decent screen size and the port wouldn't take too much time, and there's less competition. Something people doesn't seem to get is that is much better a smaller market with 0 competition than a bigger market with EVERYONE jumping on it.

I read something about the XNA market before. The number of most of them weren't that well, but some games, though, sell very well if you take release date into account.

http://www.gamerbytes.com/2009/03/gamer ... n.php#more

[jack_norton]

Personally I think most of iphone excitement is totally unrealistic not to say... fake While I know some devs that made good money, it's like 0.000000000000000001% chances, vs you have 1% chances of making same amount on Pc/Mac/linux. I think XNA is slightly better, but in any case you're always totally dependent on someone else...

[dstarsboy]

Jack's right. At $4.99 or $5.99, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot in the iPhone market. Also, the dozen or so games I've made bank me around $3 per day, lol. They almost all have lite versions and it took me about a month to make each one. The market is just so ridiculously diluted.

However, that being said, I'm gonna give it a shot. Now that SDK version 3.0 is coming out (next month) it has support for a technology called Core Data and over the last couple of days I made an interface with it for playing/editing a VN on the fly. No python support so it will have to be db driven but should work fine.

Since I have only played around half a dozen VNs and I'm new to writing VN stories, my first pass will be a Mac app short with placeholder art that I'll pass around here an hopefully people can give me some feedback on what I'm doing right/wrong. It'll be a while though, from what I've read, these things take time and this forum is full of dead projects. We'll see. Thanks for the feedback, all!

[DaFool]

I used to be a naysayer but this article pretty much convinced me:

http://makeitbigingames.com/2009/02/put ... ot-enough/

Not that I really care about iphones, PSPs, DS's at this point (since I have neither), but if I had something ready that could easily be ported to a light client / portable platform, that would be a no-brainer to take advantage of market cycles.

So if every developer starts with scalable art assets, then they could shop around for distributors by demonstrating using their super-heavy direct-X enable heavy client version of the game, and advertise using their light Flash version of the game, then cash in on all the platforms between the two extremes. And if distro on any platform flops, they can move on to the next platform. Or worst case scenario they got feedback earlier on so they can scratch the game at minimal loss and start anew using the lessons they've learned.

[jack_norton]

A problem is that many platform are closed or require lots of cash investment (like the Wii/PS3). So is a viable strategy for someone with:
- friends in the industry
- already an established brand
- lots of funding available

I think the platforms really open to anyone are pc/mac/linux and flash. For iphone / XNA you have to spend a bit of money, but still accessible to everyone with a minimum of spare cash.