Why We Finally Decided To Develop for WP and not iPhone

[Localhorst86]

Just my point: You guys here say this sentence is arrogant. But it's also 110% true!
Every single customer doesn't want **** apps! I HATE Windows Phone apps who aren't looking pretty on my 1320. Or aren't written in HD 720p resolution so it gets stretched out where lots of bad things happen. So, perhaps it's a little arrogant to people who just get their first app together.

But Apple is #1 in "App on the Mobile Phone" and they didn't get there by being nice to everyone.

I agree with you on the intention of the mentioned passus. I feel that the goal of the section is definatelly positive (and I wish Microsoft would have a similiar clause), but I do think the tone of how it is conveyed is just wrong and rude. It could have been worded more diplomatic/neutral.

 

[Skamath]

I for one am excited because of the overwhelming passion this developer has. As far as how good the game will be? Time will tell, but such a passionate dev definitely deserves at least a chance to prove to us he is good at what he loves!

Ay Capt...Er Ambassador! If one word to describe what the Bee is Buzzing about, It is Ethics.

Anybody saying otherwise needs to visit Davy Jones's Locker

 

[HaibaneReki]

I applause BeeMon for their rock solid and calm arguments against all spiteful remarks and can't wait to see another major player in the WP Store. :smile:

 

[Phone Guy 4567]

You are free to have whatever your opinions you want but we only care to address opinions that are based on facts not presumptions. However I would like to point out the fallacy of some of those opinions in case some other readers (which in my opinion includes you) did not read my entire post and replies but simply skim through them to cherry-pick a few points for your arguments.

First of all, Windows Phone was never a Plan B, it was part of the master plan. Plan B is when one plan fails, you need a backup. We clearly indicated that we would support both platforms which is one of the reasons behind choosing C# through Xamarin, so that it will be easier and faster to port over to Windows Phone. iOS was just chosen to be the initial platform. While we like C#, the new Swift language is pretty neat, so why fore would we consider paying a not-too-cheap Xamarin license if we had no intention to support WP in the first place.

Secondly, we did not attempt to paint a pretty picture of WP with our post to get favors. In fact, on the contrary, we actually described a very bleak picture of WP at the beginning of the year in our post when we made our initial decision. When we decided to create the thread in the first place, we were ready to get a huge backlash from WP owners angry that we would choose to go iOS first and not the platform that we actually love.

Thirdly, if you have actually read our post carefully, you can see clearly that we have not started substantial coding yet. What resources that we have implemented so far (graphics, music, animations) can be applied to any platform so we don't lose anything by switching. Also even if we had done some code, since we have chosen C#, it's not a big issue to switch. Now if we had already make a big "monetary" investment on one platform, then definitely we would have to still bulldoze through it to recover our investment before leaving it. And if you had also read through a lot of our replies, we have indicated a few times that if Apple was to revert or to specifically clarify exact requirements, we would reconsider our stand. Againt prove that we weren't painting a pretty picture of the WP situation.

Finally, even though as the developer of a software that got a 8/10 review from a major site and could have gotten more except that we only supported English, we are not insulted by your assumption that we were afraid of being rejected because we knew our game/apps were not of "quality". However IMHO, you just insulted your own community by suggesting that WP users would accept crappy software rejected by Apple. Whether our software is of good quality can only be easily ascertained at the time of release. We cannot address it now but we emplore you so stay around and do not delete your comment. At the time that we offical release our software, I would like to come back to revisit your comment so that we can work together to compare our software with what is available on the Apple AppStore and I would appreciate your evaluation at the time.

We hope in the future if you have any opinions on any of our posts, that you first read our posts and replies entirely. You are free not to but the time that we have to take to address your straw man opinions could have been better spent on designing and making "quality" games/apps for your platform.

I reread your post and I do apologize for missing the part that said you were about getting ready to buy Apple equipment. You do however mention at the beginning of one of your paragraphs :

"We collectively decided that the 1st platform for our games and apps would be iOS."

So iOS was your first choice and because of changes Apple made to their policies you've decided to switch your focus to WP, IMO a plan B. I don't think I said or even implied that WP would never be on the table to develop for if Apple didn't change their policy, my point is that iOS was your 1st choice until the policy change.

I don't think I insulted the WP community, because I believe many in the community are just as tired of the number of garbage apps in the store. They probably wish like I do that MS had a similar arrogant attitude when it comes to their store that Apple has.

If you really want to be a success as a developer then IMO you should have stuck to your original iOS first plan. At the end of the day sales and money are what will allow you to continue to develop for all platforms.

 

[Nerdy Woman]

I don't think I insulted the WP community, because I believe many in the community are just as tired of the number of garbage apps in the store. They probably wish like I do that MS had a similar arrogant attitude when it comes to their store that Apple has.

You don't think there's any garbage among the million+ apps in the Apple store? I seriously doubt that every app in their store is worth a d/l. I had previously mentioned an app that uses the haptic feature (aka vibration) for personal pleasuring, but according to some reviews, lacks the strength to get the job done. LMAO

Doing the math... Let's say they have 200 categories/sub-categories. That would mean there are, on average, 5,000 apps in each category. Of course, some categories will have more, some will have less. The point is, devs can make promotion a full-time job - coercing blogs and sites to go hands-on and review, generating social media buzz, striving to get more downloads and ratings - just to get into the top 1,000 in a category.

Quite possibly, devs may find it easier to become big fish in a smaller pond.

 

[tgp]

Quite possibly, devs may find it easier to become big fish in a smaller pond.

That right there is probably the biggest advantage of developing for WP right now. The other 2 have such massive app stores that it's difficult to get noticed anymore, or so I've heard (I'm not a developer). The downside to relying on WP is of course its market share.

 

[Bee Mon]

I reread your post and I do apologize for missing the part that said you were about getting ready to buy Apple equipment. You do however mention at the beginning of one of your paragraphs :

"We collectively decided that the 1st platform for our games and apps would be iOS."

So iOS was your first choice and because of changes Apple made to their policies you've decided to switch your focus to WP, IMO a plan B. I don't think I said or even implied that WP would never be on the table to develop for if Apple didn't change their policy, my point is that iOS was your 1st choice until the policy change.

I don't think I insulted the WP community, because I believe many in the community are just as tired of the number of garbage apps in the store. They probably wish like I do that MS had a similar arrogant attitude when it comes to their store that Apple has.

If you really want to be a success as a developer then IMO you should have stuck to your original iOS first plan. At the end of the day sales and money are what will allow you to continue to develop for all platforms.

"Plan B - a strategy or plan to be implemented if the original one proves impracticable or unsuccessful."

Our decision to change in neither based on the above so your usage of the definition is wrong. You cannot change the definition to match your argument. Plan A is for us to return back to mobile game development. Our Plan B is to drop game development and continue with our current core business. Plan B comes into effect only if we failed to gain any foothold in the mobile software market within a specific duration of time we determined in Plan A. Re-prioritizing the platforms that we choose to develop does not affect the outcome of our original plan; which is to get our games/apps into the market and determine the response over a period of time.

If you have read all our replies, you would have seen that we have never disagreed that garbage apps should be culled. We are just replying to your insinuations that 1) Windows Phone was a Plan B, 2) Our software is crappy, 3) We were lying, all based on your own presumptions on our original post without any facts. I have never mentioned anything about garbage apps in our original post because it was not about garbage apps. We did not choose to drop iOS because of garbage apps, we chose because Apple has now put in vague clauses into their policy that allows them to discredit any app they wish from they store without consequences based on their personal feeling about your app, not that your app has broken any of their regulations. To us having the power to move the goalpost, like changing the definition of a vague clause, at anytime to suite themselves is draconian in nature which is what we are pissed about. Nothing to do with garbage apps. And if you don't think Apple is going to abuse this power at some time in the future, I applaud your optimism. However we have our own opinion that Apple is not doing this only for garbage apps. Sorry but we are in the business world, not la-la-land, we have to be very careful on signing legal contracts and agreements. We would never sign any agreement that has vague terminology and lopsided. We are not desperate and we don't have to so we decided not to. Like we said in a few of our replies, if they provide a clear list of criteria in their policy, we would have no issues.

 

[Ashalinia]

You don't think there's any garbage among the million+ apps in the Apple store? I seriously doubt that every app in their store is worth a d/l. I had previously mentioned an app that uses the haptic feature (aka vibration) for personal pleasuring, but according to some reviews, lacks the strength to get the job done. LMAO

I'd beta test that. Jk.

 

[tgp]

You don't think there's any garbage among the million+ apps in the Apple store? I seriously doubt that every app in their store is worth a d/l.

I have a bit of experience with iOS, quite a bit with WP, and the most with Android. I would rate the quality of apps, taking into consideration both how good the "good" apps are and the ratio of "garbage" apps in this order:

1. iOS
2. Android
3. Windows Phone

I know that at least part of the reason WP apps are generally lower quality, or maybe I should say have less features, is not the developers' fault, but because of OS restrictions. Let's see if this changes with WP8.1 being more open.

 

[Bee Mon]

Since the discussion seems to be have spilled into the realm of garbage apps, here's our point of view. First of all, different users have different views on what they consider as a garbage app. For example, one user may describe a garbage app as "It does not look pretty on my pretty device" but does not mention about its functionality. Another user may complain "This app is garbage, it keeps crashing on my device." even though it may work pretty well on other devices. What your definition of a garbage app may be different from others, so you cannot use your definition of garbage app as a collective term to represent all the users because not all users think in the same way. So its a fallacy to say "I speak for everyone". No you don't.

I don't speak for everyone, but this is my definition of a garbage app. To me a garbage app is devoid of any useful functionality, narrative, or gameplay. An app that mislead users into thinking that it's the original or a native app, click-bait apps, a web wrapper that does not add any additional functionality to the original web site, ad apps that does not give any return value back to the user to me are garbage apps. I don't see why Apple with an entire legal team, couldn't come up with a simple of list of requirements of their own.

Some people also think Vizioneck is garbage and shouldn't be on a next-gen console. Sony doesn't seem to think so. Every person is biased in some way, allowing them to make personal judgement instead of relying on a pre-determined set of guidelines, is wrong in every way and shouldn't be part of a professional organization. Thank goodness Minecraft was developed for the desktop computer system years ago. I can imagine some people in an organization may have viewed the submission of his first alpha-version of Minecraft today to a particular mobile platform as "amateur hour".

 

[Bee Mon]

I have a bit of experience with iOS, quite a bit with WP, and the most with Android. I would rate the quality of apps, taking into consideration both how good the "good" apps are and the ratio of "garbage" apps in this order:

1. iOS
2. Android
3. Windows Phone

I know that at least part of the reason WP apps are generally lower quality, or maybe I should say have less features, is not the developers' fault, but because of OS restrictions. Let's see if this changes with WP8.1 being more open.

To me an app having less features or is not as pretty as a counterpart can hardly be called a garbage app. In time, with more income the developer can afford to spend time to add those features and polish up the UI. It would be horrible to reject an app based on those criteria without looking at its potential. I haven't examined Rudy's entire portfolio but I bet his first apps when he released them don't look that great either. New developers need time to get themselves familiarize with a platform and they will get better over time as long as they can survive. Rejecting apps only based on their look or missing features is a sure way of shooing away potentially good developers from your platform.

 

[Nerdy Woman]

To me an app having less features or is not as pretty as a counterpart can hardly be called a garbage app. In time, with more income the developer can afford to spend time to add those features and polish up the UI. It would be horrible to reject an app based on those criteria without looking at its potential. I haven't examined Rudy's entire portfolio but I bet his first apps when he released them don't look that great either. New developers need time to get themselves familiarize with a platform and they will get better over time as long as they can survive. Rejecting apps only based on their look or missing features is a sure way of shooing away potentially good developers from your platform.

Reading your post, Bee Mon, the best example that comes to mind is not an app, but the Surface tablet/laptop. When they introduced Surface 2, Panos Panay commented that many improvements made were due to user feedback. The first generation Surface was built in a very secure vault with zero user feedback or test marketing. The only way to give consumers what they really want is to have the opportunity to ask them.

 

[Bee Mon]

Reading your post, Bee Mon, the best example that comes to mind is not an app, but the Surface tablet/laptop. When they introduced Surface 2, Panos Panay commented that many improvements made were due to user feedback. The first generation Surface was built in a very secure vault with zero user feedback or test marketing. The only way to give consumers what they really want is to have the opportunity to ask them.

Some people just don't get it that a lot of successes are built on past failures. No one has ever come up with a perfect product on their first try but the potential is still there. People sees the potential and invest in it regardless of its current shortcomings. I have invested in many Kickstarter projects; some failed and some were successful. I don't feel cheated or wasting my money just because some of them failed because one successful project can easily be worth more than ten times the failures. Rudy Huyn was not born yesterday, Android at one time also did not have any apps, and Rovio had so many games that were not successful they were about to close shop if their last gasp effort called Angry Birds did not make any headway. At one time or another in the past, one of their apps could have been called by some people as "garbage". Thanks goodness these people are far in between in real-life even though they tend to be the most vocal on the Internet or otherwise we would still be living in caves rubbing two sticks together. Sometimes organizations get too rich and big they forgot where they came from i.e. two guys in a garage. When they climb up too high into the sky, they tend to forgot those little guys who's holding up their ladder.

 

[Tips_y]

My credit card is ready... bring it on!
By the way, I don't really play games in my phone (1520) but I'll make an exception of this.

 

[Troy Marcel]

yeah Don totally screwed the pooch, he pretty much destroyed any faith many people had towards the xbox one.

 

[WDavis4692]

To all of those readers who keep saying that Apple's store success is in part due to their stringent app guidelines, one thing you're overlooking is the extremely arrogant and snarky way the guidelines are worded. There is no reason why apple could not lay down the same guidelines in a much more diplomatic manner and obtain the same level of understanding and result.

It's just rudeness for the sake of being rude. Apple is growing too big for its britches.

 

[TechFreak1]

To all of those readers who keep saying that Apple's store success is in part due to their stringent app guidelines, one thing you're overlooking is the extremely arrogant and snarky way the guidelines are worded. There is no reason why apple could not lay down the same guidelines in a much more diplomatic manner and obtain the same level of understanding and result.

It's just rudeness for the sake of being rude. Apple is growing too big for its britches.

Taller the tree, the greater the impact when it falls.