Probably one of the most asked questions I get is “Is your game going to be available on the iPad?”.
Before I answer that question I want to take you back in history to 2014. The iPad is seen as the future and savior for many software companies with the supposed impending doom of the PC. Slitherine (who also own Matrix Games) is one of the biggest players in the digital wargaming world and JD McNeil, CEO of Matrix/Slitherine, was quoted in 2014 as saying ” Without a shadow of a doubt the growth in the tablet market has been phenomenal for us.“. And so it seemed with many companies looking to bring their latest games to this new mobile market.
However, within 12 months things had changed. Game prices started to fall on mobile devices until by 2017 many were free. The new way to make money was to offer in-game add-ons such as additional resources or better skills. This does not go well with the traditional wargame. Companies like Slitherine tried to continue to support iOS but the financials no longer made sense. Look at games like Wars and Battles and companies like Shenandoah Studios who failed or collapsed while trying to support iOS. Remember wargames are a niche market, with niches in the niche, so the customer base is not huge. Then came the final killer…
“When it comes to Slitherine titles, iOS 11 truly is an App-ocalypse”
Apple wanted to only support 64-bit applications meaning many older iOS games would no longer run on iOS devices. For companies like Slitherine this was a no-win situation with either trying to upgrade old games when the developers were no longer around, source code not maintained or rewrite their applications from scratch. Neither made financial sense and so these games disappeared overnight. Wargamers were used to their games running for years on their PC’s. People would find ways to keep these games running no matter what Microsoft did when they upgraded their OS to a newer version. Try hard enough and you can still run games designed for dos from the 1980/90s. So customers, expecting the same, complained bitterly to companies like Slitherine and littered through their forums even today are angry threads.
Here we are in 2018. The PC is still here and the game market for it is as healthy, if not healthier than 2014. You can sell a premium PC game for upwards of $60 on a PC. On iOS? Maybe $14.99 but don’t expect any sales that will recoup the costs of making the game. And who knows if the next version of iOS will support that game? Of course, we now have development tools like Unity that allow you to write once (supposedly) and then deploy to different operating systems. But let’s be honest to stay afloat, make money and be able to invest in future games you have to focus on the PC or one of the big consoles like the XBOX or PS4. Sell one game of Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War for $39.99 or try and sell 4 copies for $9.99 on iOS. Do not forget Apple will take 30% of that whereas you can sell your PC game on your own website, if you are a big brand name, and get 100%.
“Yes that’s all very well,” you say, “but is your game going to be available on the iPad?”.
Yes, my games will be available on the iPad.
For smaller developers like myself it makes sense to try and support iOS. I don’t have fixed costs to cover and I don’t rely on my games to live (not yet anyway). 25% of my net sales for Kursk come from Apple. Also with the bigger wargame development companies pretty much out of the market, there is space for smaller developers like myself to get noticed.
Here’s the rub through. If I could charge the same price as a PC version then that figure would rise to close to 40%. Here’s a thought for anyone reading this – If you paid the same price for an iOS wargame as its equivalent PC version then companies like Slitherine could look again to aggressively support the platform. GMT recently announced their (renewed )partnership with Playdek and that their first game Labyrinth would come to the mobile platform in 2019 (after the PC version).
Pay for it and more will come.
