iPhone games maturing according to report
A new survey has shown how iPhone games have been attracting more attention, which is showing how the handset is excelling as a hand held console. The survey, which talked to around 130 developers of iPhone applications, looked into how the developers felt about budget, pricing, gaming features, company proficiencies and team size in an attempt to understand the evolution of the popular platform.
The director of Game Developer Research, Simon Carless, said, “This survey shows the increasing importance and maturity of the iPhone game market. The open platform seems to be encouraging a multitude of developers to jump on board, creating an intriguing melting pot of short form and more sophisticated game titles.”
Evidence has surfaced that is showing that iPhone games are becoming more and more complex and intricate as the industry is starting to understand the potential of the iPhone gaming market, so what does this mean for the average iPhone gamer at home – it just means you will start to see games that should be able to rival the likes of the PSP and DS rather than the likes of a slightly superior version of Snake or Sudoku.
The survey showed how games that usually have a 1 to 3 month development cycle, amongst developers that were involved in the survey, took a fall from 61 per cent of completed projects to 41 per cent of in-development projects.
The survey also showed how, with the rising interest of the iPhone as a platform, gaming developers would be looking into working on games in the lesser used gaming genres such as strategy games. 11 per cent of those questioned had worked on strategy games that they had completed, however 15 per cent questioned said they were in the process of producing strategy games. An even larger boost has been recorded when it comes to storyline adventure games, where only 11 per cent of developers had worked on completed games, but 21 per cent of developers were planning on looking into the genre.
Many analysts around the world are claiming that they expect the AppStore to pass the $1 billion mark in terms of sales this year alone, and a lot of those sales are made up by the gaming community. It would seem that the industry should be looking closely at the market and this survey clearly shows that they are. After all, the AppStore hasn’t been around a long time and already it has become a household name amongst iPhone users as a place to satisfy all your gaming needs.
These next few months will be critical for the AppStore, and this year should see the AppStore really come into its own in terms of gaming. It would seem as though the AppStore can do no wrong as it amazingly past the half a billion download mark recently.
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