iPhone dev says AppStore is over-hyped

Apple today said there are 50,00 apps. A huge chunk are complete crap. There are just too many crappy to flooding the store, so its hard to draw attention to a new app. Apple needs to instate some kind of a quality control, like Microsoft with XBLA and remove the crap after its had its chance on the store.

You know, if that was $5 bucks or more, I would probably go for it. Any Americans want to tell me how much that piece of paper in the picture is worth.(This why we need colour coded money)

Anyway, maybe now these folks will go back to working on "real" games. (I don't really want to use the word real in there, but I couldn't think of anything better, you get what I'm trying to say right?

lol funny pic

Not impressed with Apple's App Store, must of it is nothing more than useless apps that are nothing more than a second of entertainment. And their whole "quality is meh" mentality is disheartening.

Maybe he should make better stuff.

What a whinie lil bitch. If he wants more money, make a better app!
An extra $600 - $700 a month puts food on the table. Just be happy people like what YOU brought to the market.

"I started a business and it's not going well therefore business is useless to everyone."

Duh. It's filled with shit. To make any money your app really needs to be a standout title.

Down vote me if you want but the iPhone itself is over hyped. Apple has a great history of taking total shit and market it as the second coming. If I wanted an unreliable, pocket draining, roofing tile I'd go out and buy an N-gage!

the real question is how many hours did he spend developing the app..

$20/day sounds pretty damn good to me.. $600/mo for something a student could easily develop.. ppl in the one-quarter stanford course made several hundred dollars off their final projects (~2 wks dev) and they're still selling..

i really think this guy is just trying to deter prospective competition from the lucrative market.

Um.. sorry your app sucks and noone wants to use it apparently?

Now remember kids, over-hyped (and over-rated for that matter) does not at all mean bad. But I have no arguments against needing some reworking.
The app store has...potential.

Honestly, if you look at the apps this guy is trying to sell, he's doing really good to make $20 a day. All it would take is a touch more polish and anyone could take more than his market share.

$20 a day is GREAT, like really, it makes me want to make one thats really good.

But, its bad for getting developers interested in making apps.

It's not number 35. Its number 35 on the paid list of the board games subcategory of the games category. Not to mention the game has an average rating of 2 stars, and is likely total crap.

This guy is basically saying "Waaaah! I made a crap game and the idiot masses aren't buying it! How come only the good games make money!?!?!?!"

This site lists widgets that work within the PSP browser (it actually has flash) http://www.psponme.com/list_psp.asp?cat=Tools

Now I'm not saying they best the stuff in the app store, I'm just pointing out that any phone that has flash (especially a contemporary player) or java will have access to a lot more than the app store can ever hope to offer.

People seem to forget Uncle Sam wants a chunk of that $600 too.

he should have written the luxury app...

Guys: the iPhone is not a gaming device, no matter what Apple or ANYONE says. That said, I love mine for, y'know, non-gaming purposes (I'm hopeless without a map, the camera and notepad help me do info-capture anywhere, and so on and so forth). It won't fit everyone's needs, sure, but I like mine.

Just not as a game machine. All right, so I have the two FF Tactics Advance games on it (Crystal Defenders and Vanguard Storm), but that's because I'm a whore for Square-Enix... and they're not bad, honestly, but they still aren't quite to the level of even the most basic GBA game. More power to you if you can come up with an example that will prove me wrong, but I just am not seeing it as a third handheld.

I guess a lot f really good apps remain undiscovered under the sea of crap. It does require luck to be found out and published all around the web and in top seller lists. So quality it's not the only factor in iphone app success. I think.

For all those doing the math, if he is making $20/day that is $7300 a year.

Great, make a couple of apps and you have a nice little living there, right? That would be if the apps actually sell for a whole year. We all know the attention of consumers, and the App Store is no different. After Apps hit the featured list, top paid or even top free, those who want them download them, and then they are kicked to the curb.

Some figures I have gotten from a few developers, #30 on the top paid (Crazy Snowboard) was getting about 1500 downloads a day, and about %25 more on weekends. At a dollar a pop that's a nice chunk of change, but you have to be one of the top 50 or so apps, otherwise, not a whole lot.

Zombieville had about 150,000 (most at $2) copies sold in March, with close to 7000 a day during the week of GDC and a release of a lite version.

That shows that it can be done, but you need to hit the top sales. People don't go looking for new games to play, they take a look at the top lists and impulse buy off there.

Both figures were taken straight from the developers on a topic in the Unity forum, talking about sales. [url = http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=21511&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=iphone+sales&start=0] Click here if you're interested[/url]

"Though Strom is clearly frustrated by the experience, we don't think $20 a day sounds too bad for hobbyists ... we're just not sure we'd want to base a career around it."

Really, joystiq? $7300 is not enough for a yearly salary?!?! Brilliant! You guys must be members of Mensa if you could come up with a conclusion like that all on your own!

It's not money for nothing, it's a late paycheck for time and work months ago. If he put those hours into a normal job instead, he would have gotten the $600 then instead of now.