Gameloft pulling back on Android development

I hope it does good for the sake of competition. I love my iPhone and all, but if Apple had something to be scared about it could only mean good things for the consumers.

Yeah, this is an odd announcement. Android isn't really even out to the masses yet. The most people know about it is the recent commercials about it, they know nothing about what devices it is on yet, or will be on in the future.

Give it a few years, THEN get back to us.

A few years? You do realize that iPhone app development is only 18 months old (since June 2008), and there are over 100,000 apps. Meanwhile, Android is a year old and there... aren't.

If you want to use numbers (which really doesn't work, because we all know the majority of apps on the iTunes App Store are bad), Android has 10000 apps in a year. That's still significant. Plus, it has one plus over the iPhone... the SDK is free for anyone to download. And getting listed on the Android Marketplace is just a one-time fee of $25. The money a smaller developer needs to invest is much less than for the iPhone.

Genius moves for Gameloft. Apparently they overdeveloped on Android while it was confined to a few low res poorly spec'd devices mostly relegated to TMobile, the smallest of the 4 major US carriers, but now they're backing out just as an explosion of decent devices hits all carriers?

> You do realize that iPhone app development is only 18 months old (since June 2008), and there are over 100,000 apps.

At that time, Apple already had an install base of 5 million units--all identical models at the time. Competitive Android devices are just now being made.

Also, of the iPhone's 100k apps, 99k are useless. And iPhone developers have their series of issues, from mismanagement and secrecy of approval policies to a poorly designed store that promotes cheap crap over quality. There are success stories on the platform, but Apple has generated dramatically more failures than successes--even amongst developers who deliver quality goods.

Android's real issues confront small developers because of the need to debug on so many actual devices (reports are implementations are making debugging on emulators alone insufficient--for example, bad drivers screwing with programs where the emulator had no issue). The Gameloft case appears to be the fault of a developer who thinks it's a great idea to over-invest when there's no audience, and under-invest going into an audience explosion--not the fault of platform.

you guys are defending android like it's your little sister. why? what's to gain from spouting off your numbers and how many apps (you feel) are worthless? i'm defending apple or dissing android, but you all are pointless with the blah blah fuckin blah.

Exactly.

and I hate gameloft games anyway, so no big loss.

You're an idiot.

Is there a large group of folk that gather to hate on the popularity of popular things? I just want to belong to something...

If there is a group like that, it best not get too popular or people might hate it.

I love it when people rant about the conformity and "sheeple" nature of the iPhone, when all they can point to is "I'm not them". Reminds me of Steve Martin's "non-conformist pledge"...

It's been 8 years now and they're still irrationally hating. People use the iPhone (and iPod before it) because it's a better product. It's time to get over it. Android will provide some much needed competition, but it's not game changer, sorry.

@MowDownJoe The sdk is free for anyone.... its the distribution that isnt free.

Also Android has the same issues as Apple its just there are even more few good apps on the android store. I have a Droid and a iPhone and time and time again the iPhone has better 3rd party support.


in a lot of ways Google creating apps causes the same problems Nintendo has with their first party titles. They are always better then what the 3rd party can produce and most of the time people will flock to Nintendo in this case google for apps.

It isn't a better product. Why is it a better product, exactly?
Is it a superior phone? No.
Is it a superior music player? No.
Is it a superior PDA-esque device? No
Is it a superior smart phone? No.

Is it shiny and "Cool"? Why, yes!
Is it advertised a lot? Certainly!

You know that there is a difference between opinion and fact, right? Some people like it better. I've used all sorts of portable media devices, and I prefer the ipod classic. I've used all sorts of smartphones, and if it wasn't for the lack of a physical keyboard and the lack of carrier choice, I'd use an iphone.

I've got a G1, and it's a pretty good phone, but the App store on it is pretty lacking. Of course, most of GameLoft's work is nothing to get excited over. The Android market is full of almost-good games that needed a little more time in QA.

Android has been out for a year man.

Oh right, I'm thinking of the Droid. Either way, it's still in its infancy.

Wait, I just looked at the 3 gameloft games on the marketplace. Solitaire? Bubble Blast? Brain Challenge?

Yeah, I don't think us Android users will be missing gameloft that much...

"I will admit that when I first booted up the Android Market, I was totally lost"

Step 1 - Open up the Market
Step 2 - Click on the games tab at the top.

To be honest, my only gripe with the Market is that there's no alphabetical listing, only popularity and date. Finding new things isn't exactly the easiest thing to do in the Market.

Assests go on SD, only the app's executable needs to be stored on internal memory