Did any of you actually read the interview? It was with Gamasutra -- a website for the game developers -- and it was simply described the pros and cons of publishing a game on XBLA. It was intended to help other game developers understand the process. He didn't come across as "ostentatious" or "whiny" and certainly wasn't "playing the sympathy card".
Also, he didn't say that he will still be in debt after receiving his share of the revenue for Braid. He pointed out that his contract went into effect before Microsoft made some recent changes to their standard XBLA contracts. He said that *if* those changes are what he has heard, he might not have been able to make money.
Ugh. I was planning to buy Castle Crasher's at release but at $20 I'll hold off until some reviews start coming in. It better get darn good reviews and provide at least 10-12 hours of gameplay for that price.
Tom Browning has it exactly right. This article is a significant misrepresentation of the truth. As he says, the 2.1 OS is in BETA. The reason you can't use it to develop 2.0 apps is that it has features in it, like the expanded Location services, that don't exist in the 2.0 OS. Duh.
I do wish that updates were going through faster. My update for Morocco took one week, and from talking to other devs, it seems like the average is around 2 weeks. It really needs to be days.
BUT, the App Store is new and Apple is being flooded with developers and apps of wildly varying quality. Frankly, I'm glad that they are rejecting apps for grammar mistakes and useability issues. I wish they'd be even stricter since I've seen some I wouldn't have passed.
One other area I agree with is that the NDA is counterproductive. Apple and the state of iPhone apps would be much better if there was a better and more open development community. But that is stifled by the NDA.
Overall, though, I'm *very* impressed with the iPhone SDK, with the 2.0 OS, and with the App Store. It has some kinks that need to be worked out. But I have no doubt that they will be.
I don't see how this can be an app developer issue. The install and update process is handled completely by Apple and is out of our hands. We don't even have real file system access -- we can only read and write files in our own "sandbox". Either the saved files are still there when we startup or they aren't.
I suppose that if an app changed its save file format with a new version and didn't provide an ability to read the old file format, that would be a problem for the app developer. But I have seen so much flakiness with the install and update process on Apple's side of things that I'll bet this problem is with them too. Especially since it seems to be so inconsistent.
I'm in the dev program and my application, Morocco, is available from the App Store. As part of the dev program, I had access to the 2.0 firmware about 2 weeks before the general public.
My experience is that the 2.0 firmware is not nearly as buggy as some are describing here. I have rarely had crashes and have not noticed any other significant problem.
That said, there is clearly something in 2.0 that is causing some apps to crash as soon as they are launched. This is always fixed by a reboot of the iPhone.
As reported in the article, this is outside the hands of the app developers. However, it also seems to be fairly rare. So far I have received only two emails describing this problem, and both were fixed by a reboot.
If you download a program from the app store and find it crashes pretty much immediately after loading, there is a very good chance that it is due to this problem, and not the fault of the app's developer.
But if the application continues to crash after a reboot, or crashes after the program has been running for a while, it is almost certainly a problem with the application itself and should be reported to the developer.
My bet is that most application-specific crashes are due to not managing memory correctly and ignoring the OS's "running low on memory" message.
Blow on Braid sequel, DLC, XBLA cert
Aug 11th 2008 8:18PM (Joystiq)Also, he didn't say that he will still be in debt after receiving his share of the revenue for Braid. He pointed out that his contract went into effect before Microsoft made some recent changes to their standard XBLA contracts. He said that *if* those changes are what he has heard, he might not have been able to make money.
Revealed XBLAugust prices incorrect [Update]
Jul 30th 2008 3:36PM (Joystiq)Dear Auntie TUAW: Is My 2.0 iPhone Slow and Buggy?
Jul 30th 2008 3:30PM (TUAW.com)I've installed 30-some apps from the App Store. It's much more stable and responsive than the Symbian and Windows Mobile phones I've used.
PerversionTracker returns
Jul 30th 2008 11:38AM (TUAW.com)iPhone 2.1 SDK Disappointments
Jul 25th 2008 5:53PM (TUAW.com)I do wish that updates were going through faster. My update for Morocco took one week, and from talking to other devs, it seems like the average is around 2 weeks. It really needs to be days.
BUT, the App Store is new and Apple is being flooded with developers and apps of wildly varying quality. Frankly, I'm glad that they are rejecting apps for grammar mistakes and useability issues. I wish they'd be even stricter since I've seen some I wouldn't have passed.
One other area I agree with is that the NDA is counterproductive. Apple and the state of iPhone apps would be much better if there was a better and more open development community. But that is stifled by the NDA.
Overall, though, I'm *very* impressed with the iPhone SDK, with the 2.0 OS, and with the App Store. It has some kinks that need to be worked out. But I have no doubt that they will be.
Data loss from App Store updates
Jul 25th 2008 1:48PM (TUAW.com)Data loss from App Store updates
Jul 25th 2008 1:25PM (TUAW.com)I suppose that if an app changed its save file format with a new version and didn't provide an ability to read the old file format, that would be a problem for the app developer. But I have seen so much flakiness with the install and update process on Apple's side of things that I'll bet this problem is with them too. Especially since it seems to be so inconsistent.
Jade Empire now an Xbox Original
Jul 21st 2008 4:51PM (Joystiq)iPhone apps we crave
Jul 18th 2008 2:38PM (TUAW.com)http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/
Did Apple set developers up for failure?
Jul 14th 2008 11:49AM (TUAW.com)My experience is that the 2.0 firmware is not nearly as buggy as some are describing here. I have rarely had crashes and have not noticed any other significant problem.
That said, there is clearly something in 2.0 that is causing some apps to crash as soon as they are launched. This is always fixed by a reboot of the iPhone.
As reported in the article, this is outside the hands of the app developers. However, it also seems to be fairly rare. So far I have received only two emails describing this problem, and both were fixed by a reboot.
If you download a program from the app store and find it crashes pretty much immediately after loading, there is a very good chance that it is due to this problem, and not the fault of the app's developer.
But if the application continues to crash after a reboot, or crashes after the program has been running for a while, it is almost certainly a problem with the application itself and should be reported to the developer.
My bet is that most application-specific crashes are due to not managing memory correctly and ignoring the OS's "running low on memory" message.