John Carmack, fondatorul companiei id Software, a facut cateva afirmatii destul de interesante acum cateva zile cu privire la platformele Android si iOS. El povesteste cum in cadrul ultimei conferinte Quakecon a intrebat membrii participanti la o sedinta unde era speaker despre terminalele pe care le detin. In sala erau la fel de multi posesori de terminale Android precum erau de terminale iOS, ceea ce denota cat de mult a crescut aceasta platforma, dar e normal avand in vedere ca exista zeci de terminale pentru ea. Cand a intrebat cate persoane au cheltuit 20$ pe un joc din AppStore/Android Market, situatia s-a schimbat, posesorii de terminale iOS raspunzand afirmativ intr-un numar mai mare decat posesorii de Android.
Every six months I’d take a look at the scope of the Android, and decide if it was time to start really looking at it… At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many people had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference.You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space.”
Pentru el lucrurile sunt cat se poate de simple, iOS este o platforma generatoare de venituri substantiale iar Android nu. Posesorii de terminale cu iOS cumpara jocuri si posesorii de terminale Android nu. Pentru dezvoltatori totul se rezuma la bani deoarece nimeni nu munceste pe gratis si e normal sa fie asa. Android deocamdata nu atrage indeajuns de multi platitori in timp ce iOS o face. Sunt sigur ca multi dezvoltatori gandesc la fel iar acesta este un mare minus pentru Google care deocamdata nu reuseste sa sporeasca veniturile dezvoltatorilor.
We made more money than people may expect on the Doom RPG stuff. It’s just fun to develop on iOS. We’d show people what we were working on and they’d go ‘Oh, when are you going to ship that? And I’d say “next month” and they’d go ‘Aww, I wanna work on an iPhone title.’ It’s hard to make a rational business decision to say I want to take resources from something else and put them on this. We did actually hire a person to be our Android guy, but it looks like he’s going to get stuck on iOS development!