October 2012
Beginner
336 pages
7h 51m
English
Content preview from Game Design Secrets
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Surveying the iOS Market
Now let’s look deeper at the state of games on the platform that Steve Jobs made (see Figure 1-2).
Figure 1-2: iOS App Store page for games
Overall Install Base
The total install base of iOS devices currently exceeds 200 million, and, according to ReadWriteWeb, 90 percent of iOS owners are running iOS version 4.x or higher. Within this market, the iPad has an install base of approximately 60 million.
Player Demographics
According to top smartphone app analyst Flurry.com, as of February 2012, a reasonable estimate of the iOS gaming market is 110 million, with a roughly 50/50 gender ratio. “Between 0.5 and 6 percent of players—depending on game genres—use in-app purchases,” Flurry analyst Patrick Minotti told me.
NOTE See Flurry’s blog, blog.flurry.com, and the posts “Mobile Freemium Games: Women Thrifty, Men Binge” and “Mobile Freemium Games: Gen Y Plays But Gen X Pays” for more details on iOS gamer demographics.
“In terms of geographical location,” says Minotti, “I would say it’s about 50 percent North America, 30 percent European Union, and 20 percent Asia.”
iOS games are primarily monetized through in-app purchases, with hardcore titles gaining most of their revenue. Fortunately for indie developers, the overwhelming share of games on the iOS market are made by them and not by established companies coming from another platform. This does not mean ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.