I really like windows7 personally. I had linux for a month or two and
went back to windows for the games and all the voices it offers and
screen reader choices, too.
using windows7 laptop
On 2/15/2014 7:03 PM, valiant8086 wrote:
Hi.
Have you taken into account the possibility that your numbers are as
they are because your windows releases are on a platform that's been
getting games, while not as many as we'd all like, for a long time,
and your releases on mac are dropping into a big gaping black hole of
people who have been clamoring for games for all this time? Of course
we see the gravitation toward thinking of iOS as a good gaming
platform also as you've said if I'm not mistaken affects all this, but
that's not really in line with my thoughts right now. By that I don't
mean I disagree with that too I'm just thinking about windows sales
vs.mac exclusively here. Thinking about myself, I wanted to buy your
mac games for my 2010 mac book air, which I don't use for much more
than trying to stay familiar with mac so I know in my own mind how
they compare and can try to help friends out with mac questions on
occasion. I heard about your mac releases and I wanted to go buy them
just to say thank you for giving us something to play besides RSGames
on mac OS. I haven't done this yet, but I haven't bought any games in
quite a while except a couple of 1 dollar games on iOS.
but my thinking is, you have people excited to be able to play on mac,
and curious how well you guys made it work. Could that have inflated
your sales a bit?
Granted, it doesn't really change the point, the fact would still be
that you're selling more games on MAC and the people you're selling to
on that platform are more involved, I think that's what you mean about
the demographics anyway. Just something I wondered about.
Cheers, Sent with thunderbird 17.0.8 portable
On 12/13/2013 11:05 AM, Draconis wrote:
Chiming in on these cross-platform topics seems to be a common theme
for me. LOL
I have three points I’d like to make.
First, ignoring Mac as a viable platform for blind gamers is a poor
strategy. One year on, and Mac sales are still far exceeding Windows
sales, even in comparison to back in the hay day of audio games, some
10 years ago or so. It isn’t just about raw user numbers, it is about
demographics and the quality of those users.
Which leads me to my second point.
There is an old saying: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
This could not apply to anything as well as it does to the statement
that Android is more popular than iOS overall. It is technically true
that Android is used in more devices, but that is because many of
those devices are not, strictly speaking, Android devices. That is to
say, they are not being used as portable computing devices like iOS
devices are. Kindles, Nooks, many models of feature phones, and
countless other gadgets, all get lumped into the Android user
numbers, even though many of those devices are so limited in scope
that users don’t even know Android was used in their development.
This is why, in the areas that matters, iOS’s numbers are so much
better than Android’s, despite the marketshare numbers that the media
likes to quote. iOS consistently has over 80% of web usage from
mobile devices, for example. iOS users are for more likely to pay for
apps, too. iOS users also spend more time on their devices, showing
greater engagement with the platform. And those kinds of numbers go
on and on.
It is the same kind of trick as companies like Samsung use that
create headlines in the news like: “Samsung sells 10 million Galaxy
blah blah”. In reality, they shipped that number to resellers and
warehouses. Shipped, but not necessarily sold to end users. Samsung
never actually releases specific sales numbers. They only ever
announce numbers of units shipped. It sounds better that way.
Apple, conversely, only ever announces sales to end users, and never
the number of units shipped.
All of this, before you even start taking into account the
fragmentation of Android, which is a disaster that Google is
continuing to scramble to get a hold on with nothing to show for it.
Less than 2% of Android devices are running the latest version of the
OS, compared with over 70% of iOS devices. Android is a support
nightmare for developers, much as Windows is.
Granted, that 2% number may be slightly skewed, given Google’s
continued desire to artificially inflate the usage numbers of
Android, but it is still a huge problem for the platform.
My final point is a technical one.
We explored a number of options for developing the Draconis Engine,
including experimenting with various languages, techniques, and
technologies. We have now shipped multiple titles on three platforms
in the space of eleven months. Three Mac releases, three Windows
releases, and one iOS release. (This assumes you count the Show Cases
for Mac/Windows.)
The Draconis Engine was created with C++ primarily, with very tiny
portions written in Objective-C to cover OS X and iOS GUI, and small
portions in C# for Windows.
While C++, like any language, has advantages and disadvantages, if
you are interested in cross-platform development, particularly game
development, we found that the relatively minor trade offs were worth
the huge advantages we gained by going this route.
Just about all other cross-platform methods, like Java or Python,
come with huge disadvantages, as I believe Tom has mostly already
covered.
Hope this is helpful.
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