People ask me quite occasionally, “What did you guys do with the money from the Impulse sale?” The answer is, a lot of things. Over the next 60 days there’s going to be a bunch of announcements as things we’ve been working on start to come to fruition.
Today is the first of the announcements! Stardock has opened a mobile game studio in Plymouth Michigan. Technically, we opened it awhile ago but we didn’t want to talk about it until we had something to show and that’s what today’s announcement is about.
We’re going to release the games one at a time over the next several months but the first one is going to go out next week! Dead Man’s Draw.
Initially, these games will be iOS exclusive but we plan to bring them to additional platforms over time.
Here are some screenshots:
Dead Man’s Draw comes out next week for iPhone and iPad.
Sneak preview of the next game coming out…
And then one that comes out after that…
Press Release here:
https://www.stardock.com/about/newsitem.asp?id=448519
Glad to see you're considering other platforms- I don't own a smartphone (I would if I needed one, but I don't)
That first game does look interesting and something I would buy on PC if it got good reviews.
Good luck with that.
Well then. That explains the screenshots in the future games thread.
https://forums.elementalgame.com/445174/page/5/#3398846
I think this move by Stardock is a good one. Some PC game companies are having very good results with games on tablets. Slitherine is one. For some games that they sell on the PC and the iPad they claim to sell 10x more on the latter platform. They also charge similar prices for the tablet version to what they charge for the PC version.
i hope Stardock does some 4x games of the space or fantasy type for tablets. There are nowhere near enough good ones available yet.
I will consider it when it comes to Android. Until then I forget about the mobile division..
Does this mean the Stardock forums will finally become smartphone-friendly?
I gave up on iOS a couple of years ago. It became too boring, which I assume is a good thing if you are a developer. Anyway, I am not too excited about this, even if they do support android or windows phone. I just do not see being able to have a GalCiv2 type of experience on current hardware.... Although on a 8 inch windows PC I can finally see some more portability coming to some of my games.
Rebellion for iPhone, yeah
That space game looks very interesting! Some kind of frontier miner ship perhaps? Or even better - a light-weight homeworld type game?
iOS??? Are you on crack?
Last I checked AndroidOS based products control 88% of the market.. AndroidOS phones control roughly 61% of the market. Kindle is Android based, and Kindle dominates the tablet market. Who in their right mind would develop on iOS and not Android?
We have 7 androidOS based devices in this home, and ONE iOS with zero plans to purchase another iOS device. Most people I know moved away from Apple's proprietary garbage.
my smartphone is a galaxy note 2 and i gave my ipad 2 away since i rarely used it so i dont have any apple bias but ....
The reasons everyone including stardock is going iOS first or iOS exclusive are
1. androids huge market share mostly comes from developing countries. while the 80-20 may be true world-wide ... in first world countries its more like just 60-40 and in the US even 50-50. and most of these millions of asians couldnt give a crap about western games just like americans & europeans rarely play the type of games popular in china,korea, etc.
2. its alot easier to make a game that works on ipad & iphone than a game that works on the hundreds if not thousands of different android devices.
3. multiple studies have shown that iOS gamers are more likely to buy stuff than android gamers.
I used to be annoyed about that too but when you actually play all these iOS exclusives you ll realize you wont miss out on much. If you want something casual to waste time android may have only 9971 games that provide that instead of the 10000 on iOS.
and if you want any game with some actual depth iOS has the same near zero that android has. Hunters 2, Warhammer Quest, etc. etc. ... i always wished them to be android until i played them and found out i m not missing out on anything. they are all not even a pale shadow of comparable PC games. i guess the x-com port is the single interesting iOS exclusive (well for me of course) but if you already played the hell out of that on PC there s no point in getting it since the replay value isnt that high.
the best "serious" gaming tablet is one running windows (well not RT of course). even if they lack the power for modern games you could at least play less demanding games like Panzer Corps (this is one might be comming to ipad but without all the mods & user made scenarios its 1/10 the fun.... ) or oldies like AoW2 .
edit: maybe i should add that i am talking about strategy and rpg titles ... the genres where i cant find any depth in iOS. its entirely possible that there s trading card games etc. with tons of depth on iOS/Android - i wouldnt know as those arent genres i m interested in.
Hm. Mildly interested. The 3rd game looks good, but it is iOS and i dont use that.
I was hoping for some PC anouncement ...
Anyway, good luck!
I know 1 person with an Iphone.
I know 20 with Android devices. (Kindles, Nexus, Galaxies, etc) Makes no sense to go iOS when it's such a small marketshare now.
Oh well, one less thing to buy.
Folks- maybe they are going to start in IOS then move to android later. (seriously though give us more announcements)
Developing for iOS rather than Android is likely easier and less expensive. Scroll to "screen size" for the main reason why: http://opensignal.com/reports/fragmentation-2013/
Yes SD, please consider Android next.
Nice, finally a reason to use the wife's ipad.
That second picture reminds me of a childhood favorite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lode_Runner
Funny thing on the space game. We designed it before we got Star Control. But it's an infinite exploration type game.
also, if you're reading this and have and iOS device: Absolutely get Dead Man's Draw. I don't say this to self boost but for regulars here, it would be really useful I think for you guys to see what a game that was designed from the outset for a mobile device can be like. The whole game was made for less than $200,000 from start to finish.
If you need an Android developer, let me know .
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