There have been several recent articles written on whether or not Android-based phones (and specifically the Nexus One) are going to be good for game developers.
Is Google Nexus One A Gaming Contender?
Gaming on the Google Phone?
The arguments come down to:
- The Android Market is still not a very robust storefront and not as polished as Apple’s.
- Lack of multi-touch limits the user-input capabilities
- Limitations of the “sandbox”-ing strategy Google has used. Specifically, only being able to run apps that fit in the 512MB of internal storage. Not a huge problem for many games, but makes the IPhone Myst implementation a non-starter.
- Concerns about the need to support multiple configurations of apps in the field. Right now iPhone has really two versions. If every Android phone has slightly different capabilities, that could be a nightmare.
In particular, I wanted to call out some articles about GameLoft, one of the biggest mobile game developers. A recent article outlines their celebration of the 10 millionth App Store download of their titles. Not too long ago they announced that they were significantly cutting back on Android development. Can the iPhone gold rush repeat itself on Android? Only time will tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment