Fellow developers! Hear me out! We need to meet up somewhere and think of more bull **** why we should idiotically double dip our buyers. I say we meet at a PF Changs somewhere and whoever is the biggest developer pays for everyone.
But an iPad version of an iPhone game is not "the exact same version" is it? You can still use the iPhone version just fine without having to pay anything extra. Here's how I see the argument: I have about 500 DVD's, now after upgrading to a Blu-ray player I will have to buy all these films once more if I am to experience them in HD. It's the exact same film! Now, obviously this means I will not be buying all those 500 titles again on Blu-Ray, but a few favorites have already been purchased, and no I didn't complain to neither the studios nor the clerk at my local retailer.
Can the studio update someones DVD with a download to make the movie HD? Its not the same. You guys have the opportunity to and I think it's really sad only a few developers chose to, seeing how little time it really takes you like jeffy said compared to pc game updatin'
Well I haven't personally even looked at the iPad for developing yet. But this is what I don't get: People here act like the developers have taken something away from them. They haven't! The app you bought for your iPhone still works great (hopefully) with your iPhone. As an added bonus you can even use it with your new iPad without any extra cost!
So you paid 1$ for the iPhone version and a extra 5$ for the HD version 6$ isn't bad for a videogame... Most ds game cost 30$ stop been cheap.. Support the devs
...And poor helpless kids are dying of hunger at this moment. Having a much worse life then youl ever have. Be glad with what you got and stop nerd raging like a baby over such a richman problem. If you can afford an Ipad you can easily afford to buy a better version of it for the device. Your choice. The devs put some more work into a new version and ofcourse see a good way to earn some extra cash.
Well I kinda like this quote from another user: "I know I would definitely be pissed off at Adobe if they charged me more money for some of their good upgrades to each version of Photoshop I have had over the years, or if a PC game developer charged me more money for drivers because they upgraded the game to better support my new video card so the game I previously bought would look much better. So you want to charge your fans a lot more money for little upgrades that should have been free that took you little time to do? And you want to know why people are mad over it? Oh no, I guess the solution is to not run updated software and put it on 2x mode instead. Big middle finger to the developer." I too feel I got totally jipped and slapped in the face by the developers with many of my useless "upgrades" I paid for, upgrades like he said should have been free in the first place. But whatever ya greedy unrespectable devs. How bout that PF Changs idea?
" If you can afford an Ipad you can easily afford to buy a better version of it for the device. Your choice. The devs put some more work into a new version and ofcourse see a good way to earn some extra cash" Agreed. If someone were to buy a $3,000 gaming laptop then he should be subject to different rules. No longer will his video game updates be free, even on indie games. Since he can afford a gaming laptop, he should be subject to pay for all game updates that are free of charge to people who have $500 laptops. That's so stupid. Cuz someone buys a system then it's suddenly ok to charge him more than he should?
Guys, you're not going to get anywhere if you try to fight this battle logically. This is not a logical issue, but rather an emotional one. Look at this from the other side of the fence for a moment. I'm a customer who's all excited about this spiffy new iPad I got. I can' wait to try it out and see all the great new features over the iPhone. So I look in the app store. But instead of finding spiffy new iPad games, I find up-rezed iPhone games. I'm disappointed. Then I notice that those same games I already payed for on the iPhone are 5x their original price! Now I'm disappointed and upset! Customers don't mean to feel that way. They want to support the devs. Unfortunately, logic is a poor salve for what is really an emotional issue. Customers can't help but feel the way they feel. IMHO, porting games from the iPhone (save for a few notable exceptions) was a mistake. You're targeting the exact same market as the iPhone. It's not like consoles where a port means a different user base that's happy to see your game. It's the same customers. And they're going to feel how they feel no matter what you say. I do have a few thoughts on what could have been done (and what can still be done) to salvage the situatiion. But I'm not sure anyone is really interested in that. Just remember that this isn't about logic. It's about the emotions of your customers. If you come from that direction, you'll have a much easier time resolving their qualms.
So, a few hours of your time to re-touch a photo is alright, and this is equal to putting weeks of engineering and graphics designer work into re-implementing a game in a higher resolution? It is clear that you severely underestimate and undervalue the work of those individuals doing it. As a graphics designer you should be quite aware that re-painting a 64*64 image in 256*256 and repeating that for all of the hundreds of images of a given game is not trivial, it's frustrating and time-consuming. So is re-designing a graphic layout from a 320*480 resolution to 768*1024 - it's not just about making buttons larger. Even then, the basic understanding of what it means to be a customer seems to have gone hazy on the App Store. You don't buy things by estimating the work done to create them, you purchase them by estimating their value to you. If a new feature has no value to you, then you don't pay for it. If you find that its asking price matches your perception of value, then you buy it and enjoy your purchase. But yelling that the developer's work has no value, but you still deserve to have that work because you want it and you already paid for something else a year ago - it doesn't really make sense, does it? You're confusing bug fixes with new value-adding features. Bug fixes are obviously the responsibility of the developer to fix during a reasonable timeframe of support. Blizzard's customers pay every month for their WoW updates, and will pay for every episode of Starcraft II separately. Either business model obviously differs from the one being discussed here. But if you're willing to pay for subscription, this conversation doesn't need to go any further. Demanding free content and feature updates because you've paid $1-$5 for a game you have already enjoyed and had no complaints about is unreasonable and downright disrespectful: free doesn't pay developers' wages any more than it does yours. How would you like to have "long-time supporters" who complain if your product costs more than a dollar, complain if additional content is not free and complain if new platforms are not supported for free. How much service do you feel entitled to for one dollar? By the exact same logic why not demand Nintendo to give you Wii versions of Metroid Prime series for free if you had them on GameCube. After all, it's the same hardware & OS and they only changed the game to support widescreen and Wiimote, right?
LOL. Someone actually thinks the Wii has the same hardware and OS? It has a different CPU, graphics chip, different motherboard, and a completely different OS. What are you on? I can understand both sides. One side. The developers. Are they really greedy? Yes of coarse they are, it's a business either way you look at it. They'll think any way they can to make themselves more money. Are they practically giving you the same game with only texture updates (most games)? Yes they are. A poster mentioned Soosiz HD. Now I can't tell a big difference b/w both versions on my iPad, now that is a waste. How long did this take? 2 days to make into a another app slapped on with an HD tag on it? Iugo got there apps into HD in one package as a free update and that's how it should have been done. No, Now that I think of it, I only understand the buyer side. Most of these iPad game developers should be booed.
The Wii is roughly a GameCube with higher clockspeeds. It has the same feature set as far as graphics goes, and is binary compatible with GameCube games. In essence, it's a GC in a new plastic box with higher clockspeeds, a fancy controller and 3X the price. No wonder Nintendo makes profit, eh? Read here for more details: Newsweek article.
just get the HD versions that really add something different (labyrinth 2 for exapmle) and just upsize the rest! no big deal!
I ordered an ipad but won't have it until next week. I am planning to buy HD versions of my favorite iphone games and just move over iphone versions of games I enjoy.
You base this statement on what evidence? Look at the arguments against these upgrades to the iPhone software. The arguments are generally poorly expressed and quite angry. Worse yet, many don't hold up to logical analysis. That sounds like an emotional response to me. Treating an emotional problem with logic is only going to make the problem worse, not better. There is a marketing solution, but first we have to acknowledge the root cause. Speaking of root causes, something else occurred to me that is probably helping drive consumer outrage. As developers, we didn't really think through how customers would view the concept of universal apps. We saw it as available options. Which one do we pick? Customers OTOH internalized it as a promise of software portability. Apple told them that it is within developers' power to make the iPhone software work well for the iPad using the same executable. Without realizing it, I think customers have a deep rooted expectation that they should be able to have the same software in two places. The fact that many titles are different programs for different prices "feels" (note the emotional term) like developers breaking a promise that Apple made. Again, since it's an emotional response, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Many customers probably even feel bad about feeling the way they do. But it is what it is. Like any consumer, I feel it too. Trying to understand and communicate those feelings is the hardest part. Because they won't make logical sense.
Wii is no doubt a cheaply made system, actually it's utter crap if you think about it and it has the same motion controls as the failed Zavix system a few years before the Wii, even had the same motion bar and everything. WiiSports even plays oddly familiar to some of the ones games on the older system. Anywho, still the hardware inside is all new, updated graphics chip and CPU, and like nintendo said, even an entirely new operating system, unlike wants going on with the iphone and iPad. At least they took a lot of time making the wii version of metroid prime and took a couple of years to do it.
I like what jeffy had to say. They seemed very logical, but I guess to a developer they're poor because they're on the other end. In reality, it is the developers arguments that are very poorly stated.
While that's a reasonable argument to make for some pre-existing games, any developers who make a game starting from today will most certainly have the prudence to create their art assets in HD from the outset and then scale them down appropriately for each device. There would no longer be added cost to redevelop the app for the iPad because the developer will be designing and developing it to work on both devices from the outset. So would it still be justified for the developer to charge a customer a second time for what is 99.9% the exact same game? I still personally feel that the best approach is to give a hi-res iPad version to your iPhone customers for free, but leave open the option to sell them a separate, premium iPad version with new features and options. Simply because not everyone will want to pay for those new features, they simply want to play their iPhone game on their iPad at a higher resolution and without having to scale it up.
This might very well be the best approach for a lot of people (=people owning both iPads and iPhones). Personally however I would prefer my phone not to be filled up with apps that takes four times the space needed due to loads of iPad resources. A game like Monkey Island 2 for instance would be humongous! I really don't think there is a perfect solution to this conomÂ… connonÂ… conomonononÂ… PROBLEM!
