That will probably take some time. The improvements we see will most likely be in small increments. Too many customers still have older devices to be ignored.
3G hasn't even been fully implemented yet. 4G won't be ready for at least a couple of years. But that's not to say Apple won't release an updated 3G based phone.
Since the top grossing list for the holidays, which shows who's actually making money and not just shipping units, is: 1) dominated by brands from major publishers instead of indie titles of arguably higher quality 2) the indie game you point out hardly uses graphics as the main selling point Then according to you this doesn't support my claim that indie games with high production values get buried in the app store, and that high quality (alone) doesn't guarantee sales in a marketplace which obviously favors brands. Let's just say I disagree with your assessment. Will the quality of graphics go up in 2010? Yes, it will. However, the highest quality graphics will most likely come from professional independent studios who are passionate about their games. Big publishers tend to be aggressively business-driven and consider their products ready for sale with much less polish. It's also important to understand the difference between artistic quality and technical quality. These concepts seem to get mixed and blurred in most conversations, with people often cheering for games with subjectively good visual design but lousy technical implementation.
i think we will see 2 trends. One is more small companies becoming establish as reputable game companies and continue pushing out more titles. the other is bigger studios releasing more console games titles and develop graphic rich game titles. on indie developers, we will see more success examples of doodle jump. although not very often, we will see continual effort from this community. there is still a lot of nice games from them. due to the huge pool of apps in the appstore, their games will not hit the mainstream so easy. I think this will continue but gamers know where to look out for great games. TA is doing very well here. I hope apple improve the appstore for indie games and maybe one day they add features like related games and better review system so that indie games can be easy noticed. maybe TA should release a free app for game review. so more people can get news about the game scene.
Frand, I won't disagree with your point. What I think indies in general tend to miss is content. I am seeing far too many gimmicky concepts. For example a game called Chop Stix was just released. From the game discription it's an artistically rendered game about catching flies with chop sticks. Why would I pay to do that. In this case it won't be graphics that cause it's undoing. Getting all dressed up with nothing to do sucks. Even if it were free, I couldn't justify the memory space. It is not a given that indies will lose out to the big guys. Gameloft titles tend to be bland, but right now I buy them because they give me something interesting to do with those pretty graphics. As I see it, that's the challenge for indie developers. Keep in mind this is in the context of the OP's original topic.
Well, I won't comment on the content of the game yet, but I hope you'll agree that the graphics have improved: Please keep in mind this is all work in progress and the graphics you see above are unlikely to be exactly as in the above screenshot when the game is finally released. But the above is a screenshot from an iPhone 3GS with a placeholder UI overlaid on realtime graphics.
