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by npunt 978 days ago
Great read, very eye opening.

> Similar to developing for macOS, a Mac is pretty much required for developing for iOS and there’s the $100 per year developer membership fee. I think the combined income of both iOS and macOS (95% of which comes from iOS) barely covers the cost of the membership fee and the cheapest Mac Mini.

I think this contextualizes the post well, seems like overall revenues might be in the <$10k or even <$5k range. That's extremely hobby territory (/buying lottery ticket territory). Feels like at that scale a 'build whatever makes you happiest' heuristic is healthier for the individual and cross-platform support works against you.
4 comments
alberth 978 days ago
For $100/year developer fee, you’d expect better developer documentation in return.

Just say’n.

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moritonal 978 days ago
Their MacOS revenues might have been <$10k, but given they have a 1000 reviews on Steam and their Android has 100K+ downloads I imagine the total revenue is more like >£80k
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npunt 978 days ago
If you read the quote, MacOS plus iOS is <$1k (cheapest mac mini + apple dev acct). Given that the article stated iOS & Android have equivalent revenue, you're looking Android+iOS+MacOS at <$1500 revenue. Its not a mobile-first game but 100k downloads suggests a single Android download is worth a penny, give or take. Brutal.
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kevingadd 978 days ago
The average Steam release makes less that that, IIRC.

https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/11/28/the-median-indie-gam...

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Clamchop 978 days ago
On the other hand, it's hard to predict where your product needs to be to find a spark that sets a fire.
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inhumantsar 978 days ago
I don't feel like it's terribly hard to predict that the Mac gaming market is going too small to make financial sense for a solo-dev game
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Clamchop 978 days ago
I'm not necessarily talking about whether the market is _large_ but rather whether users on that platform and its users will participate in raising its profile to a tipping point. More than one platform is likely to contribute to this.

Users follow other users, if they can.

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reactordev 978 days ago
There is a market but not for the hobbyist. You have better luck on iOS than macOS for games. However, tools, you can make a killing selling simple tools with sexy UX on Mac.
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iamstupidsimple 978 days ago
> However, tools, you can make a killing selling simple tools with sexy UX on Mac.

I've been thinking about doing something like this recently but I'm not a heavy mac user these days. Any tips on what people are looking for in small tools?

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reactordev 978 days ago
Know your market. If you aren’t a heavy Mac user then you probably should develop for your space. Any attempt will be met with headache as you fight Apple certification, design aesthetics, and enshitification of your code base to support the nuances of Apple.

Ask yourself, what tools can I build that are not only useful to me, but maybe useful to others, and start there.

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