| I think you are missing the point here so I'll layout the three reasons price is a big deal to some (I'm basing my arguments on the ($1000 per platform price because that is the first place I think it's really worth while): 1. If I'm bootstrapping a startup, That $2000 is easily at least 1 entire year of web hosting, or a new MacBook, or a couple of new servers. Bootstrapping has thin enough margains that $2000 is a large amount of money and runway for a young company and that's only for one dev. Have two dev's? that's even more of your runway gone. $4000 could sustain two devs for two months if they are really cheap and try hard. Xamarin is unlikely to save you that two months. 2. If I'm developing an indie game there are A HUGE amount of cheaper better options available. Unity, Unreal, Cry Tech, cocos2D/3D, or Apportable. All cheaper and better for game dev. 3. If I'm learning how to develop mobile apps with the hope of obtaining a full time job. Then Xamarin job posts are fairly rare, so spending even $600 to learn the dev process and then still not have the skills to get a full time position is a losing value equation. 4. There are cheaper tools out there, like Ruby Motion or Apportable. I think the Xamarin guys are brilliant and made a great product but I think the value is very limited to existing Dot Net or independent app developers. Yes it makes a lot of sense for those groups but there are a ton of others that the price is a real barrier to entry. |
The only way your math makes sense to me is if a start-up only plans on releasing for one platform at first. If you're going to build an iOS app first and only move on to Android if that iOS app is successful than it probably doesn't make sense to use Xamarin.
If you're planning on doing both iOS and Android at the same time (and maybe Windows Phone as well), the added developer hours (same dev or an additional dev) to build the same project in another language instead of sharing 50% of the code and just building another UI would probably cost you more.
I never heard anyone for Xamarin selling it as a game dev solution. IIRC Unity is actually running on the same Mono engine from Xamarin (it's an open source project, but I think they're running it). Last time I checked some of those other solutions had expensive licenses too.
Xamarin is still too new to see lots of job postings looking for that skill. I also think that in the near future companies using Xamarin will use it for LOB apps. That's a big market for .Net developers building desktop software or internal web sites. A transition to Xamarin might makes sense for both these companies and these developers.
The bottom line, products are targeted at specific customers. Xamarin could have decided to go after the start-ups, but since most start-ups are content with releasing an app on a single platform first, the proposition of getting additional platforms with less work isn't that enticing. It's much easier to sell the product to an enterprise as their cost for multiple teams with different skills would be a lot higher than the Xamarin license.