| I think the only important difference between the $300 and $1000 licences is the Visual Studio add-in and while I prefer VS to Xamarin Studio, I would assume the starving devs at a start-up will be fine with it. 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. |