by Dan East » Jan 11, 2006 @ 4:12pm
Wow, this post got really, really long. I'm not even sure if there is much of a point to all this rambling. Sorry!
One year (my banner year) I sold almost 1000 copies of DEXplor directly through my website (IE 97% profit - paypal takes around 3%) at $13.95. It has never been listed on Handago. I do have it listed on PocketGear, where it has sold maybe 15 copies over 4 years.
The PPC market is a very strange market, which is why there are so few big publishing houses creating games for it. In a way that is surprising, considering how many devices are out there. The very first ARM Pocket PC, the iPaq 3600, sold over 1 million units. Pocket PC surpassed Palm in sales over a year ago. So there are many millions of devices out there. The problem is the demographics of the owners are quite varied, and most of them are not in the market to purchase games.
Commercial devices. You've got a certain percentage of devices tied up in dedicated commercial use (WalMart uses ruggadized Pocket PCs to manage jobs at the their tire / lube centers. We went to a rodeo last week and they were scanning tickets with the same model Pocket PC WalMart uses). My business partner (an internist) reports that most of the pharmaceutical drug reps that deliver sample drugs utilize Pocket PCs to inventory what they distribute, and to collect signatures from the physicians. We have hospitals that purchase and utilize Pocket PCs for the sole purpose of running our medical software. To the gaming market, these devices don't even exist. They will never run any additional 3rd party software. This probably represents the largest percentage of devices in existence.
Executive, wealthy class. This bunch owns Pocket PCs because a) their friends own them, b) the cost is a drop in the bucket to them, and c) they often actually use them as PDAs which suites their lifestyle. This group seldom goes beyond the preinstalled software. I know of two other physicians with Pocket PCs that use them purely as PDAs. They are just another gadget lined up on their desk along with their blackberry, cell phone and tablet PC. One specific physician is a pretty hardcore gamer that mostly plays first person shooters. I asked him if he had ever played Quake on his PPC. He didn't even know it existed. He did not associate gaming (beyond solitaire) with his Pocket PC at all. So although it would appear he would be the perfect target consumer (being an avid gamer with a Pocket PC and money to spend) he is not a factor. If he wants to play games on the go then he will buy the appropriate hardware - in his case probably a PSP. So this demographic is also not a factor in selling PPC games.
Kids. This group either saved up money and bought their own PPC, or finally talked their parents into buying one for them (usually with an argument having to do with school and better grades). At one time it was extremely evident that the biggest demographic at PocketMatrix (in the General forums, not here in the developer area) consisted of this group. This demographic desires games more than any other. The big problem is that they have no money to spend on games, and even when they have cash they won't spend it on software. It is the group that primarily drives the warez scene by providing the demand for software.
Commuters. Now, in my opinion, this is the largest demographic for buying PPC software. When I say commuters, I'm talking specifically about public transportation, which should give a big hint that this group is not in the USA. The reason I say this is because of my DEXplor sales. More than 50% of sales were to Germans - and amazingly DEXplor is English-only. My theory is that this demographic is comprised of many middle class individuals, that do have some extra money to spend, and that have a decent amount of time to kill during commutes. This is an educated bunch, so I would expect more involved and sophisticated games would appeal to them.
The real issue we face as PPC developers is the changes in technology. For over a decade the only significant portable gaming device was the Game Boy and Game Boy color. Even the GBA couldn't hold a candle to what a Pocket PC was capable of. If you wanted the best (potentially) in portable gaming the PPC was it. Heck, it was the only way to even watch movies on a portable device. Now things are totally different. We have the DS and PSP. You can't even buy a cellphone now without a color screen, and almost all of them come complete with totally crap java based games (most of which are an abomination to what we call gaming, and exist solely to make the carrier money), that end up fulfilling whatever small desire the average person has to play games on the go. You can purchase a notebook computer for less than the high end Pocket PCs. Notebook sales have surpassed desktop sales - something many (myself included) thought would never happen. You can now purchase portable DVD players with a 7" screen for $100 at Wal Mart. So what does all this mean? Well, that more and more people who purchase Pocket PCs will be limiting them to PDA only use, because they can get the other functionality from dedicated hardware that does a better job and can be purchased for less money.
To make things sound even more bleak, even Microsoft and the OEMs appear to have no interest in making gaming a success on Pocket PCs. Pre-PocketPC, Microsoft provided no support for games whatsoever. Jimmy Software and others hacked their Casio E-105s to directly access the display buffer, which made the first real games possible. With Pocket PC Microsoft provided the most rudimentary support they possibly could - a formal pointer to the display and exclusive access to the hardware keys. Even then, with some devices, like the iPaq 38xx, we still had to revert to hard coded direct display access to get decent performance. Why does PocketHAL even need to exist? Because no-one at Microsoft or the OEMs give a crap about gaming. Why hasn't a single OEM produced one single Pocket PC specifically with gaming in mind? I'm talking about a PPC with hardware controls that even remotely resemble a gamepad - the DPad on the left and buttons on the right.
Finally, we've got Handago, which has managed to obtain a monopoly on PPC software sales. And what a terrible steward they have been. The amount of pure crap listed on that site is obscene. As has been said a hundred times now, if a product does not make the top ten list, then it is doomed to obscurity - relegated to a small listing buried 10 pages deep amid a cesspool of crap. I saw one listing, in the Pocket PC section, trying to sell a PC game that had supposedly been written on a Pocket PC. Give me a break.
The only really successful way to promote a game I can think of, besides being in the top ten at Handago (and you might as well go play the lottery instead of shooting for that), is to find a specific demographic, in a specific country if necessary, and target them directly in their online community, wherever that may be at that specific point in time. Even so, that will only work for significant games - your basic puzzle games simply aren't exciting enough to generate any buzz.
Dan East
Handango and PocketGear
