Yesterday I posted some info that suggested a two-tier Xbox LIVE marketplace on Windows Phone 7, and that I thought it was a massive mistake on Microsoft's part. Today I had a lengthy chat with Paul Foster, a Microsoft Developer Evangelist, about that post. He wanted to give some more details about how things worked to avoid me having to draw my own conclusions.
We went into Xbox LIVE publishing in great detail, and I decided to get Paul to confirm some of the things we discussed by email so I could post them here, for those that had read my previous post and were worried. Paul was unable to answer all of the questions (due to various things being hush-hush at this time), but said he'll answer them when he can. Below I've included his answers, along with the outstanding questions we'll hopefully have answers for in the future!
Q: Will Microsoft engage directly with small companies/individuals that have great games, ready to publish (to become part of the managed portfolio)?
A: Microsoft's XBL team and importantly a range of 3rd party XBL publishers are looking out for new opportunities, in fact at GDC 2010 and Mix10 the wpgames@microsoft.com alias was advertised asking for indie games devs to submit their game concepts they are building. The important point here is that if you want your game to be a big success you have to do more than just post it into an app store. You need to think about it as a manuscript for a book and take it around various publishers to get opinion and seek publishing opportunities. Publishers have the skill and capability to market your game and find bigger publishing opportunities – such as XBL. Publishing by default into an app store isn't enough for success when big numbers of people are doing just that – you need to do more than just develop your game, you need to drive the commercial publishing of it and the ecosystem of XBL provides broad opportunities for publishing. If after doing all that, the best opportunity for you is to publish straight into the marketplace then work at advertising your game. Seek magazine or blog reviewers, publish videos of it and ensure you have a cool web landing page for it. None of this stuff costs much and can raise the profile of your game.
Q: How are managed/unmanaged portfolio games separated in the store (visually/category-wise)?
A: All apps/games are in the single app store, filed by various categories. There are various merchandising locations in the marketplace and in the Games hub – these will be driven by various metrics from the store as well as for apps/games of planned marketing activities.
The following questions are unanswered as yet, but it seems like the answers will be positive for indies!
Q: Will there be separate "top sellers" / "what's new"-type lists for managed/unmanaged portfolio games, or combined lists?
Q: Are managed/unmanaged games separated in search results (if I search by name)?
Q: Will there by managed/unmanaged portfolios of apps too, or games only?
Update: Today I had a lengthy chat with Paul Foster, a Microsoft Developer Evangelist, about this post. I posted an update here.
Ever since I had my first iPaq with the .NET Compact Framework, I've wanted to code for a Microsoft mobile device. Coding in C# and Visual Studio is by far the nicest coding experience I've come across in the 15 or so years I've been programming. Unfortunately, up until now, Microsoft's mobile operating systems have all been absolutely rubbish.
Windows Phone 7 is set to change all that. Everything I've seen suggests Microsoft have finally got their act together, and WP7 looks set to be a huge success. Finally I can have the Windows phone I've always wanted!
Over the past couple of months, I've been reading more about developing for Windows Phone 7, and in the last few weeks, I've been playing around with both Silverlight and XNA as part of this. The experience is great, and I've been really looking forward to working on a game for WP7. I've spent the last few months of my spare time working on an iPhone app, and it's so nice to be able to switch Xcode/Objective-C for Visual Studio and C#!
However, there may be a problem...
I was just pointed to this page by a fellow XNA coder. Although not entirely clear, my interpretation of this text surprises, and shocks me. (Emphasis mine).
To answer, it's important to understand that we have a managed portfolio for Xbox LIVE titles on Windows Phone 7. As we looked at how the mobile gaming industry was evolving, it was obvious that there's a significant problem with the "race to zero" – or having too many, mixed quality titles available on a marketplace. Too many offerings makes it very hard for any specific title to stand out (no matter how high-quality), and negatively impacts the overall business ecosystem by making it almost impossible for developers to earn a fair return on their work. Our goal with the Windows Phone 7 games that utilize Xbox LIVE services is to cultivate a portfolio of high-quality titles that are regularly released – this is very similar to the portfolio management we do for Xbox LIVE Arcade titles.
This sounds to me, an awful lot like the current Xbox LIVE Arcade situation. Indie titles (eg., those created by people that do not have commercial relationships with Microsoft) are relegated to a crappy sub-category of "Indie Games".
You may be wondering what the big deal is here - surely we want to keep all this "indie crap" generated by bedroom coders hidden away so we can see stuff output by the real companies, eh? Well, not so. Not only are there "real games companies" that develop this way (because they're just not big enough to have this kind of relationship with Microsoft), there are also a lot or really good quality games output by "bedroom coders".
If you look at the Apple/iTunes App Store, every application or game sits equal. A game I publish, sits alongside a game published by a large company like EA. There are "league tables" for ratings and sales, which allow the best games (whether they're from a large games publisher, or a single coder in his bedroom) to rise to the top. For all of the faults with Apple's App Store, this is how it should be. If an individual puts out some work that is better than EA, then it deserves to be above them. Consumers care games, not about the companies (or individuals) behind them.
I have no real idea, but I would estimate that at least 75% of all apps/games on the App Store are created by individuals or companies too small to have relationships with Microsoft. That is a huge portion of apps/games to relegate to "the shit section". One of the reasons the iPhone did so well was because of the third party software. If Microsoft screws over the huge majority of developers like this, it will absolutely affect the success of their platform. We're already lacking things like Achievements - it's already going to be hard to convince users they should buy our game instead of EAs's, so pushing us into the amateur category will just make things harder (And therefore, less worthwhile).
My interpretation of the quoted text may be incorrect. I really hope it is. It's also possible this affects only games, and not apps. Who knows? If games created by me are relegated on Windows Phone 7 like they are on the Xbox, then I'll simply put up with Xcode/Objective-C, and go back to coding for Apple's platform. And this means, despite my desite for a WP7 phone, I'd probably end up buying a new iPhone, and not a WP7 phone.
Until this little mystery is confirmed, one way or another, my WP7 game is on hold :-(
Monday, 16 August 2010
3 comments Google Buzz First off, let me get this out of the way before you get the wrong impression of me...
I HATE TWITTER.
It's always down, it's full of spambots, and 140 characters is just too short. If I find myself going back to shorten words to fit like an SMS, then I'm afraid it's something wrong with Twitter. It can't be me because I don't know any big words.
So, with that out of the way, you know I'm not a Twitter Fanboi. Infact, you can probably conclude that I'm a Google Fanboi. I host my domains at Google, I use their email (Apps for Domain - all free!), I even wrote this blog in Python - a language I've never used before, because I love App Engine. I'm a Google Trusted tester, and have been beta testing new features in Buzz for a few months. I'd go and work for Google at the drop of a hat.
Hate Twitter, Love Google, but Ditching Buzz? WTF?
It might sound a bit crazy, but there are good reasons. And in the interests of being constructive, I'm going to list them here. Some of them might (will) contradict things said above, but tough. That's how it is.
- Not enough people using it. It's catch 22, but all the people I want to follow do not use Buzz, so I have to use Twitter too. I don't need two services doing (mostly) the same thing.
- Posts are too long. This might sound stupid given I said Twitter was too short, but the problem with Buzz is that it takes too long to catch up with things. I should be able to skip over a summary of posts, with a link to read more for the things that entice me. Twitter got the number of characters wrong, but the idea of restricting things right. I can skim over 24 hours of Twitter in 5 minutes. Not true of Buzz.
- Google Buzz still can't sort properly. This one >really bugs me. Googlers suggested muting, but this is a pain in the ass, and will also break Google's clever algorithm that learns what I want to read. I want to read it - I just don't want comments sending it to the top!
- There are no decent iPad clients. I love Twitterrific on my iPad. Buzz doesn't have any decent clients (seemingly on any platform). I don't like web-based apps, they just aren't written to work with the device, and they're slow. I totally get that Google want to be web-based and work on all platforms. That really is great - but they will definitely lose out a little against clients written specifically for a device.
Some of these reasons are linked - eg. a decent client would surely sort properly :-) However, one of the problems that a third party can't solve is that it's impossible to render a decent "summary" of a Buzz post. The web application shows the first few lines, but this rarely represents the content of the article.
I totally believe Google Buzz could easily become a better service than Twitter (Apples to Oranges, I know, but there isn't really need for both). Unfortunately it has some major issues that just make it hard for me to use. It's entirely possible that my use case is wrong, and that it's a fantastic service for other people. For me, however, it just doesn't fit. It's like a lame version of Google Reader, without the awesome third party iPad apps.
In the interests of getting feedback from people that might not visit to leave comments, I'll be following this post in Google Buzz too, though it's probably the only thing in Buzz I will be following!
Sunday, 15 August 2010
0 comments .NET Games XNA Rob Hutchinson, a talented programmer I used to work with, from nullcity.com has just release a game called Breeze on the Xbox LIVE Indie Marketplace. It was built using Kitae, his 2D XNA Game Engine. I'm really impressed with how this game turned out, and I think it's going to do really well in the marketplace. I thought I'd plug it here, as I know many readers are XNA coders :-)
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
0 comments .NET Games XNA With the iPhone app I've been working on nearing completion, and Windows Phone 7 + XNA 4.0 in sight, I recently decided to get back into game creation. I've previously released a game on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, Jungle Blocks, but it wasn't very good, because I was somewhat excited about the idea of my game being live, and pushed the button before it was really finished.
So, here I am again. Take 2. This time, I want to finish something. A game to be proud of! It doesn't matter how long it takes to finish, I've already done the whole XBLIG thing, so I aim to take my time and do it right.
In order to keep me motivated, I decided to encourage my colleagues to get involved, by declaring a games programming competition. Until now, nobody else at work really knew XNA, so by getting others involved, there will be people to talk to and discuss ideas with. To encourage people to join in, even if they have other priorities, we set a 6 month deadline and set down minimal ground rules. To keep things fair, we decided:
- Games must be legally publishable - e.g. no copyright material
- No paid-for assets
We didn't define a platform/technology, to allow for iPhone, Android and other platforms, but as it turned out, all but one participant decided on XNA :-)
It would be kinda lame for someone outside our company to win the competition, so I'm afraid you guys are official excluded. However, if you're interested in learning something new, I encourage you guys to lay down a similar challenge at your workplaces. If you do, be sure to let me know - I'd be interested to see how other people get on with the same challenge :-)
I was toying with the idea of creating "Jungle Blocks 2" for the Windows Phone 7, since it wouldn't be hard to do, and if it was ready for WP7 launch, it could probably make a few quid before the marketplace fills up. However, because I have a (small, but real) advantage over my colleagues (having used XNA before) and because a few of them are ambitious enough to be doing 3D, I feel somewhat pressured into not being a wuss with a 2D game...
So, my plan is now to build a small 3D RPG for the Xbox, something not too different to Zelda 64 or Mario 64 (though on a much smaller scale ;-)). I've not really played with 3D, so this feels like enough of a challenge that I'll learn a ton of stuff, but simple enough that I (hopefully) won't just abandon it half-way through (something I may have a reputation for...).
Over the coming months, I'll blog about what I'm doing as I go. I can't promise I won't give up and go back to a 2D Jungle Blocks, but at least if I do, I can say I tried!
Thursday, 05 August 2010
0 comments Mobile Phones Those that follow me on twitter have probably noticed me talking about giffgaff a lot lately. This isn't just some scam to try and earn money - I really believe what giffgaff are doing is fantastic. They're bringing lower prices (and cash for referring friends) by saving money by not having expensive TV ads or call centres. But this post isn't about who giffgaff are - you can read that in a previous post.
Payback
To encourage customers to spread the word, giffgaff offers £5 to new customers that are referred by a friend. The friend also gets £5 as a thank you. So everyone wins. Additionally, you can earn money by helping out in the forums or even send emails to your friends about giffgaff. The cash you earn can be paid out as credit or even real cash via paypal!
So, over the last few weeks I've been spreading the love, and earning a few quid. To show how easy this is, I decided to publish my earnings each month to show what you can earn! I'll update this post each month with the latest figures.
July 2010 Earnings - £59.52
- Sim cards activated £5.00 x 8 = £40.00
- Emails sent £0.50 x 10 = £5.00
- Forum participation £14.52
- Total: £59.52
Note: The forum participation figure may be different each month, and depends on how much you post. The top posters earn around £28 in a month!
This is a very reasonable amount of cash for doing very little work, and it suggests that not only will I never pay for my mobile usage, I'll probably be able to pick up new handsets for free (or almost free) too!
If all this sounds good, and you want a free sim card with £5 credit to get started (Note: You only get the £5 if you are referred, and you must buy credit to activate the sim card and receive it), then request one here!
Version 1.9 of Google Wave Notifier is now available. Unfortunately I didn't get around to adding Google Apps support, because it's turning out to be more complicated than expected, but I'm still hoping to have it done soon. The new features in v1.9 are:
- Changed source code over to Mercurial from SVN :)
- Added ability to customise the URL used to open Wave to support options like "minimized:nav,minimized:contact".
- Reduced minimum poll frequency to 1 minute.
- Added code to check for the presence of a network before checking for new waves in the background.
Fore more info, visit the Google Wave Notifier website or go direct to the Google Code project page for the download.
The source code for Google Wave Notifier is available (using Mercurial), so if you're got an idea for some new features, I'm open to acceptable patches!
For further updates on Google Wave Notifier, you can follow @WaveNotifier on Twitter!
Sunday, 25 July 2010
1 comments iPhone Books Over the last few years, I've picked up a few O'Reilly books on my iPhone from the App Store. It's not particularly fun reading on an iPhone screen (especially pre-iPhone4), but the books are crazy cheap. Like £3 cheap!
I figured that the reason these books were so cheap, was that they're locked to the iPhone, and you can't read them on your PC or other device. So I was pretty made up when I realised that any (most) iPhone apps work sync to the iPad!
Unfortunately, I didn't realise the iPad would render text so nastily at double-size (I'm hoping iOS4 will fix this).
Nevermind. Today, I found a gem on the official O'Reilly site. How to extract EPUB books from those cheap book-apps we've been buying. This will allow you to read them in your browser, or any other device that supports the EPUB format. This means you can read those books in iBooks on your iPad :)
For the less technical, I've put together some screenshots showing how to do this. First, find the app in the Apps section of iTunes. Right-click and choose "Show in Explorer/Finder".
Windows Explorer (or Finder, if you're on a Mac) will open, and highlight the file for this book. Right-click and choose Copy.
Paste the file somewhere temporary, and rename it to end in ".zip".
Double-click the zip file, and navigate to the Payload folder.
Inside the Payload folder, you'll see a .app folder. Navigate into that.
Inside, you'll find a folder called "book". This is the interesting one. Right-click, and choose Copy.
Paste the folder somewhere, and navigate inside it. You'll see three items: A folder called "META-INF", a folder called "OEBPS" and a file called "mimetype". Highlight these files, right-click and choose Send To -> Zipped folder.
Rename the new folder to end with the extension ".epub" and copy it to a folder where you would like to store your books. Then from within iTunes, choose "File -> Add Folder to Library" and select this new folder. Alternatively, you can drag the epub file into iTunes.
That's it! Now your book will appear in the Books section of iTunes, and will sync into iBooks on your iPad. You can also transfer the file to other devices that can read this format.
This makes those very-attractive O'Reilly books look even more attractive!
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
0 comments Mobile Phones Since posting about giffgaff, I've had quite a lot of emails request sim cards. I decided to make the process a little easier by adding a form to the page. If you're like a giffgaff sim card with £5 free credit (which you can only get by being referred to giffgaff), then please fill in this form.
For lots of reasons why should you move to giffgaff, see the original post :-)
Update 27th Aug 2010: giffgaff have added a new £5/month Goodybag which gives 2p/min calls and 1p/sms! No better time to request a free sim!
Update: giffgaff have extended their half-price goodybag deal for another month! No better time to request a free sim with £5 of credit!
When my 18 month iPhone contract on O2 recently came to an end, I was surprised to find that moving to O2 PAYG was far cheaper than moving to their simplicity tariff. Additionally, the simplicity tariff was a 12 month contract unless you paid an extra £5/month. This was a no-brainer. I might want an iPhone 4 in a few months, so a 12-month contract (that is still more expensive) is out of the question. I moved to O2 PAYG.
Only a few weeks later, I seriously started looking at giffgaff, a company I'd been told about by @monkeyonahill. It turns out, giffgaff are owned by Telefonica O2. The company is run independently, but is a virtual operator on the O2 network. This means the infrastructure is exactly the same as you get with O2.
Prices
So, let's get on. The reason giffgaff looked attractive, was the prices. giffgaff don't have call centres, or TV adverts, or other expensive crap. They're lean, and they pass their savings on to their members. This shows in the prices!
- Calls and texts between giffgaff members are always free, provided you have topped up within three months
- Calls to other mobiles and landlines are 8p per minute
- Text messages to other mobiles and landlines are 4p each
- Mobile internet is free for everyone until 1st October
- 0800 numbers are free
If you compare these prices to your current tariff, I'm sure you'll be surprised. But I know what you're thinking - you get inclusive calls/texts, right? Well giffgaff can do that to!
giffgaff sell "goodybags" which last a month, but generally work out cheaper if you use your phone a lot. For July and August, all goodybags are half-price! This means for £5, you get:
- 100 minutes
- Unlimited texts (no, really!)
- Unlimited internet (no, really!)
You can also "queue up" a goodybag, so for this month, you can pay £10 and get this goodybag for both this month and next month!
Unlimited? My Arse!
Something that truly annoys me, is the use of the word "unlimited", when it doesn't mean unlimited. In giffgaff's case, it really is unlimited. This may change in the future, but for now, you're not going to get told off for surfing too much or sending too many texts!
Keep Your Number!
As with all mobile networks, you can bring your number over to giffgaff. You don't have to do this straight away - you could request a sim below, and test it out with the assigned number, and then if you decide to stick it out, get a PAC code from your current provider and port your number in!
Interested? Want a Free Sim with £5 Credit?
Because giffgaff is "people powered" and doesn't spend lots of money on marketing, it's up to their members to help them grow. As such, if a member refers a friend, they each get £5! (I got mine thanks to @appleboyy). You also earn money back for other things like helping out in the forums.
If you're interested in trying out giffgaff and would like a sim card with £5 credit for free, then please fill in the form below. You can also request sim cards direct from the giffgaff website, however unfortuantely, you won't get £5 free credit.
Please note: You will need to purchase credit (currently £5 with the half-price goodybag) to activate the sim card. This does not need to be done now - only once you have received the sim card from giffgaff.
For more info, do check out the giffgaff website. If you have questions, pop by the forums. The members are a friendly bunch, and happy to answer your questions!
I really think companies like giffgaff are the way forward. Today people are used to hunting around to save money and we're becoming less reliant on things like TV advertising to find things. Let's hope this is a sign of things to come - spend 10 minutes on Google, save a fortune :-)
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