No-cost desktop software development is dead on Windows 8

[Adrian Lopez]

According to Ars Technica:

Microsoft wants Windows developers to write Windows 8-specific, Metro-style, touch-friendly applications, and to make sure that they crank these apps out, the company has decided that Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-use version of its integrated development environment, can produce nothing else.

If you want to develop desktop applications—anything that runs at the command line or on the conventional Windows desktop that remains a fully supported, integral, essential part of Windows 8—you'll have two options: stick with the current Visual C++ 2010 Express and Visual C# 2010 Express products, or pay about $400-500 for Visual Studio 11 Professional.

[Applewood]

$500 for a compiler of such quality is a trifle. It sets the benchmark that no other dev environment approaches*. And we know, we build on all kinds of systems and are constantly pining to get back on PC purely because of VS. (We're currently on the 2008 version)

* Actually the free mac option is a good second but that's not for pc.

[Adrian Lopez]

$500 for a compiler of such quality is a trifle.

I'd rather spend those $500 on something else, but for me the problem has less to do with cost and more to do with Microsoft's plans for the future. Microsoft is pushing Metro style apps along with a distribution model that depends on Microsoft approving and adding one's software to their App Store. I'd rather be able to sell games on my own website, without regard to whatever content restrictions Microsoft might wish to impose on the games they sell through their store.

Microsoft isn't doing this to sell more copies of Visual Studio, but to push its new software distribution model for no real benefit to developers. I consider the Microsoft-only distribution model a loss for both developers and consumers, though I'm sure there will be many who, like those whose vision is clouded by Apple's reality distortion field, will think such a model is actually superior.

[Grey Alien]

Yeah it's not much. Way less than Abobe Suite for example (although I do believe that people pirate the hell out of that one).

[Bad Sector]

Too much drama for nothing.

You can always use Eclipse with CDT and MinGW and i'm sure that now Clang is available for Windows, you'll be able to use it too. And if you find Eclipse too bloated or whatever, you can use Qt Creator. GCC produces executables of comparable speed to MSVC and Clang is improving in a very fast rate. Also both GCC and Clang have much better support for the latest C and C++ standards (even one of the Visual Studio's engineers recommends GCC if you want good C support). If you need tools like a resource editor, sampling based profiler, graphical debugger, etc you can also use these with OpenWatcom whose compiler is a little less developed but includes a complete toolset.

Sure, none of the above have "Microsoft" plastered all over them, but that means zero. People did, do and will do real work with these tools. Express editions were available since only recently and unless your corebase is complete shit, switching compilers should be small matter (for example making my current codebase to compile under OpenWatcom was a matter of creating a project file for its "IDE" and setting a define in source code options).

Windows probably has more C and C++ compilers than any other platform.

EDIT: also to add, Microsoft isn't removing all options for free desktop application development tools. They will still provide VS10 for those who want a free desktop IDE. And you can always download their VS10 Express .iso and save the registration keys.

[Applewood]

Well it works for me. I don't know too much about it atm but I'll be watching closely.

The appearance of the mac appstore has made us put that format on the radar for future stuff. If there's ever finally a built in version for windows then it might be worth a punt.

[Adrian Lopez]

The problem is not the app store itself but the fact that you can't sell Metro style apps through any other channel.

I also can't help but wonder what Microsoft's model will mean for game pricing and market saturation.

[Applewood]

See my post elsewhere about fringe channels. If there's a shop button on the desktop, why would anyone want to sell it anywhere else? The existence of that button is the only reason we'd consider supporting this format tbh.

[Adrian Lopez]

If there's a shop button on the desktop, why would anyone want to sell it anywhere else?

The 30% cut Microsoft will take for all sales? The chance to sell games Microsoft won't carry because of their content? Not having to submit your games to Microsoft every time a new version is released?

[Applewood]

Well, as often - you go your way, I'll go that way.

[Adrian Lopez]

With Microsoft, it's "that way" or the highway, which is unfortunate. If people don't want to sell outside the app store, there's really no reason to force developers into selling through the app store.

[Jack Norton]

With Microsoft, it's "that way" or the highway, which is unfortunate. If people don't want to sell outside the app store, there's really no reason to force developers into selling through the app store.

That's why I'm dropping Ren'Py (sadly) for future games, and moving to Monkeycoder. The only way to sell freely games in future will be from your own website with HTML5 - nothing else.
I really think all this appstore madness is going to hurt negatively the market as you say, saturating it with crappy product but everyone has his own opinions

[Applewood]

That's why I'm dropping Ren'Py (sadly) for future games, and moving to Monkeycoder. The only way to sell freely games in future will be from your own website with HTML5 - nothing else.
I really think all this appstore madness is going to hurt negatively the market as you say, saturating it with crappy product but everyone has his own opinions

Yup, because non-appstore games are never shite.

I'd prefer to make 100% income selling from my own website tbh, who wouldn't. Unfortunately I can't market for shit, and even if I could my time would still be better spent programming than selling as programming will always be what I do best. You still need marketing to make a major success on an app store of course, but there's also a chance to get visibility on it and sell loads with little effort (I'm living proof). If I were selling GLWG from my own website only, I would've already had to jack it in and go work for the man again a long time back.

[Applewood]

I didn't know that was the intent, but I'm fairly sure there'll be a legal intervention on that one. Thankfully I'm happy with those terms anyway if that's how it sticks.

[Adrian Lopez]

What sort of legal intervention do you envision?

[Applewood]

What sort of legal intervention do you envision?

The usual unfair monopoly shit. Graphics drivers have always caused problems because MS were overuled about trying to keep quality control and testing in-house (refusing unapproved cards to install), by manufacturers who'd prefer to make shite hardware with bad, non-compliant drivers. Just one example, there's loads. These big firms are fighting all the time.

[Jack Norton]

The problem is that is not like if you get on an appstore you increase exposure by much, since they're flooded by submissions. Also, they limit your content. I don't make erotic games, but recent games are quite sexy, and while on my site I'm 100% safe, there's always the risk that for some idiot reason they could be removed from those appstores. Any limitation of freedom, even small, sucks IMHO
That said I'll surely put the games on those appstores in future, but still keep selling direct.

[Applewood]

I'm afraid you're wrong on that - I'm living proof. When there's an AppStore, there's a forum (or two) where a shitload of people congregate to discuss what's happening on it. Make a good game and get TouchArcade talking about it and you're halfway home with one forum post.

We've had 2.5 million installs of GLWG to date. Where would I have gotten those customers from otherwise? (Granted over half of that number were free giveaways, but I still wanted to find people to giveaway too).

[Adrian Lopez]

We've had 2.5 million installs of GLWG to date.

How are those installs distributed among the various platforms? Just wondering how much the number of installs has to do with the platform rather than the means of distribution.

Would the game sell fewer copies if it were possible to distribute games direct as well as through the App Store?

[Applewood]

750K units sold on Android (300K of them for $0.10 in that big promotion)
20K units sold on PlayBook
iOS picks up the rest.
PC sales to date: About 50 from ArcadeTown

It's all in the volume of eyeballs. There's a stat somewhere that says Apple have paid out $3.5Bn to developers to date. If Steam or Jack Norton enterprises ever catch that up, then great!

Can you think of any of your friends that don't have an iPhone/Pad, a droid phone or a blackberry? Anybody at all? Exactly!

(The same could be said of owning a PC or laptop, but what central place can they go to? And what's to make them find your own site? On mobile, everybody just presses a button to find stuff)

[Jack Norton]

Well let's say that is true, what if Apple tomorrow decides to take 70%? of if removes your app for INSERT_ABSURD_REASON_HERE ? Again, I'm not saying it's bad, but putting all your eggs in one basket, and without any control, is risky. I prefer to sell mostly direct and THEN, have my games on appstores as secondary form of revenues. Look what happened with casual portals, and how many casual devs are there left that are truly independent ?

[Applewood]

(removal) If that happens, we're gonna be in the shit up to our necks. But it's hardly a reckless play and is not something I'm losing any sleep over.

(royalty hike) Just suck it down and pretend to like it. It's not as if we have a plan b)

[Jack Norton]

Have to say that as new indie, probably the appstore approach can bring indeed more revenues. But if you build up your customers for several years, every new game you have XXX amount of sales guaranteed from your newsletter/fans/followers. It's just like having a planB/safety net in case shit happens Look at Spiderweb, he is on Steam / iOS now, but he can still sell direct at higher prices and while I don't know his sales, judging from comments in blog/forums many people still buy direct from him (or even twice) just to support him. But surely that requires an investment of several years and is not something that can be done quickly.

[Applewood]

You can't really sell what we make direct though, which is another angle. (Our legal entity name is after all Rubicon Mobile, Ltd.) We do have a PC version but tbh we didn't try hard with it due to said marketing skills lack.

However for our sequel we've bypassed all this digital crap and gone straight with a retail publisher for the PC version who's gotten the game into Walmart and etc. They're also promising digital of their own and steam (which will only happen if my name isn't mentioned I guess).

It's not like we're not trying to spread our net as wide as possible - it's just that selling direct is the A number 1 most difficult thing to do, and imo should never be given as advice for aspiring wannabes as their target. Indeed now we have stacks of people we can contact, direct selling would be more feasible for us but without that initial app store success we'd have nothing - which is where everyone has to start.

[Jack Norton]

Haha you're missing the point, it's not like I think to sell more than Apple! I think that direct sales can easily overlap to the appstores (until they'll allow that, of course) and as I said are an extra safety net, in case some shit happens
If you focus your effort on a specific target (mobile in your case), you'll obviously sell more on that one. On PC you probably would need more deep gameplay, different UI, and so on. Believe it or not I know devs making six figures/year from direct sales only, so that's definitely a good revenue stream.
Again, until the new Win8-MacOS come out, because I am not sure exactly what will happen - seems that everyone wants to FORCE users to use their appstores...

[Applewood]

I was just taking a liberty with that point

I think I know a couple of these PC guys myself. The thing is, they all seem to have that magic marketing touch that the rest of us mere mortals can only dream of. It comes so naturally to people that can do it, that they don't even grasp that most others cannot. Which is hardly unique to this situation I guess.

As a single trivial example (well, two): Steam won't return my calls and emails and kotaku have never mentioned GLWG ever. Steam carry some inferior PC games to GLWG imo and sure as shit I've seen kotaku mention some stinkers. So why those and not mine? No friggin clue, in neither case it's not for want of trying. I suspect it's about credibility but outside of mobile I can't establish any. Like 99.9% of all other indies.

[Jack Norton]

As a single trivial example (well, two): Steam won't return my calls and emails and kotaku have never mentioned GLWG ever. Steam carry some inferior PC games to GLWG imo and sure as shit I've seen kotaku mention some stinkers. So why those and not mine? No friggin clue, in neither case it's not for want of trying. I suspect it's about credibility but outside of mobile I can't establish any. Like 99.9% of all other indies.

Well, yes I understand completely what you mean and I agree- it's quite frustrating indeed. That's the problem everyone is facing and probably can be solved only by one factor: luck!
Some of those devs making six-figures/year aren't on Steam. Now, I don't understand WHY Steam wouldn't want such good selling games when they have others that are CLEARLY inferior (and sell less, some games on Steam make less than people imagine).
Even myself with my small games... I have some that sell direct (without any big exposure) more than others who got accepted on Steam. So I agree with you on this one. However, I still think is worth keep trying, because you never know when the doors will open. See Spiderweb who until last year wasn't on Steam, and now has all his games there

[Bad Sector]

Didn't people from Valve said recently that they're swamped by game submissions (which include even people submitting existing games with replaced textures and tictactoe made in visual basic) and because of that they lose a lot of good games? IIRC they're trying to figure out better methods for indies to submit games (there are speculations about things like peer reviews from 'trusted' indies who are already in the platform - which implies that if you aren't in Steam yet, you should network with other indies ASAP :-P).

[Jack Norton]

I've had another indie who is on Steam and makes same games recommend me, and her advice was ignored, so I'm not sure!

[Applewood]

I think this is the problem:

problem:
Whoa, massive demand. We can't serve it.

solutions:
1) We could scale up and make more money, or
2) Just ignore people and they'll go away.

I'd go for solution 1) myself.