Windows RT - Born to fail

[Applewood]

I thought you might like to see a post-mortem from our recent launch of a popular mobile game, Great Big War Game, onto Windows RT. The post actually contains some real numbers and I'm sure you'll find it enlightening.

The full article is here:
http://www.rubicondev.com/blog/windows-rt-born-to-fail/

Excerpt:

Anyone who caught my previous post might already know that we recently released Great Big War Game onto Windows RT. If you’re one of the teeny tiny crowd of people who just bought one of these devices, you can find one of the very small number of “proper” games right here.

A week after release we have made the princely sum of £52 in sales. That’s not a typo. And despite this, and the fact that GBWG is one of only several halfway decent launch titles, Microsoft have confirmed they will not give us any promotional features or help us with visibility in any way.

[igamedev]

I think they missed the boat this Holiday season by coming out a bit late with their os/hardware, etc, etc. I have heard they're waiting till next year to really beef up their app store, so perhaps you're just a bit early.

[Nutter2000]

Sounds bad Paul, thanks for the warning!

Oh and welcome back ;-)

[Applewood]

Thanks, thought I'd check in to see how the spam was going.

[jcottier]

Hi Paul, I really hope you were in just too early. To be honest, I know NO-ONE from my network dev that have started WinRT dev or even people who bought a surface. I am planning to port my engine on WinRT, and I think the mobile market could do with another strong market. So, I really hope you are wrong and WinRT won't failed in the long run.

Can you tell us more about the porting process? I am hoping that it won't be too difficult. I've just ported all my games on BlackBerry 10 and it was such a nice/fast/smooth/pleasant experience. I've started looking at Android and I must say that I am extremely puzzled by this pile of poo (talking about the C++ tools chain, not Android). So, I am just hoping that moving to WinRT will be without too much trouble. Do you have to support a lot of stuff like on XBLA (I heard) or do we just have to support a minimum amount of new stuff compare to old PC dev.

thanks

JC

[Applewood]

It depends on what you're starting from. We had to port from DX9 to a bastardised version of DX11 amongst other things, so that didn't help. No built in shader compiler was another pita we could've lived without. Also the docs are a bit scarce too as it's all new and there are no forums to find easy answers.

Beyond all that, it wasn't really too bad and MS helped us some. It was post release where everything went tits up.

[vbovio]

Thanks for sharing!, any plans to release on Win 8 PC store ?
I'm wondering if it's worth porting to win 8, and how are sales for games, my C++ 2D engine uses DX9 and Win32 api, how difficult/long would it be to port ?

nice to see you back

[Applewood]

Thanks.

That's part of the problem, there is a publisher involved which stopped us doing a "one size fits all" app. Which in turn due to their bizarre setup means we're barred from getting any help with features and stuff.

I think it will probably take you about two months to do a nice port of your underlying engine. Once that's done, there isn't much overhead starting a new project. It's not trivial but if you're up for doing both tablet and pc optimised builds you can probably make some money out of it. It's just RT that has an echo right now.

[jcottier]

You might have seen this

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...-on-Windows-RT

[Applewood]

Heh, how come I can't generate any publicity when I have something more positive to say!

[Jack Norton]

Same here, I know nobody (apart devs) who has a Windows RT device. I think you made the port too early. Maybe, or maybe not

[Applewood]

Well, it was a risk and I can accept failure on the chin. Things might even improve over time.

But £52 in a week? like, LOLLLLLLL

[buto]

I just read across some news on the news site of a rather big german publisher and stumbled over the following acticle (in german obviously):
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldu...b-1764666.html
(the headline reads something like - App developer jolts microsoft into action)
Thought you might find it interesting to know

[Nutter2000]

Heh was going to mention that Develop article, I take it they didn't contact you then?

Just goes to show really, complaining gets you everywhere ;-)

So MS have "graciously" decided to work with you then?
Congrats!

Paul! Paul! he's our man, if he can't do it..... etc ;-)

[Applewood]

lolz.

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