CATCH 22 - Unity vs Apple

Target Platforms Mobile
1

Hi Guys,

I was told that any games or apps developed for the iPhone and iPod touch must be under 10 megs in order for people to be able to download the app via wi-fi. Is that true ?

If that is true, then Unity developers are stuck between a rock and a hard place because doesn’t Unity eat up 9 megs of storage capacity just for the engine ?

This would leave you with less then a meg for coding and game assets. - Yikes…

Yeah sure, you could go over 10 megs and build a 1 gig game with all the bells and whistles. However people would not be able to use the wi-fi feature and would be forced to go back home to their computer and connect their iPhones and iPod touches via a USB connect.

This of course would seriously hurt your sales because many people who purchase apps do so on implusive buys and want it at that exact moment.

Hoping someone will remember your game and go home from their week long vacation, or long distance road trip to download your game is not realistic.

So whats the point of Unity ?

Whats the point of spending $3,000 dollars on Unity licenses to make a 1 meg game for the iPhone.

I might as well make crapware that does not require an advanced engine like Unity.

Even if I had access to the full 9.9 megs for content devoted to my game. I am certainly not making the next killer next gen title with only 10 megs to work with.

Is this the future of the App store ?

It seems like everywhere I look game developers that want to make a professional game are getting screwed.

I want to make an awesome game utilizing Unity for the iPhone and I want to be rewarded for that effort by making a ton of money. However for some crazy reason it’s almost like Apple wants the app store to sell crapware.

Even if I do go out and develop the game,I then may be forced to reduce my price to compete with the .99 cent crap titles filling up the app store, but that is a entirely different argument.

I guess my long winded rant leads me to the following questions.

What is being done to correct this issue ?

Will Apple ever raise the 10 meg cap ?

Should I lower my head in defeat and reduce myself to making iFart apps ?

Pixel - Poet

2

No, you can only download games via 3G/Edge if its under 10mb. If its over 10mb you must download it via wifi or via your pc/mac.

3

Or you can sync it from iTunes. (Which in my case, I also download via WiFi anyway. :wink: )

Look, you wrote a whole lot of stuff. Seriously, perhaps you should look into easily-found information before going on a rant. It will allow you to do useful things with your life.

There are some threads about the 10 MB already, around here. The basic gist is, “it doesn’t matter”. Even if our opinions didn’t matter here, Apple certainly would not be marketing the iPod touch as a gaming system if the basis of your post held any water.

4

Well, if it makes you feel better, I have a purchased app installed on my iPod Touch that’s nearly 700MB in size. :wink:

5

You’ve hit the crux of the biscuit here, man - you want to make Something Awesome, but before you even start, you’re screwed. There is no point at all in even trying, because some stupid rule is bound to thwart you. Don’t fight it, because in the end, if you do naively work you ass off and create something, it will be like unto an ifart in the wind (much like this post) compared to the original vision, which you were forced to compromise because of the stupid evil Archons incessantly trying to screw you over and trample your awesomeness into the dust of history.

And then you die! So obviously, as you’ve discovered, the only way to win is not to play… :wink:

6

http://appshopper.com/blog/2009/09/23/app-size-and-success-in-apples-top-lists/

Short version: 86% of all apps in the store are under 10MB, but only 60% of apps in the top 100 are under 10MB. This suggests it’s a actually good idea to be over 10MB. iPod touch users are not affected by the 10MB limit at all, and there are a lot of them. Not to mention, plenty of people do use iTunes/USB sync in preference to buying on the device, even if the have the opportunity to do otherwise. Conclusion: make sure you actually understand the issue, and don’t worry so much. :wink:

–Eric

7

Jessy,

Before you make assumptions, I did attempt to look for this topic and use the search feature 4 times to no avail. So I would greatly appreciate it if you can point me in the right direction.

For keywords I typed " 10 MB Limit "

8

I did not tell you to go looking for the threads. I can’t find them either. I just told you that they existed.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=iphone+10+mb+limit&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g-s1g-sx2g-msx2

There’s a much larger world of iPhone apps out there, outside of Unity.

9

iPhone Advanced allows you to strip all unused stuff from the release build (physics if not used, etc), thus, for a small casual game, you can make a game that is less then 10Mb with decent graphics :wink:
If you are careful enough with texture resolutions, you can still fit a decent game into 1Mb, it all depends on your creativity and skill.

10

Yes and it’s all well documented on Apple’s developer site (iOS 18 - Apple Developer).

With Unity iPhone Advanced and build-size stripping it is technically possible to create a sub-10MB game but it won’t have much in it at all. So yes, the reality as of today is that with Unity your games will be over 10MB if you have any real amount of content in it.

Relax, the sky is not falling…

The point of Unity is that most folks don’t have the energy nor the skills and inclination to create their own 3D engine so they’d like to pick up an off-the-shelf middleware solution that lets them focus on making the game, not the engine. The reality is that not being able to make sub-10MB games is simple not a “ZOMG screw Unity!” situation. Yes, it would be beneficial to go below 10MB (more on that below) but it’s not such a heinous deal breaker that renders our tool worthless or otherwise something to dismiss.

As time goes on and we get beyond major version 1.x we have specific plans to increase the “diet potential” of our engine and allow developers to strip more and more parts of it to allow for smaller games. We’re not there yet, but we’re mapping out strategies to be there at some point.

Ask Apple. :slight_smile:

11

I know there are some games that already made with Unity3D…wonder what size they are?

12

I think that all games made with Unity on the AppStore are 10+MB and some have done extremely well (Zombieville USA being the most common example of a huge Unity-authored hit).

13

I wouldn’t worry too much. I have apps less than 10 megs and apps that are over 10 megs. I didn’t notice much of a difference when it came to sales. Everyone with an iPod is going to be downloading over a Wifi connection, so for that entire market it makes no difference. There are so many wifi spots all over the place, that it really doesn’t affect impulse buys imho.

The 10meg size of the engine is negligible. Once I start adding content, I’m usually way up over 20megs. So even if Unity only took up 1k, it would have still been too big to be downloaded over 3g.