I am planning on building iPhone games and Android games. I have to fund the entire project. Looking at the prices I see that the splash screen is making the licenses a little over priced. Now I can get the indie license and then buy the regular iOS/Android publishing for a few hundred dollars and deal with the splash screen or I can fork up the entire enchilada and get the pro version of unity to get the iOS pro/Android pro to remove the splash screen.
My questions are:
Is it worth it?
Are other people making professional iOS/Android games with the Unity Splash Screen?
Is it unprofessional?
Do customers care?
Does the app store care?
How expensive does it make the load times?
I can deal with the Unity logo splash screen, but will I lose customers/quality for it?
I'm a PC developer and while I can't speak for people who play games on their phones, I will say that PC gamers don't mind the splash screen.
In fact, what we're doing is trying to actually incorporate it into the intro of the game, in an effort to make it seem more like "Yes, we intended for this" rather than be like "D'oh, we hate this thing, sorry!"
Right after the Unity splash screen fades out, it fades to our company logo in an identical fashion and then fades out again before throwing right into the main menu. It gives the sense that the Unity splash screen was on purpose, which lowers the feeling of how unprofessional it is (but hey, we all have to start somewhere and $1,500 is an absolutely stifling chunk of money, especially for an indie developer).
Ultimately, a splash screen isn't going to be what decides whether your game sells or tanks.
Yes, it’s worth it. Buying the full out license gives you access to a lot of critical optimization features that would otherwise be unavailable to you. If you plan on going cross-platform on both iOS and Android, if you can somehow fork the funds out I would. In saying this, you may want to potentially gain some revenue first by creating an Indie game off of one of the cheaper a la carte licenses, and then using the funding from that to get a full license.
Yes, I’ve seen some games use the Unity Splash Screen. Most of the uber professional games that have been made inside of Unity typically won’t have it as they ponied up for the license though. If you want to look professional, than save up for the license.
That’s really up to you. If it were me, yes I would consider it unprofessional unless you were working in conjunction with Unity to advertise their engine. Mad Finger games has been featured by Unity, and they do feature Unity’s logo throughout their game, but they aren’t using the standard splash screen as an example.
Only hardcore gamers that actually know what engine you’re using would care.
No it doesn’t. They care about you following their guidelines for publishing an app. Follow those blindly and you will still get approved.
It doesn’t make them any more expensive from my experience.
Ultimately, if you consider professionalism and quality paramount to your products, then the answer is simple. Do it professionally, there is not other way.