I’ve been getting into Unity lately, and I just thought about how much money is possible to make if I only develop for Android and possibly Windows Phone. If I were to make fun, little arcade/high score games for only Android and possibly Windows Phone, would I be able to afford a new Macbook Pro within a reasonable amount of time? I need a new computer soon and I want to make a transition to Apple. I’d use the Mac with a dual boot of Windows and Mac OS X. Another reason for wanting a Mac is for technical reasons such as the possibility of iOS development and Xcode and I just like Mac OS X.
Indeed. I would say that it is “possible”, but very, very unlikely.
To reiterate what Tyler said, it is going to depend on skills. If you are new to this, you can’t really even evaluate your skill level yet. But you have start somewhere.
It is very unlikely your first game will make any profit. But don’t let that discourage you. Once you get a few games under your belt you will have started to get a much better idea of what you can do and how to improve. Your first game might not let you buy a laptop, but your tenth may let you buy a house. And there is no shortcut between 1 and 10. Keep at it!
General reports, and also based on my experiences (generally), it is 20% of the revenue of the App store when for the amount of users. Much less if it is a pay only (once) app. Ad revenue (from what I have heard, no experience with it) is roughly the same.
I can only speak for my experience, but I’ve made enough from my first game to pay for Unity Pro… And to be honest its just a crappy puzzle game that is Android only. I should add the game is ad supported and this is over a period of 1.5 years.
If you are doing it for the money…then you will probably be disappointed… Monetization remains an afterthought to me. I would much rather focus my efforts on gameplay first. My opinion is if you make something fun and worth playing… money will come along with the players. Obviously there is quite a bit more to it than this, but its my 2c.
The hard part to me is coming up with a great idea that has not been done a million times over or that takes a team to accomplish
I’m in your same mumbling state, digging into Unity free for a while with the desire to make games for Android for fun and of course for make some dingding, cos I need also to eat sometime. What is keeping me down is the huge investment Unity is asking me to do to just try to see if I am worth for it - 3K is really too much to risk and there are out there way cheaper options like the Unreal engine which with just 20$ allow me to try a leap into the unknown safely. What is keeping me from jumping there is that I already know and love Unity, I dont’ wanna C++ or to stick my hands in overbloated game dev tools, hoping that, sooner or later, Unity billing policies will open to more reasonable alternatives for a wider spectrum of devs, even low-end indie devs like me.
with successful do you mean they made cash? I would really like to see one of them - free or not - because I didn’t happen to download any android game with the ugly Unity black screen logo loader in 6 years.
One of the more commonly known games was Thomas Was Alone. It was developed within Unity Free. It no longer has the logo because of the upper limit of Unity Free ($100,000 gross revenue annually).
I think more of then than not, if you think you need pro, then you aren’t ready for pro. In other words, more often than not, if you can’t do it in free, then you won’t be able to do it in pro. Especially for mobile. Because I have an asset on the store, I just got temporary access to pro. Seeing what the soft shadows and bloom did for my game makes me really really want pro. In fact, I don’t want to release the final version of the game until I have it. But what I want and what I need are two different things. Almost everything that pro can do is about increase the visual quality. You don’t need that, you want that. And gamers, especially mobile gamers, aren’t going to care.
well that is what I call a good example - BTW I played it on PC, unaware it was made in Unity.
ok I feel more relaxed now and maybe this answer is good for undefeated_monarch as well
Also, if the concern is that $3k is a risk because you have never built a game and don’t know if you can then Free is perfect. Build a game in free. Even if you never plan to release that one. Then the person will know if purchasing Pro is worth it. Unity free is an awesome deal for new users. No strings, no monetary investment. All the features in pro are there to make games better, not to make games.
Heh… this is exactly why I left indie so long ago. As my games got better and more successful, I wanted to do bigger and bigger games. Starting working a small team, then indie studio, startups, and then big studios. Rather than limit my scope, I expanded my resources.
Now is probably also a good time to mention that $3k is a relatively small amount of money for starting a business. There are a whole bunch of people out there in other industries that would kill for $3k startup costs instead of $100k or more.
I almost said something similar. No one is going to give you free restaurant and equipment to see if you actually do it. Monetarily speaking, game dev is really cheap to get into. The real cost is time.
Of course not. By almost any definition making successful games pushes you over the 100k limit. You must buy pro. And since you have pro, you kill the splash screen.
I almost said something similar. No one is going to give you free restaurant and equipment to see if you actually do it. Monetarily speaking, game dev is really cheap to get into. The real cost is time.