Hope it’s ok to talk about a non-Unity game here?
Anyone tried playing Zynga’s Running With Friends on older iOS hardware? On my iPad 1 it pretty much crashes everytime I start a game, and I’ve seen it running pretty slow on an iPod 4.
Just wondering what people thoughts are on supporting older iOS hardware for current games in development?
I work in an ios game dev company - most of our clients require Ipad1/ipod4 compatibility but “soon” that won’t be the case as new iOS versions will drop support for them - it’s a real pain to support them since those devices have so little memory
I’m currently trying to achieve 60 fps on iPod Touch 4th with Traffic Racer.
It’s quite challenging to say that it’s okay to just drop support for anything, when you know some people out there are still using those devices and will have either a bad experience or no experience. But I have found that every time I think along the lines of making a game for iPad for example, that crappy old iPad1 always drags down the entire design because it just doesn’t have enough memory or speed. I know 3G/3GS iPhones/pods are pretty much phased out. It won’t be long before iPod 4 (which I have) will phase out too. There are probably stats somewhere of the market share of the various devices.
iPhone 3GS is not phase out YET ! At least not until this June. 
It is still supported by iOS 6 (the latest iOS). Come June and the expected release of iOS 7, iPhone 3GS will finally be put to rest, but users will still be able to access the App Store so there is expectation for it to be supported which will last for a while.
I am pretty sure by June next year, iPhone 4 will be the next to get phase out. The interesting thing about this situation is that iPhone 4 /iPod 4 is actually SLOWER and inferior in performance than iPhone 3GS - due to its retina display that’s 4 times (400%) the pixel display area, but the same CPU/GPU as iPhone 3GS slightly higher clock - it is only 33% faster in CPU/GPU - 800 MHz CPU vs 600 MHz CPU and 200 MHz CPU vs 150 MHz GPU - essentially the CPU/GPU has to drive the screen that’s 400% larger than previous generation but with only moderate increase in speed of CPU/GPU (33%) than previous generation. This makes iPhone 4 hugely underpowered than iPhone 3GS. In my opinion it should be phase out BEFORE the iPhone 3GS. It is due to this that It is a huge headache for most developer because of the huge disparity in performance and capability between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s (and iPhone 5)
The problem is Apple is still selling them, so most users are still expecting their iPhone 4 to be supported for years to come.
Hadn’d you ever place Zynga games on Facebook either? Their games do the same there. Using a drag drop IDE to save on developer salary costs and training is always a bad ideal when you don’t include competent regression testing as part of every release.
But you should also go through your iOS settings and turn off the messaging/push notifications for all the applications you have installed as they are using too much memory. As that mechanism is the easiest way to hound end-users into buying add-ons and upgrades almost every app that doesn’t need to use the Message Center, uses the Message Center.