What’s your experience with either one of them?
Is the success % about the same in either one? Or do you feel one is a better market for indies than the other?
What are the pros/cons?
Getting into iphone dev requires more than a few little investments (unity ios, an iphone, a mac)… You’d need to spend at least 1k, and it’s really tempting to explore the mobile gaming dev, but is the investment worthit? Or am I better of starting with some pc games and submitting them on steam?
Good question, what is the balance in sales between small PC games (possibly Steam) and IOS games. Looking forward for some actual data.
the thing with steam is that its very hard to get in for indies, you need to really have a hit to be considered. and im not sure , but i think they are now requiring games on steam to be integrated with steamworks and if thats the case, you would need unity pro to develop such integration
steam is known for rejecting a lot of games, so unless your game is a really great game , your chances to get in the store are very slim…
and with the mac app store and the itunes app store are just technically strict, once you comply with the guidelines and your content is not questionable ( offensive,sexual or plain bad taste) your chances of getting accepted are much much higher
with pc games, if you are not lucky enough to get accepted on steam, you still have direct2drive and gamersgate to try and sell your game in those places which seem to be way less strict , specially gamersgate…
Isn’t because Steam is a PC platform that they will accept all games (specially for small/indie games). Steam is very selective with games, they don’t look at concepts neither demos or anything that looks in an alpha state, your game not only must be really good but it also needs to be near completion (beta at least). Also, forget about getting into steam with iOS like games. Small, tiny games, doesn’t work on steam (you won’t even get a rejection email from them). Games that hit the top 10 in iOS could easily get rejected on Steam. As CoatlGames already stated, when you are developing a game for PC, don’t forget to also try direct2drive and gamersgate (impulse also is a good). All of them requires you Unity Pro (as you need to integrate all their SDK into your project).
Noone is talking about submiting IOS games to Steam. Neither is Steam submission part of this topic. We are rather talking about what are some actual profits, of selling game on Steam (small PC game) or in App store for IOS game.
From the O.P.
People are replying in direct response of queries posed by the original post. Asking “do you feel one is a better market for indies than the other” absolutely should get responses that discuss barrier for entry into the various potential markets, it’s an enormous part of the question.
Well, a very important matter that has been pointed out imo, is that those PC game stores require unity pro due to certain SDK integration.
My concern is that (while I don’t mind investing some money in tools/licenses/hardware) I want to know if it’s worth it. I don’t want to rush into something only to find out I’m standing exactly in the same place as before (only with less money).
Knowing I’ll need to get unity pro all the same if I want to get into one of the ‘good’ PC online game stores, makes things a little harder; or should I say, they make the choice easier.
Buying a cheap mac, one of the older iphone versions, and unity ios, is cheaper than getting unity pro anyway.
And on top of that, they give you a hard time at Steam others, which is understandable, but requires me to make a bigger up.
I like the idea on working on nice small tidy games for ios. Sure, doing my best but getting results in less than a year!
It seems too hard to start working blindly on something for maybe a whole year (or more) without knowing where its heading.
I rather make a small game and get results, even if they’re bad, I want to see where I’m heading towards. Get to a checkpoint, regroup, keep working.
So far it seems like starting programmers (like me) are better off by getting into the app store, and focus our energy there! :-0
Yes but… its no easy ride for riches. It will pretty much guarantee covering the cost of ios basic though. As for the bigger amounts of money, you really do need a shit hot artist to capture people’s attention. Or you have a game that just lucks it. It does happen. With 2000+ new releases per week, you also better have a decent marketing plan. Having said that it is still the place you can make some decent bucks.
Bear in mind an important rule of business, you are earning for things you did in the past, you aren’t earning anything for what you are doing now. A wise man told me this 
it means expect to keep pushing your product for a long time before seeing a result.
The cool part of unity is, say sales suck on ios? No problem. Unity is xplatform…
I prefer the App Store (and mobile dev in general) because it’s a more transparent setup and more like real self-publishing. The revenue split is known ahead of time and there’s a published set of guidelines (although in practice Apple can still reject anything they want). With Steam, everything is secret, or at least not disclosed until you’re accepted. I even received a Steam rejection that said it wasn’t their policy to disclose the reason for the rejection (so this might sound like sour grapes, but it is a supporting example).
I don’t really get why you are so defensive?
Read the thread subject again “What’s your experience with App store and/or Steam?”
What I’ve basically wrote earlier was indeed my own experience with steam and the app store (which btw is a direct answer to the thread title).
I’ve submitted in the past an iOS game ported to PC (Dead Strike) to Steam, even with lots of improvements the game got rejected on Steam. Though they like Forgotten Memories (our current project) which will be available on Steam on 2012.
Well yes but porting IOS game to PC/Xbox/PS? It wont make any significant sales for sure. And if you have to recreate whole game to port it in new platform then it is already whole different story.
Well I know appstore is good. You do get absolutely equal chance of success as the biggest AAA studio on there. It’s been observed many times. But on steam I haven’t seen any real evidence that the little guy has a prayer tbh, or is even accepted much. As I’m expanding my operations, I think I have a good shot at steam. But steam is way down the list for me.
@hippo: Hey, there’s one think I’m not 100% what it is, what would a decent marketing plan comprehend? Is it like paying for some advertising? Submitting your game into game review website/forums? I’m not sure what to think! :-0
I’m also putting Steam as a lather choice. Mobile is what we are focusing primary.
yeah, submit it to reviews for websites, pay some advertising, promote your game in every place that its possible within the context of your game genre…specially for iOS games , getting noticed is a very hard task, because there are thousands of similar games and sometimes with very similar names, so make yourself stand out
Short question: Why do you need the pro version for sdk integration? I don’t seem to get it.
Or a new iPod touch.
Because you need to use C++ plugins.
–Eric
also im quite sure you dont need any kind of sdk integration on direct2drive or gamersgate, as i have bought from both stores and there are a lot of games that are simply drm free, and you get a custom made installer or a dmg image nothing too fancy… the sdk integration is only for steam and maybe for impulse…
Ah okay, so i guess DllImport is blocked in the free version then… Too bad.