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[Chris Koźmik]

I recall someone saying on this forum he deos not know even one indie that made money on mobiles. I also stumbled upon this article, http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-24-bigpoints-big-changes , BigPoint ceased developing games for mobiles. Even through everyone agrees this is a growing market...

So, to put it simple, is mobile worth developing for from indie's perspective?

[James Coote]

I've met a couple of indies who have made money on mobile, so it's not impossible. Right now, I think there are some distinct advantages working on PC though, that probably outweigh any of the nice things mobile offers.

However, in the future, looking at windows 8 in particular, there will probably be a merging of the pc space and the tablet/mobile world, so it might be worth having a play with mobile in advance of that.

[flavio]

I think there are some distinct advantages working on PC though, that probably outweigh any of the nice things mobile offers.

Hi, (it's a bit OT, I'm sorry) could you enumerate some of the advantages and the nice things, please?

PS The link in your signature is wrong.

[True Valhalla]

I think mobile is an excellent market for indies looking to go commercial. On PC you're competing with incredible AAA games, but on mobile content is performance-limited which gives indies the chance to compete on a more level playing field.

Given the time and a small budget, Angry Birds would not be a challenge for many indies to replicate - and that's considered a top-tier mobile game.

Personally I've been targeting the HTML5 side of mobile, and made over $13,000 online over the past 2 months thanks to my endeavors (details on my blog: bit.ly/TouchToStart).

Mobile has a lot of life left in it. It's a goldmine if you can break in, and I'd recommend you give it a shot while you can.

[Xienen]

Our experience with Break Blocks has shown us that a game that can't inspire its target market to try the game is going to fair just as well on mobile as it does on the PC(Mac version included).  They are both very tough markets to stand out in, but generally, simplistic mobile games can sometimes reach critical mass, while that same simplistic game on PC may not appeal to nearly as many people.  Conversely, I think complex games have a slightly smaller market in the mobile space than they do on PC.

Our problem was that we were a complex game with a simplistic facade, so our target market thought the game was too simple for their liking, while the people looking for a casual/simple game were quickly frustrated by the game mechanics.  Live and learn =)

[James Coote]

With a mobile game, you're limited to touch interface. Most games that work great with touch, will still work well with a mouse and keyboard. The reverse is not necessarily true (think RTS on mobile... just doesn't work)

On PC you will hit technical limits a lot later on. You can have a far higher polycount or number of NPC's running around on screen before things start to get sluggish

Yes you could make something as technically sophisticated as angry birds without running into those limitations on mobile. But you can't afford the marketing budget required to be the next angry birds. At least with PC, you don't have to buy extra devices to test your game on

Also, you've got more options distribution wise. It's not like there is only one app store on PC and you have to pay 30% to be on it. With greenlight, your not going to get on steam until you're already popular, so why not just get a paypal or amazon "purchase" button on your website and pay 5% transaction fee in the meantime?

Edit: Also with multiplayer games, you can make some reasonable assumptions about how much bandwidth players have, how reliable their connections are. You can't make those same assumptions on mobile

_____

PS The link in your signature is wrong.

Thanks for the warning. Should be fixed now

[True Valhalla]

With a mobile game, you're limited to touch interface. Most games that work great with touch, will still work well with a mouse and keyboard. The reverse is not necessarily true (think RTS on mobile... just doesn't work)

On PC you will hit technical limits a lot later on. You can have a far higher polycount or number of NPC's running around on screen before things start to get sluggish

Yes you could make something as technically sophisticated as angry birds without running into those limitations on mobile. But you can't afford the marketing budget required to be the next angry birds. At least with PC, you don't have to buy extra devices to test your game on

Also, you've got more options distribution wise. It's not like there is only one app store on PC and you have to pay 30% to be on it. With greenlight, your not going to get on steam until you're already popular, so why not just get a paypal or amazon "purchase" button on your website and pay 5% transaction fee in the meantime?

Edit: Also with multiplayer games, you can make some reasonable assumptions about how much bandwidth players have, how reliable their connections are. You can't make those same assumptions on mobile

Both platforms have their benefits and downfalls, I'm certainly not going to say one is better than the other. After all, I make money on mobile but my major project is an MMORPG for desktop.

Mobile and desktop both have a place. But to answer the OP, mobile is definitely "worth it".