I'm losing my favourite game

[venta]

I don't post about work here much. But just for once...

I work for a company that's been building a cross-mobile (and indeed cross-device, should you wish to play games on an internet-enabled telly or a high-powered toaster) platform for casual games. And our game store is now up and running:

www.antixgames.com

This is what our marketing department is calling a "soft launch", which appears to mean largely un-publicised. We support only a couple of phones[*] at the moment, and don't have a large range of games. But if you're willing to install a plug-in, you can pop along and try the games out in your (Windows) web browser.

Those of you who've heard me on the topic of work recently will instantly identify the actual bits I've actually been involved with :)

[*] Number of phones our software runs on: big. Number of phones our software runs on which have been properly tested and exhaustively verified and can be considered market quality: small.

Comments

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Ah right, I was confused by AI Factory also having the product for PC and assumed it was entirely their work. It makes sense as having it as a showcase. No criticism on the GUI, it looks very nice :) I was just curious whether a separate company was making money from such games or not. And I agree that the non-board-games on there seem to offer more.

Yes, it does seem to be that on mobiles it's still possible to charge for even trivial things (though it wasn't too long ago we had even ringtones selling for several pounds, I don't know if that still happens). Perhaps part of the problem is that even if free equivalents exist, it can be harder to search them out (people may just go with whatever floats to the top of the app store rankings). Possibly also not helped in that the app stores make it very easy for developers to charge, so it must be tempting to think "why not try selling it".

[venta.livejournal.com]

AI Factory made the engine. They do also sell the game, including that one for PC you linked to. The game on our store, though, is our version using their engine.

Where by "sell" I do admittedly mean "offer for sale". Even allowing the effects you mention, I'd be truly staggered if anyone wanted to pay £12 for a PC version of an OEM Connect4!