14 DAY TRIAL // Some of you may remember Neil Young from the time he was working for EA, and mostly for the good things he did while there. However, in the meantime, he left EA and started ngmoco, which is a developer especially created for the iPhone and in total conformity with the iPhone platform.
Based on some of his most recent statements, we learn that Young believes many changes are in order to improve the gaming experience that the iPhone delivers. Not only that, but he also says that the apps found in the App Store are not exactly what he would call impressive, wherefrom his belief that these should be improved as well.
One of Young's statements for MTV Multiplayer comes to better illustrate all of the above. "My read on the market is most of the games that are $9.99 don't really deserve to be there. [...] If that's the premium tier of pricing on the device, my expectation would be the premium tier of pricing would have premium games built for the platform that fully take advantage of that, versus a cross-port from a Symbian or a DS game." Young says.
Furthermore, Young also suggests that, from now on, all games released on the iPhone should be specially designed for it, in order to take into consideration its strong points and not exploit the not-so-impressive aspects of the over-advertised device. This conclusion is drawn from the fact that the iPhone is very different in many respects from other devices, and even very appreciated and worldwide recognized games have failed to deliver all that pleasant gaming experiences, mainly because of the earlier mentioned reasons.
To further argument his point, Young also says that, ”"The only mega hit that exists today at a $9.99 price point is Super Monkey Ball. [...] We're excited to get to the place where you get the first thing that's been built for the device, so the gamer could go 'You know what, this is every bit as good as a DS or a PSP game and, not only that, it's actually built from the interface out'."
Young's statements are mostly accurate and straight to the point, should we objectively consider the fact that none of the games in the App Store have turned out to be big hits. Quite on the contrary, actually, as sellers had to cut down the prices for these creations to even sell acceptably.