Major iPhone developer quits…
The developer of Trism
, Steve Demeter, quit his day job after making over $250,000 since his app launched in the App Store
. Yeah, that’s about 2 months for one goofy assed game.
Folks, if you’ve got an ounce of creativity and pair it with someone else who has business acumen and another with a working knowledge of XCode, get your asses to work and break into this market now.
The potential is huge, the revenues are strong and the market is only going to get larger.
Read more about this lucky bastard here.
Steve Demeter developed the iPhone puzzle game Trism
as a side project, but now he’s quitting his day job. Why? Because he says he’s generated $250,000 in profits since he started selling the $4.99 game on iTunes this summer. That’s after Apple (AAPL) has taken its 30% cut of total sales, and after subtracting his initial investment of about $5,000.
So while we’ve heard plenty of griping from developers who complain about Apple’s restrictive grip on its store, you’re certainly not going to hear Steve joining that chorus. In fact, he says, he’s so pleased with Apple, that he’s going to work exclusively with them, and will pass on the chance to work on other platforms, like Google’s Android.
Why cut himself off from other markets? In part, because he’s doing just fine with Apple. But Steve also says that Google’s strategy of distributing its OS to multiple manufacturers who will create multiple handset models will actually cause him more headaches than its worth.
“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”
So if he’s not expanding to the other mobile platforms, what is Steve going to do with his newfound wealth? He says he’s actively looking to hire more people – engineers and artists specifically. While he started off on his own, he now has four more people working for him in San Francisco, working on 5 more iPhone games.
That being said, my application is still pending and my crazy and lucrative ideas are starting to fill up the 1gb chip in my brain. Hurry Apple, hurry.
On the flip-side though, several apps have been shot down in flames and rejected - long after being completed and submitted. That’s a lot of wasted code and effort that harbors bad feelings, as illustrated by Wil Shipley (of Delicious Monster fame), who writes:
Call me a proponent of free markets, but I think Apple needs to have a clearly-documented policy for approving submissions to the iPhone App Store, and it should be:
• Publish all software submitted to Apple, as long as the software isn’t actively harmful to users, illegal, and does not violate Apple’s agreements with cell phone vendors.
• Period.
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