Posts tagged Trism

This isn't exactly a new story, but since I don't have anything else to write about and this story makes me pretty happy (as opposed to the economic calamity going on right now), I figured I'd write about it.  Last week the developer of my favorite App Store application was featured in a news story discussing his incredible success based on app store sales in the few months since his application launched.  The application of course is the game Trism, a puzzle game which I did a video review of not too far back.

This is the first prime example of Apple's app store empowering average-Joe developers to get out there and make solid products.  Apple facilitates all app store purchases, even free applications, by providing the infrastructure (hosting, sales, marketing) free of charge.  Of course in the case of pay-for applications like Steve Demeter's Trism, Apple takes the 30% cut that I mentioned earlier.  Still I'm sure Steve isn't complaining about that, after all he's on track to make $2 million by July 2009.

In the article Steve also goes on to denounce Google's Android platform.  He says that he'll stick with Apple because (obviously) he's "doing just fine" with them.  He then went on to mention that he thinks Google's approach of having multiple handsets for different carriers will be an annoyance for developers:

“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?”

- Silicon Alley Insider

His argument makes sense to me.  It's pretty obvious that it's easier on a developer if they only have to worry about one platform (the iPhone/iPod Touch) rather than multiple.  Support becomes easier, and coupled with Apple's hands-on approach to managing the app store everything runs more smoothly.  Sure there have been plently of detractors lately saying that Apple is a little too strict with their certification process, but in the end it provides a much better-managed environment for both users and developers.

In the news story Steve Demeter, a solo developer, discusses how he went from working on Trism as a side project to making $250,000 in two months based on app store sales.  The game went up in the middle of the summer for $4.99, and since then Steve has been able to rake in a ton of cash on a relatively simple application, and that's after Apple took their cut (30%) and his initial investment is figured into the equation.  Not too bad, huh