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Amazon's Android store has an innovative pricing policy. As a developer make sure you understand its implications before you do business with them.

1. You name a list price. You can choose this, but it can't be any higher than the list price you offer on other stores.
2. Amazon chooses a discount between 0% and 100%. They can sell for the list price or they can give the game away for free or anything in between. It's up to them.
3. Amazon gives you 70% of revenue on each sale, or 20% of list price. Whichever is greater.

This table sets out the various discounts Amazon might choose to offer, and their profit margin on each one:

They can offer your $0.99 game or app for 30 cents and still get the 30% margin. Of course they're getting 30% of a smaller amount: For each game sold they'll make only 10 cents instead of 30 cents. But it still makes sense for them to do that if by offering the low price they can make it up on volume. And I think they probably can...

Amazon needs to give users a compelling reason to move to the Amazon store from the default Google store. 70% discounts across the board is a pretty compelling reason. So by putting your app on Amazon you are helping them to tease users away from the official Google store: customers who might have paid 99c for your app on the Google store can swing by Amazon and get it for a third of the price. If Amazon chooses to do this you will have no choice. That's a win for Amazon... but is it a win for you?

What a great summary from this Lane Splitter review:

I've been having a strange amount of fun playing, crashing, and replaying Lane Splitter recently. There's no doubt that the game is basic, but it's got the ingredients for a great 99¢ time waster: Good controls, a fun gameplay premise, and online leaderboards. It's even universal which is always a bonus for those of us with both an iPhone and iPad.

Full review here.

Rovio honcho Peter Vesterbacka flings the slingshot at Nintendo and other console makers in this robust interview with MCV:

“It’s interesting to see people like Nintendo saying smartphones are destroying the games industry,” Vesterbacka mulls. “Of course, if I was trying to sell a $49 pieces of plastic to people then yes, I’d be worried too. But I think it’s a good sign that people are concerned – because from my point of view we’re doing something right.”

Read the whole long and saucy article. Near the bottom if you make it that far you'll see Vesterbacka deny that they're trying to develop new IP. Risky strategy to put all your eggs in one basket after they've hatched and are angry. Have I stretched that metaphor enough?

Generally speaking, simple RPGs like Pokemon clones can monetize reasonably well. RPGs have a relatively smaller but devoted audience who purchase premium goods like time or energy power-ups and special items, as we go into detail on in our Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2010-2011 report. (Which costs $1000 -- that monetizes REALLY well.)

The Pokemon mechanic is very easy to learn (and presumably to develop), but with plenty of scope for more and more content: the perfect free to play game.

Read the full article.

You might also enjoy Favimon.

Windows Phone won't flop. It with vie with Apple for second place smartphone OS:

[IDC and Ovum] share the view that Android will continue to lead the pack in the next few years, and by some margin. Two other points are just as interesting, though: the analysts' belief that there will be at least four smartphone platforms with a sizeable user base, and their confidence that Microsoft's Windows Phone will not be a flop.

The problem for game developers is that only Apple has managed so far to build a vibrant app ecosystem around its devices. If Android and Windows OS win on market share we might see the decline and fall of the "app lifestyle". Bad news for mobile developers.

Full story in the Guardian.

Inside Social Games has an interview with Brenda Brathwaite... an arty farty gamer who's selling out (in a good way) to build social games. She makes some great points on getting money out of your players:

“It’s a really difficult question with a really obvious answer,” Brathwaite says, “but the answer isn’t in words, it’s in feel. And I don’t know how to communicate the feel. You want the game to be fun, and there are classic monetization hooks. Like you want bigger, better, faster, more, you pay me for bigger, better, faster, more. But how do you integrate that without sacrificing the fun?”

And, make your game like a street musician, not a beggar:

Brathwaite explains Loot Drop’s approach to monetization with a metaphor: A lone mariachi playing a song on one side of the street and someone asking for money on the opposite side of the street. She’d stop and pay the mariachi money, maybe even pay him to hear another without him ever asking her for anything because she appreciates the experience. But she wouldn’t feel good about giving money to the beggar on the other side of the same street.

“We’re going for the mariachi’s side of the street,” she says. “We don’t want you to feel there’s a panhandler begging you for money in the middle of the game.”

It'll be interesting to see how this pays off when Loot Drop comes out. Meanwhile read the full interview (and if you want to smile, watch the video at the top of this post and give me money while you're at it).

Zombies are popular game characters for so many reasons. One reason I'd never thought of before -- they give designers a legitimate excuse for very simple AI.

From the Zombieville post mortem:

Keeping with simplicity, it was apparent that the A.I. shared the same qualities, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when exposing your game to the causal market. The zombies are deceptively simple at first, by evaluating their distance from the player allowing them to shamble towards the player until they die, or claw you to death. Simple yes, but there is strength in numbers and as you progress they can become quite the bullet sponges.

Read the full postmorten at Game Career Guide.

In my day job, I'd love to develop an AI Programming Beginner's Guide. It could start with true dumbness -- say, program the AI for the baddies in Space Invaders. Progress through zombie-level intelligence, gradually increasing NPC IQ with new techniques. Comment or @me if you're interested in writing something like this.

There's a long article in the Guardian about what game developers make on Windows Phone 7.

Money quote:

"Once it's got past this stage there is also a chance that Microsoft will veto against your game going on the platform. Ultimately, this prevents the market being swamped, but above this, there seems to be a layer of games by big publishers (EA, etc) that just step past the smaller developers in the queue. This is the biggest drawback of the system. Microsoft is in complete control and smaller developers will always be battling up hill until they reach a point where their title is trending – like Minecraft."

- Integration with Xbox Live is a big plus point.
- XNA with C# is good for startup game developers. Large studios have lots of code in C++ which is a pain to port apparently. Lots of existing XNA tutorials and expertise makes the platform easy to learn.
- Good developer tools and community. Microsoft App Hub is buzzing and worth a look.
- Fragmentation is an issue as with Android.
- Nokia deal guarantees longevity for WP7 -- a lot of recent MS platforms haven't survived long, making developers wary of targeting them. But Nokia's commitment means it can't fail completely.
- The store is curated with a much stricter (and less predictable) approval process than the App Store. Writing a game doesn't mean you'll be able to sell it. They don't want to swamp players with loads of apps and end up with an unprofitable mess like the Apple app store (!).
- Integrating phone and Xbox games if a fun area but looks kind of a gimmick to me, for now.

Link to the full story.

The article argues that the government needs to provide funding to start ups. But why is that a good use of tax payers money when nearly every start up fails? Surely what start ups need are ways to keep costs and risks low (which means low tax and regulation early on, including liberal rules about conducting businesses in your home), and access to investors when they need them -- which is after they've started to make some money and need to grow beyond their bedroom.

Meanwhile JFDIBritain offers a more pragmatic approach, refreshing in that it advises start ups to avoid building a real web site or logo and instead just get on with building an audience using a blog, Flickr, Twitter, or what have you. Do most of today's start ups even need a professionally designed web site or a logo?

Free game, average of 3-star reviews (so not great quality). Number 9 top grossing game this week.

The sixth-most-popular in app purchase costs $99.99... for that you get 65M poker chips. Talk about being a high roller. Presumably the bank wins back most of the chips it sells so there's never too many chips washing around that people can win. There'll always be a market for more chips. You can buy them right at the table too -- you'll kid yourself that if you just had enough chips to keep your hand in you'll easily win them back. Nice ruse for the developer.

It looks like chips get cheaper the better you get -- another in app purchase (the seventh-most-popular) offers 71M chips for $29.99.

Pokerist is just one of A. Kurulenko's successes. Big Red Button is another. I have no idea what that's all about.