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Why is gaming on Android still lacking and so bad?

S

SAWYER

Lifer
I have been toying with an HTC Inspire and I am shocked at how bad the gaming is compared to IOS. I could understand a year or two ago, but 300k plus Android phones are being activated a day and marketshare is steady increasing
 
apple has one hardware platform a year. android phones are coming out with all kinds of internal hardware. and the money for games is still on iOS

i don't know about sd installs, but google screwed up the install system. on iOS there is no 2GB limit for apps. you install whatever you want until you run out of space

and the hardware/GPU on iphones/ipads/ipods is usually a lot more powerful than a lot of android phones
 
- iOS users are more likely to spend money on apps/games.

- iOS devices generally have a more powerful GPU than same-generation Android devices

- Android is a mess of different screen resolutions, aspect ratios, memory/hardware configurations, OS versions, etc.

- Battery life for gaming is pretty pathetic on most Android devices
 
Odd, I have plenty of really cool games on my TB. Biggest hurdle was just the size of my internal storage on my old Droid 1. Now that I'm free, temporarily, of that limit, I've several awesome games. Maybe you're just looking in the wrong place? FUD?
 
Some of the larger smartphone game development houses are creating their games for both Android and iOS. So, it isn't uncommon to find something from Gameloft on Android, but sometimes those quirky little games on iOS won't be available and some studios simply just don't seem to care. Like Square-Enix has a bunch of iOS games, but I only found 4 games published for Android via this website:

http://www.androlib.com/android.developer.square-enix-inc-nqF.aspx
 
EA is also not sending (some of) their wares to Android. Konami and Capcom are almost completely absent.

Even Gameloft doesn't have all of those titles there, and you definitely don't see things like Rage HD or Infinity Blade.

I think it's possible that that's because as a platform, iOS reaches more users and that there are more people playing games on iOS. It's not weird at all when you'd consider that recent surveys show about 80% of iPad owners play games.
 
i'm currently playing:

reckless racing
solipskier
flight director
fruit ninja
pew pew 2
robo defense
 
Android is not a gaming platform. Be grateful it plays games at all.
I am happy enough with Solitaire. 3D cars and shit is way out of line for something that I need to check email and such.
 
smartpatrol said:
- iOS users are more likely to spend money on apps/games.
Click to expand...

true.

Pay per play is not as popolar as with apple.

But the advertisment model can bring huge revenues, like angry birds showed us.


- iOS devices generally have a more powerful GPU than same-generation Android devices
Click to expand...

I would argue with that.

I think that the main advantage of the iPhone is that it has just 3 or 4 different GPUs, all very similar.

This allow you to use some nice hacks to speed up the graphic, like with the consoles (I'm thinking about real time texture compression especially).

Anyhow at parity of price, usually android phones are much faster.

- Android is a mess of different screen resolutions, aspect ratios, memory/hardware configurations, OS versions, etc.
Click to expand...

The main issue with fragmentation is software. You can easily cut out the lower-end devices.

But if very few devices supports the latest APIs, like rendergraphic, you have to ditch that feature.

This will go away with time.

- Battery life for gaming is pretty pathetic on most Android devices
Click to expand...

On most low-end devices. Kepp in mind that the iphone sells for 400$+
 
The OP's "bad" is subjective. Someone could make the statement that Android's gaming is decent and another could say it's bad and both be right. It's an opinion. If anything Bateluer's statements prove how "bad" gaming is on Android. The average user should not need to jump through some hoops as he has obviously done to get some games on your Droid.

That Apple's iOS has a larger games library and it arguably has better and higher quality games library on top of that. That's not to say the state of gaming on Android isn't improving. It is. The Unity 3D engine is being ported to Android and that should help developers having another game engine to work with that they don't have to build from scratch. Companies like OpenFeint obviously feel Android has a growing games community as well. But it doesn't change the fact that in terms of available games and the quality of the games, iOS currently has Android beat.
 
I have a lot of games on my phone. Gotten a lot more ever since Amazon started releasing a different paid app for free every day. My favorite so far is HexDefense.
 
I agree. I've used my co-workers Iphone4, and while I find it lacking compared to my Incredible in most other aspects, the games he has are simply amazing compared to the piddly shit on android.

Would still take my rooted Incredible over iOS as I don't game too much, but still it would be nice to have equal games.
 
apple apps make more money and are easier to make and control, the games for android will get better but will never be as lucrative and thus will not be as prolific. that said, its a damn phone, be happy with angry birds and use it for what it was meant for, phone calls and email and general productivity, and sketcher which is an ace program.
 
the problem is angry birds isn't even smooth on my droid/milestone.... You can blame all the hardware fragmentation you want, but is it that hard to get some decent performance on a simple game? Yes the game runs damn smooth on my iPod Touch 4G which is clocked lower than my Droid (800mhz vs 1ghz overclock), and even the older iPod Touch 1G runs it fine.

Fragmentation is one thing, but it's like saying you're only getting Pentium 1 level performance out of your i7 930 because software is unoptimized. Optimization is nice, but we should only be seeing like 10-20% differences... not like 50% performance penalties and what not. This is just BAD.

Also excuses like the App Store is x months older is not really valid considering games have been awesome since like 2008 on iOS.
 
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I just bought Dead Space on my iPhone4 and lets just say its amazing. There are times I forget I'm playing on a smartphone.

I'm not big into games, but this is an area that the Android platform is struggling with. Oh and NBA Jam is sweet too!
 
AstroManLuca said:
Gotten a lot more ever since Amazon started releasing a different paid app for free every day.
Click to expand...

Amen to this. By far the biggest shock to me on the Android OS is the poor selection of high quality games compared to iOS, but the fact that amazon basically gives away three or four decent Android games away every week means that I have plenty to keep me busy.
 
From reading others' responses, I think... it's quite clear that some don't really care or mind the state of Android gaming on their phones.

And it's quite obvious that the majority of Android devices are phones, so... perhaps, better games don't come because people don't care about them.

Maybe it'll change when people care more... just like with that GPU acceleration issue. It wasn't fixed because nobody minded or cared.
 
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