App Store versus DSiWare – The Developers' Verdict (Part One)

While we’ve already established that the iPhone and DSi aren’t necessarily going to be facing off against each other in deadly battle, the similarity between the Apple’s App Store and Nintendo’s DSiWare download service bears closer inspection.

As a method of getting games onto their respective devices the two platforms share a common aim, but which one is likely to offer the most pleasurable experience? Will Nintendo’s knowledge of the gaming market help it to eclipse the App Store, or will the Japanese veteran be made to look positively amateurish by Steve Jobs’s team at Apple?

With a thirst for the truth burning within, we contacted three developers with experience of developing for these two services and we asked them for their opinion on what the future holds for digital distribution on handheld machines.

Nic Watt of Nnooo is something of an old hand when it comes to the art of digital distribution – his firm has released Pop on both WiiWare and iPhone and is preparing to launch it on DSiWare shortly. Luc Bernard is the brains behind the upcoming WiiWare title Eternity’s Child and has recently founded a new development studio called Oyaji Games with the intention of producing games for several download services, including the App Store and DSiWare.

Finally we have Thomas Kern of FDG Entertainment, home of the much-loved Bobby Carrot series, which recently made its iPhone debut. A WiiWare version is currently in development.

Pocket Gamer: What do you think are the best things about the App Store?

Nic Watt: For me it’s the ease of getting software to market and installing it onto your device. There are also no ESRB or PEGI rating costs where as with other online stores you are required to rate your games. A small $5 game can cost over $4000, for example.

Thomas Kern: Where to begin? You have worldwide access of your app; it’s very easy to get it up and running; you can grab daily reports which is vitally important when formalising a strategy; there’s customer feedback; you can update apps; you have no complicated age rating processes; it’s fast and very accessible and you can make change almost in real-time.

All in all, Apple does one hell of a job marketing the platform, which helps too. The App Store has practically endless revenue potential.

What do you consider to be the more negative aspects of the App Store?

NW: The ease of getting software approved is an issue, I think. There are no barriers so anyone can make and release anything, regardless of its quality.

Also the navigation of the store isn’t great. For a company that designs such amazing products and actively flaunts their ease of use, Apple’s App Store is very badly designed. It appears to be primarily a way to house lots of contents and make money promoting the content Apple likes on the front page. If you are not chosen by Apple to appear on the front page then essentially you are screwed.

Traditional bricks and mortar stores work well because as well as the ‘front of store’ offers - or Manager's Choice selections of old - it is very easy to wander around the store and browse content.

iTunes, the App Store and other services suffer because everything, understandably, is trapped behind layers of menus. Imagine if when you walked into HMV or Tescos and to get to an aisle you had to first climb up some stairs and open a door; you'd get bored and give up!

There has to be a better way to facilitate the browsing of content on these online stores.

Luc Bernard: For me it’s the sheer volume of stuff available. Since practically everyone can do games for the store, it’s flooded. There are over 6,000 games on the App Store right now, but most are terrible and are just put out there in the vain hope of making some money.

How easy is it to get a game published on the App Store, compared to a service like WiiWare or DSiWare?

TK: WiiWare and DSiWare are not what I would describe as open markets. You have to run through a very strict developer approval process and may very well get rejected.

LB: With the App Store it’s a case of paying your $100 and then uploading it and getting approved by Apple. With WiiWare and DSiWare it’s not anywhere near as simple; you need a office location, around $2000 for a development kit and then extra money on top of that for getting the game rated correctly for each region you intend to publish it in.

NW: As long as each component of your software works - all the buttons take you to the right things, for example - then it’s easy to get stuff approved for the App Store. It could be buggy as anything when you get into the gameplay, or have few or no features, but that seems to be fine.

WiiWare and DSiWare are much harder, which in some ways makes the turnaround of good ideas longer but it also makes you think more about what you are making and focus on making it good.

Nintendo also have an internal approval system which, like Apple's, plays and tests your game. However Nintendo's quality assurance is significantly higher and more stringent.

You also have to pay to get your game rated by the ESRB, PEGI, Australian Ratings board, the German Ratings boards and so forth. All of these things make it that much harder and longer and therefore make you really try to step up to the mark.

In the long term it creates a smaller marketplace, which has products that are more focused on being able to make back at least their development costs.

It's ironic that the industry has clamoured over an open distribution model for ages and now that it's here, in the form of the App Store, it's actually more of a bane than a boon. You'd have thought with all the creative freedom the App Store gives you that people would be rushing to get great and unique content out. Instead it's just clones of the latest popular trend.

What I mean by this is at face value Nintendo's model seems to be corporate greed of both the developer and publisher, what with being "more focused on being able to make their development costs" and Apple seems to give much more artistic freedom.

The real irony is that while Nintendo's model may restrict elements of creative freedom for monetary gain, at the same time any company with sense will try to distinguish their software from a competitors which does push, albeit slowly, creativity.

The App Store by contrast has very few restrictions. However, due to the structure of the store and the free pricing model, all that has happened is software has dropped pretty much across the board to free and 99 cents, there are millions of clones out there and the truly innovative people are being scared away.

Check back shortly for the second part of our exclusive interview.