Frontier's David Braben on LostWinds iOS, Android, Elite, and the Raspberry Pi

Axe99 | 23:18 - 7 May 2012

@ Jay - there's a lot of people (devs and pubs) that say piracy is higher on Android than iOS - enough people that know what they're on about. Braben won't have anything against Android - he's dev'd games on more systems than you can poke a stick at. He's just making decisions, and piracy affects those decisions. Unfortunately, Android now is looking like the PC platform in the early 2000s (when piracy was decimating it, and devs focussed more on the relatively less-pirated consoles).

The people to get angry at are the pirates.

On the topic of the game, the original Lost Winds for Wii was great - best game I played on the Wii, and unlike even many of the Ninty first-party games, really controlled well. Just wish they'd bring it to Vita as well - I likes me some buttons for my gaming :).

Wish he'd bring out Elite to Vita (or anywhere!) as well - Elite = epic :).

klouud | 16:44 - 7 May 2012

@jay - not me. You may check out my phone if you are in my area and see that I do not steal. The thing about Androids is that people that buy Androids are normally technologically competent and have the skill set to pirate apps. Therefore, the base user has the tools to pirate - not to mention Androids are primed and ready to pirate right out of the box with no rooting necessary!

I'm not saying that Android is bad - I love the fact that you can install applications from Dropbox - I used it to install an emulator on my wife's nook color. I'm just saying that its really really easy to install pirated software. And that is the point.

Most jail breakers don't even know how to install a repo and add the application that allows you to pirate.

Honestly, its easiest to pirate on PC/Mac because there are absolutely no road blocks set up to prevent piracy. I'm surprised that iOS and Android get fingers pointed at them so much when its much easier to pirate on a computer.

I think the main problem is the high turnover and fragmentation of android devices. The super awesome android device you buy today will be obsolete in 3 months. This is what I mean by high turnover. If you get an iOS device, you are guaranteed that it will be good for 2 years because dev's build games based on the weakest device in circulation - i.e., games are aimed mostly at the iPhone 4 and next year they will be aimed at the iPhone 4S.

jayh106 | 15:10 - 7 May 2012

Why is it developers always say that the reason for not porting to android is due to piracy. There is just as many people with jail broken iphones and ipads, and before anyone says that they only jail break so they can run some form of software that apple don't support, bollocks you do it so you don't have to pay for software.

klouud | 15:00 - 7 May 2012

I'm very excited about this - the LostWinds game for iOS was an absolute blast. I personally liked the original control scheme and found the game play as well as the graphics to be very very polished. This is an example of a development team that is passionate about bringing console quality games to the mobile platform.

I completely forgot I was playing an iPhone game. Pretty much anything with the LostWinds stamp on it will be an instant buy at any price for me.

thanx for a great product guys! Keep it up!

tim

NotSpam | 14:42 - 7 May 2012

Good scoop and good questions also! Frontier/Elite on iOS: They should do this sooner than later imo.