Article: Help take Trainz to the top!

[wholbr]

Hi Bob and everybody.

Android has a larger installed base, but iOS apps make five times as much money. There are a lot of cheap Android devices out there in the hands of people who don't have much money and don't buy many apps. Developers have to take that into account. What matters is how many buyers there are on each platform, not how many devices.

Bob there are a number of varying reports on the revenue difference between android and Apple through their online outlets. Below is a section of a recent report generated through Re/code

Report starts here:-

For several years now, Apple has had the edge in attracting apps over Google. Android phones are greater in number than iPhones, but developers have continued to favor the iPhone because their owners tend to spend more money. In addition, each iPhone user is far more attractive to advertisers than an Android one.But now quantity is giving Google a boost.

The massive number of Android devices is finally starting to make Android a more significant revenue generator than the iPhone. Each individual iPhone is still more lucrative than a single Android device for app makers, but the overall size of the Android market is starting to be large enough to overcome the per-device difference.

Two recent studies suggest the Android ecosystem has started to overtake the one surrounding the iPhone. For example, found that in the first quarter Android generated 45.8 percent of ad revenue compared with 45.4 percent for iOS — the first time Google outperformed Apple.

Digi-Capital, meanwhile, says that when China is included, Android stores generated more revenue overall than Apple’s App Store last year.

“Accepted wisdom and research tells us that iOS makes more money than Google Play, despite Google Play having more downloads,” Digi-Capital’s Tim Merel said in a report. “Nobody would argue with that. But what about iOS vs Android at a global level? Include the massive Chinese Android app stores, and Android didn’t just dominate download volumes, it made more money than iOS last year.”

Whether it is this quarter or last year or even next year, it is clear that the Android universe is on a pace to dwarf the one around the iPhone due to sheer numbers. Apple remains ensconced at the high end of the market, while much of the global growth is in affordable smartphones — often ones selling for $150 or less without a subsidy.

Google is working to curb the fragmentation in Android, particularly across Asia, to better collect data and revenue. It’s also trying to lure more developers to build for the Play store. Several new features will land later this month at its developer conference, according to someone familiar with the company. And Android’s market share gains are continuing. In last year’s fourth quarter, Android accounted for more than three quarters of all smartphones, compared with just under 20 percent for iOS, according to IDC.

Report ends here.

As bob Hahn advises in his above posting Apple users tend to spend more money on applications person for person than Android users. However the shear size of the Google android market means that more purchasers can be found by volume making overall revenue take higher in the Android market.

Apologies for the formatting of this posting as their seems to be a problem with the site on this section.
Bill

 

[Enzo1]

Also, as a point of interest, our App Store sales exceed our PC sales in total revenue, and in terms of actual volumes, iOS generates over 100x as many unit sales. This means that the mobile apps actually help us finance the PC and Mac development and without these products, there would be no Trainz at all - so even if you don't like these products, it may be worth trying not to discourage others from trying them!

Lies... Lies everywhere. I can't even believe that you have the balls to post that bull.... Wow, you really are who I thought you were. If only you had the same to tell us that you screwed TANE up big time and were working on fixing it, instead of feeding us trash like this. I think everybody in here is smart enough to tell that you sir, are a liar in it for the money, and just screwed your community over.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Excuse me? I cannot believe I have just read that. Firstly, I have the Trainz data, and you don't, so I have no idea how you can conclusively claim any of this is lies. Just because you don't like what I said doesn't make it any less truthful.

For your further edification, and to disprove your liar theory, here is a little more data. Trainz Driver sales peaked at over 2,000 units in a single day whereas TANE Kickstarter attracted less than 2000 users in a month. In a single day when Trainz Driver was free, there were 175,000 downloads!

While you can choose to not believe these figures,what you do have available is public data. The top apps are downloaded MILLIONS of times a day - so it is very easy to see that it is possible to 100x more unit sales at a 100x lower price point.

I'm not going to go into financial details, but please be assured that my comments about where our revenues come from is true (as it is equally true that without PC and Mac sales, there would be no Trainz at all - it requires multiple platforms and multiple revenue streams to fund ongoing development).

Secondly, you have clearly missed all the posts about what we ARE doing for TANE but clearly you would rather abuse me than let those facts cloud your response. HF2 has recently been released for PC. Mac is around the corner as is the beta of SP1 which will deliver some great steps forward. We are working with dozens of people on various Trainz issues. Today I have spent several hours with one Trainz user troubleshooting an issue that we are unable to replicate in house. I assume this behaviour indicates part of my "screwing over" of customers?

Lastly, and this is the one that always has me puzzled, is what possible motivation do you think we would have to screw over our customers? Surely this would be the worst possible plan for any company? Customers are the ones who provide the revenue to pay for the development and marketing, and the goal for most companies is to deliver products that customers want to purchase. This is what we are attempting to do.

So, you sir, are both wrong and misguided in your judgement, as well as extremely rude and offensive to the company that, assumably, you would like to see continue to improve the products they sell. So somehow you will just have to trust me as the guy who pays the bills and studies the P&L reports that there isn't a single lie in the statement you have quoted above.

If your goal is to see the company fail, then I don't really need to spend any more time explaining anything. If you would like to help us succeed then please ensure you volunteer when the beta testing of SP1 is announced.

 

[nicky9499]

So are you changing your DRM policy or not?

 

[shaneturner12]

I was wondering that as well, as it would help in situations when there are server problems.

Shane

 

[jacksonbarno]

Probably not, as I'd wager Tony has no intention of keeping any further promises... A shame too, T:ANE was starting to ever so slightly look up.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Let's make that wager then - just let me know the amount and I'm in.

The consipracy theorists do have a field day. We are preparing the DRM free update and update process along with a number of other priorities. No promises have been broken (please read the statements again if in doubt). The timing is the only issue and we rate performance and stability as our top two priorities and that is where the majority of our efforts are being concentrated.

There re have been some MyTrainz server issues which may or may not have contributed to recent sporadic payware not active messages. We know not everyone was affected and we know that mostly a restart at some point resolved the problem. We have not identified a cause or a repro but we do know that these users could access the game.

Unfortunately oroviding the limited information we have on this is likely to fuel speculation rather than temper it. Perhaps we should not communicate at all (although ironically, apparently we already do that).

 

[shaneturner12]

Makes sense there Tony. If I end up getting another server-related issue I will see if I can work out what's going on using one of the programs on my system that can capture information on the network side. Ultimately though, it's likely to be something up on the hosting company's side although I'm not sure what at this stage.

Shane

 

[nicky9499]

Unfortunately oroviding the limited information we have on this is likely to fuel speculation rather than temper it. Perhaps we should not communicate at all (although ironically, apparently we already do that).

Your company's attitude towards PR is a case study in managerial disaster.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

That is your opinion to which you are entitled. We have a difficult situation where we have some users with issues we have difficulty replicating and when we identify the cause we work to resolve them.

Having the ceo respond within a few minutes of a post on a forum at 10:30pm is seen in some circles as extraordinary service. Given that I can only provide words of advice rather than concrete solutions this is seen by some as contempt, lies and to quote a recent post bullsh"t.

All I can say once again is we are working towards solutions for issues some people are facing. You can call it what you like and given that the same half a dozen people provide 90% of the vitriolic directed at us, there is a possibility that the issues are not as clear cut as some would postulate.

 

[amigacooke]

Tony, I wonder if you would consider this?

1. There are many reasonable requests for information on this forum that have no reply. For example (and almost staying on topic) requests about Android versions of these apps.
2. An abusive diatribe gets a swift (and quite lengthy) answer.

If a person is seeking information, what style of communication is effectively being encouraged by N3V?

 

[nicky9499]

If a person is seeking information, what style of communication is effectively being encouraged by N3V?

As aforementioned N3V's approach to PR. He lashed out at Enzo because Enzo's post was mostly weak arguments and ungrounded accusations. And yet there are posts from various users many months old raising legitimate concerns that have gone unanswered or even deleted. Perhaps these are what he regards as "vitriol"?

 

[boleyd]

I am sure that many N3V customers have had much "stronger" backgrounds. I would fashion a guess that they would universally agree that communicating with customers makes sense. Why - because those existing customers may buy more product. Potential customers see a proper customer service process and are encouraged to purchase the core product and more later. And, the talented customers are encouraged to make addons which enhance the rich content of the product.

Any company, especially a tiny one, should maintain a dialog with customers. I have, however in my past, seen some management complain about customers and dislike any communications with them. Usually that attitude is borne from a slowly deteriorating communications channel. I would "encourage" that person to remedy the problem and then sack him/her if my personal interactions with a few chosen customers does not see improvement.

The N3V policy of saying nothing to customers except to decry a well paid manager's dislike to work at 10:30pm is not productive. Ask the lead programmer, once a week, for a short synopsis of progress. You do not want to be specific since that sets customer expectations. However, "we are making progress with the Crash While Saving" problem might suffice. At the VERY LEAST it says that the Company recognizes the problem.

I think we would all encourage some periodic acknowledgement of what is happening. All silence breeds is each customer developing their own rational as to the product's condition and that of the company itself. That is not good for anyone.

I hope we can look forward to some periodic information releases to tell us that things are moving along.

 

[jacksonbarno]

Furthermore, PR isn't defined by who is up at what time doing what. Getting a snippy response to a question isn't exactly a textbook case of good public relations.


As for that wager, you as well as I know that it was a figure of speech, and going off of what we got the last time people gave you guys money arbitrarily, I think I'm fine in terms of cash that I throw your way.

Considering the fact that you were just refusing to acknowledge that the DRM-free patch was even promised to us, I'm having a hard time believing that now you are now somehow preparing a patch out of the blue.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Thank you for the more reasoned and reasonable responses. I'll try to answer a few more of the points raised.

Re android - it was identified in the announcement it was iOS only and I have answered several times about the status of android - it is easy to miss responses just as it is easy to miss lots of things on busy forums. The answer to save you searching is that we do not have a timeline on android support for TDJ and it depends on the success (or not) of the iOS sales when and if we invest in the android version.

Regarding ignoring posts of users problems with TANE, again the answer has been made - we're working on the things we consider to be the most important. Some of these were in HF2 and more are in SP1. We cannot answer every question on the forums and we have set up several far better ways to deal with issues that require a direct response.

We we created a submission form for people with specific issues and only 57 people have provided responses through that system.

We have created a q&a website which provides a much clearer method of communication that these open discussion forums and that system has been more widely used and working quite well.

We address dozens of individual helpdesk requests every day.

We are working with the community through the Trainzdev forums with the latest version of TANE and we've announced there will be a beta of this forthcoming. There is a summary report of events from those forums posted regularly providing a reasonable progress report.

So I think there is plenty of information out there. i think the problem is really that people want answers to questions we cannot answer like exactly when SP1 will be publicly available and whether a specific issue has been addressed.

There are also some significant misunderstandings. Drm for example - Far from changing our stance on it or denying anything about the promise of a free patch, I have just confirmed that we are working on the process and it is close. I'm not sure why my comments were misunderstood and its a shame they were. From memory I said "nothing had changed from our publicly stated plans on Drm" which means a Drm-free version IS happening and we expect it to be sooner rather than later.

Regarding a response to being called a liar and full of whatever , Perhaps I should just ignore people calling me names. Sadly I am only human and misconceptions and errors need to be addressed - hopefully this thread does help rather in that area rather than pour more fuel on the fire.

Sorry for all the long posts but the longer I spend editing here the longer you all need to wait until we get the important stuff together and into your hands - like the SP1 update which will go a long way towards solving a number of the problems some people are facing.

 

[nicky9499]

Fair enough. In which case bugger off and do your thang now, we'll see how SP1 is when push comes to shove.

 

[amigacooke]

Deleted by original poster.

 

[ktain.ny]

go TDJ 4...

lemme just say, THANK YOU, N3V, for FIANILLY giving us some decent steam on our mobile devices. however, would it take that much time to port the JR sd70s, es44acs, sd40-2s, and P42s into one of the games??? but not to waste ur time, time you could be using to improve T:ANE from the load of **** it currently is, to a good game worth buying?

 

[nuggles58]

I downloaded and installed free TDJ 1.0 onto my iPad 3 (iOS 7.1.2). When I tap the icon to run TDJ, the flash screen appears then immediately disappears. That's it. No joy. Tried uninstalling then re-installing but no change.

I have exactly the same problem. I have IOS 7.1.2 as well and no joy.

John

 

[touchtime]

is any south african steam locos availible content to buy.