Shuffleboard 2002 for Nokia 7650 release

Now that i read so many of those posts, i really ask me why a customer should pay 12 bucks for a game on a pocketpc, smartphone or whatever. All you game and soft developers are a bit crazy i think. I mean paying for a product someone had work with is not the point, but we are talking about software that has just 100-300k and i can get a whole big pc game with about 100's of megs of date for some bucks more. I mean, where is the realation here ? i would pay 3-5 bucks for such tiny code stuff, but not that. I mean if i wanna have all the soft for my 7650 right now i can get a complete new pda for the same money, really strange. No offense against you in special but i guess you are all crazy, really.

$12.95 isn't THAT bad, in fact i'd play it if it wasn't for the fact that digital red refuses to release demo versions of any of it's software. $12.95 for a game that might not be any more fun than watching paint dry? I think i'll leave it thanks.

If you think that's bad, what about a Sept. 11th 'Game' where all of the $20 it costs to register goes to the developer?! Lovely. I can think of numerous charities which could benifit from such a source of income, be they in New York or Afganhistan.

Yep, $10-20 WITHOUT a demo version or even a decent description really does suck.

Lack of demos is something that Digital Red may want to look at, but I do feel that they are getting a lot of really bad press of late and not all of it fair.

Apart from the 9210 Plus issue, it has to be said that Digital Red games are, generally speaking, of a very high standard. Just read the reviews of their games and, although I am the first to say that graphics aren't everything, they really do polish their games to make them look top notch.

They have apologised for the unfortunate comments regarding theior Fireman game, so I think that a little patience and cultural awareness would make this a better situation for Digital Red.

You have to remember that they also develop for the PocketPC and which market do you think is currently bringing in the pennies?

As for paying for games on a mobile platform..... who's gonna pay these guys if we don't! It can be argued that development on a mobile platform is a greater challenge than developing for a Desktop PC. And the size of the Exe surely has nothing to do with the value of the product!

We need to tell developers when they are doing wrong, but thank them when they are doing right. Personally, I'm grateful for the Digital Reds, Epocwares, Ximplifys, Symbianwares and PsiLocs of this world! Keep up the good work.

I agree with most of your points, 11/09 included, BUT Digital Red's attitude towards customer comments is lacking, wheather emailed or posted in response to their comments on this forum. They are also in the minority when talking about developers who refuse to release demo versions of their games.

Reviews arn't all that helpfull as every 9210/7560 game seems to be rated as 'amazing' by my-communicator.com and fellow users. Take Ski-flying and TerraForce as examples. IMO neither are that great, and although i cant see time has been spent on both of them, the asking price is a little high for such basic software. (Gold Miner and other Java games being further examples of simple software, over priced by developers).

I'm the first to pay for & register software when A) We are allowed try it for a few days first and B) It's genuinely worth the cost. Examples being Task Manager, Active Desk, VR Pool, ActiveMail/Profiles etc. (Not that I have them all!)

As i said no offense, but i still think that the general price for all this software not only digital red one's is to high. I mean i really like this software and it was for sure a big work to program it. but still, the size of the exe matters because every coder will say the same as me, coding this stuff won't take a year like a pc game, because we talk from some 100 kb's and not 100 megs. That in fact matters i think, and should be shown in the price. I think 10 bucks, and maybe 15 for the mega super duper game or application is right enough. but i see software paying 20$ and more...nope guys, there's something wrong.

"Although i CAN see time having been spent on both of them"

Amending the above post. Sorry.

As for as the price, we fix it in accordance with the developing cost of different product. The other basis is distribution account. Up to now, the distribution account of Symbian OS software can�t be compared with that of PC flat, and even isn�t as many as that of POCKET PC. I think that is why the present software price is rather high. Of course, users can put forward the suggestions on prices, and to the software of 7650, what price is suitable for you to accept? We would try our best to make the price close to the users. Digital-Red will introduce more and more types of 7650 software, so that the policy of modifying price is not impossible. It is the result of users� support that Digital-Red developed so much Symbian OS software in less than one year.
In addition, according to the usual way of Digital-Red, test edition will be provided on WGC within a week at most (http://www.worldup.com/wgc/). If you have any advice to Digital-Red, please tell us and we will accept it with patient.
Thank you.

Herein, specially thank TANKERx for his valuable suggestions to us. We wonder if we can organize some activities with this web to inquire into the users� price accepting level to 7650 game software. In return, we will present the users who participate in the activity with some software.

A quick comment to mATRIX, tbh I find it hilarious that value for money is measured in terms of how much bloat is included with the app that makes it worth paying for. If that were true windoze would be worth paying for, and Visual Studio really would be worth �2000 or whatever the asking price is now. Unfortunately neither are worth their asking price, in terms of games the value for money is in the playability.

Programming apps that take 100mb on a PC is easy, programming apps that do the job and are smaller than 100-200k is bloody hard, the app has to cope with limited size, RAM, and processing power. Any programmer will tell you how hard juggling those kind of optimisations are. IMO the abilities to do this makes them far superior to windoze programmers churning out yet another pile of tripe filling a CD and costing �40.

You argue that the price is too much, but remember 10 years ago the standard price was �25-30 for a game occupying a 720k floppy disk, no-one moaned that for the same price some games were on 4 disks. I keep forgetting I'm on my final line, lol, anywho, at the end of the day (in come the clich�s) it's the app that counts not it's size, a good app is always worth the money and a bad one isn't.

[quote="omar_g"]
Reviews arn't all that helpfull as every 9210/7560 game seems to be rated as 'amazing' by my-communicator.com and fellow users. Take Ski-flying and TerraForce as examples. [/quote]

I think you'll find the reviews on this site seem to be fairly accurate, I know I wouldn't review TerraForce or Meltdown as they suck so bad from the demos, wildpalm shoulda left it at DooM and tried something else imho. Ski-flying is a nice game, and a good one imo hence a good review I did, the only downside to it is how hard it is.

Tough one this.

I am a developer myself, and although i have never developed a Symbian application, I know how difficult it can be.
But the smartphone platform seems to be undergoing the same money-grabbing dash the windows had when it first came out. Let's face it, we all like playing games on our phone, but it isn't the reason that you bought it now is it?

The fact is that $12 for this game seems to me to be too much. Why? Well, it's basically just shove ha'penny, which isn't really a very interesting game. It may keep you entertained for a few days, but not much longer. When I develop games for the PC I always release them as Freeware, as I would be embarresed to charge money for them. I would understand if I had employed a team of programmers to work for years on it, but I would challenge digital-red to be honest with how many man-hours went into the production of this game.

Nokia released Bounce with the phone, and it is still the simplest, most addictive game out. This to me is still the threshold for games on this phone. If i download a game trial that is better than Bounce, then I MAY consider buying it if the price is right.

I chose not to buy any games for the Palm when it came out, and sure enough, after a year or two people starting releasing the stuff on Freeware. The only other way I would consider buying games is if they released a compilation CD with a few dozen games on and charged maybe �10 for it. They did this with the Palm, and that way, you don't feel ripped off if one of the games is rubbish.

until then, roll on freeware developers!

I'm not digging at Digital Red, they just happen to be the example i've used. I WOULD pay $12-20 for a game if it warranted it, but without demo's those of us who can't afford to buy n' try every game will never know if it's good enough. I wasn't digging at reviews by poster's on this forum either, just reviews in general. They all seem to rate 9210/7650 software as 5* products when in reality most are very very basic games that woudn't see the light of day on Pocket PC, Palm, or Gameboy.

I'd love to try Digital Red's horse racing game (if I still had a 9210!) because i was SO close to buying it. Even a one day demo would have changed my mind.

BTW Doom on 7650 would be something i'd definatly be interested in, and if the developer managed to add in multiplayer via bluetooth, I and my 4 friends with 7650's would all pay $20 for a copy.

One thing people are forgetting that to develop for the 9210 you need to have an M$ VC++ license to go with your SDK, so you won't see freeware until costs have been recouped. Another issue with freeware is it's easy for a beginner to code it, and if Symbian cease OPL support I very much doubt you'll see much freeware.