Elite Systems - Retro RPGs Coming to iOS

Elite system announced that it will be bringing some old classic RPGs to the iOS such as Wasteland, Dragon Wars, Neuromancer and Bard's Tale (I, II & III). These games have been added to a collection they were going to release, but have hit a delay.
Here's a snippet:

There is however some good news, the delay (which we expect will be brief, perhaps a couple of weeks), should provide us with an opportunity to include some more “AAA” titles to the Apps when, or shortly after they’re released. The “AAA” titles are likely to include:
THE BARD’S TALE (I, II & III) – the acclaimed fantasy role-playing video game series based loosely on traditional Dungeons and Dragons game play and inspired by the Wizardry computer games
WASTELAND a post-apocalyptic computer role-playing game first released in 1988 and perhaps also
DRAGON WARS and
NEUROMANCER
A revised release date and the dates of the 7-day-only promotional launch pricing (£0.69/Euro0.79/$0.99) will be announced shortly.

More information.

Damn, why they always skip android

It seems to be the same thing that happened during the PC vs Mac wars. All the developers were making software for the PC and not the Mac. That's why I never bought a Mac. The games for it were pitiful when compared to the PC. If that hadn't been the case I would have bought a Mac in a New York minute.

Now it's Apple's turn to return the favor to the competition.

The problem as far as I concern is that the PC was an open market while Mac is a product from Apple.

Apple holds something like 90% of the tablet market share. If you're going to port a set of niche products to a tablet OS, you're going to do it to the OS that has 90% share not the OS with 10% share. If and when Android tablets make significant market share inroads, we'll see more of this kind of commercial development for them.

So buy your mom a Kindle Fire for Christmas!

Originally Posted by khaight
Apple holds something like 90% of the tablet market share. !

That was true last year, but Apple has lost a ton of market share since then. They are currently down to to 66% market share, with most people anticipating large further drops. But they are still predicted to be the leader for the forseeable future.

Originally Posted by JemyM
The problem as far as I concern is that the PC was an open market while Mac is a product from Apple.

True. All I know is when I went to the store I saw whole shelves of games for the PC and a few rows dedicated to Mac.

It's sorta funny now that it's reversed and Apple has all the software while poor Android is the redheaded stepchild.

As for this bundle, I couldn't be happier. I would not mind at all playing some of these games on my iphone…..might be a bit tricky, but at least they are turnbased.

Maybe not all are TB. I never played Neuromancer. Have no idea what that one is about.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Maybe not all are TB. I never played Neuromancer. Have no idea what that one is about.

It's kind of like an adventure game based around hacking which also has some cyber combat against enemy security systems. I want to say that the combat was turn based, but it's been a long time (and the combat was not that memorable compared to the adventure elements).

I'm not sure that Neuromancer will stand the test of time as much as the other titles. It got somewhat mixed reviews even when it first came out, and it doesn't really have any of the classic features that people are usually nostalgic about in old games. But if you enjoy hacking based adventure games you might enjoy it.

Thanks. It sounds like it could be ok. Well, it'll be part of the package so will give it a shot when it's released.

Originally Posted by JemyM
The problem as far as I concern is that the PC was an open market while Mac is a product from Apple.

You seem to forget a small company called IBM. The only reason that it was "open" is the way other companies found a way to "legally" reverse engineer IBM's hardware.

Originally Posted by Thaurin
You seem to forget a small company called IBM. The only reason that it was "open" is the way other companies found a way to "legally" reverse engineer IBM's hardware.

Thats like calling Germany a dictatorship.

I already played those games many, many years ago - and if I wanted to replay them, I'd most likely do it on a platform that was suited for it and with an emulator - so that I wouldn't have to support people who would profit from the creative works of others.

THE BARD’S TALE (I, II & III)
WASTELAND
DRAGON WARS

Someone took these titles from my wishlist of games I'm waiting for on GOG! I hope it means the PC rights are available for the GOG folks as well.

I can speak from reports from indies making games on the Android - piracy is absolutely rampant. Selling stand-alone games for the Android is very, very difficult and frustrating. Apparently Google's recent anti-piracy measures were broken within an hour.

So in spite of the fact that Android sales are overtaking iPhone sales, devs are going with the platform where people are actually buying the games.

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
I can speak from reports from indies making games on the Android - piracy is absolutely rampant. Selling stand-alone games for the Android is very, very difficult and frustrating. Apparently Google's recent anti-piracy measures were broken within an hour.

So in spite of the fact that Android sales are overtaking iPhone sales, devs are going with the platform where people are actually buying the games.

Might be true, but there are no hard facts about piracy. All we now is that it exists, period. To be perfectly honest, constantly attempting to fight such a vague concept seems kind of pointless to me, no offense to you as a developer…

And for crying out loud dudes, give Wasteland another proper PC release (and add some sound effects to it as well )

It seems to me the statement "there are no hard facts" is an attempt to obfuscate. Devs are sticking with iOS because it generates higher sales despite more Android handsets being sold - seems like a fact to me.

Agreed. It's true that the illegal nature of piracy means that we can't exactly collect infomation about it through traditional channels such as sales records. But we certainly know more about it then merely the fact that "it exists".

Originally Posted by Dhruin
It seems to me the statement "there are no hard facts" is an attempt to obfuscate.

There's a pretty interesting blog about selling games on Android vs iOS from the indie developer Mika Mobile:

http://mikamobile.blogspot.com/2011/06/android.html

They noted that they were surprised at the revenue they were getting, 80% of the daily revenue from iOS and that was in spite of no promotion and having a smaller market to work with. This was back in June so Android has grown a bit since then even.

They also noted the technical support with Android can be a pain in the ass. It's a bit of a double edged sword, but overall they definitely seem to feel it was worth the trouble to port to Android.

Amazon is supposedly verifying all apps in its market are Kindle Fire compatible before they publish them so they are taking a bit more of a hands on their approach to Android. Reportedly the pre-sales have exceeded their expectations so after this holiday season there should be several million more Android tablet users out there.

Originally Posted by Motoki
Amazon is supposedly verifying all apps in its market are Kindle Fire compatible before they publish them so they are taking a bit more of a hands on their approach to Android. Reportedly the pre-sales have exceeded their expectations so after this holiday season there should be several million more Android tablet users out there.

This pleases me -- in a couple of weeks I will be working for the company that makes the Kindle, so I want them to sell a huge pile of the things. Competition is good. I want to hand Apple a heaping helping of disruption from below.

It seems to me the statement "there are no hard facts" is an attempt to obfuscate. Devs are sticking with iOS because it generates higher sales despite more Android handsets being sold - seems like a fact to me.

Exactly.

You see your game go out, you see sales extremely lackluster and not returning the cost you put into it (and nothing close to what you sold on iOS), and you see the game getting pirated up the wazoo. You can argue all day that you can't prove that the extent of the causal relationship between the two. It doesn't matter.

You can continue to hold your hand to the stove top and say, "Hmm, let me analyze why I'm feeling the pain and how much damage it is REALLY doing to me, on a per-second basis, because there's always a chance that the pain is a false signal and the damage won't be that much if I stick with it long enough and hard enough." And maybe that's a good idea and won't land you in the hospital while you are watching the smoke come up from where your hand is, and you will learn something new that nobody else knows.

But most devs will yank their hand away and say, "OW! Sh** that's hot! I'm never doing that again!"