Why would i ever want to spend 5 bucks for shit that got stolen from newgrounds or a "latte". Jesus christ these people.

Also last time I checked mobile gaming is doing well on actuall mobile consoles like the 3DS, suck it phone games.

Mobile games just need to die. How can anyone in their right mind actually find it enjoyable playing with your finger on a tiny screen like that?

If anything it's just a social statement, "I'm so cool I'm playing games on my phone, lol I'm such a nerd!".

Cancer.

Support costs are also a problem. A writers or musician doesn't have to take into account compatibility problems with hardware or platforms.

And thanks for the article link. Haven't read it yet.
How can anyone in their right mind play on anything else but touch? Touch is a lot more intuitive. Give a child touch, they'd immediately understand what to do. Give them a mouse or a controller, they'd need some practice to get it right.

If he's looking for a dedicated gamer audience, people who spend on games instead of pumpkin spice latte, then what's he doing on the mobile market? :P

Well, you have people whine about the price of actual good games like King of Dragon Pass just because they happen to cost more than 5$
The problem is that developping a real game for the phone is very risky because noone wants to pay more than what they would pay for that "shit that got stolen from newgrounds". If you know your game will be sold 0.99$, you might not be motivated to do much effort :/

I was thinking the same thing... the mobile market is what it is, and it is so for a reason. It is gaming on the go, short burst on the bus, and the pricing structures reflect this. MObile games can be very very good, but they are also tailored for that particular market. If the developer want to have more "hardcore" and retro market, he need to go where it is, not complain they are not coming to him. I feel the culture shift the author here is searching for needs to happen within himself, not the customers....

X-D So typical, so funny ... we've got to force gamers to change so they'll buy crap games and be more like us

I think the problem is two-fold. First there is a huge market of time/money-wasters, and then there are too few non-casual gamers using mobile platforms for gaming.
My non-casual, completely free, open source, ad-free, no-microtransaction TBS game for example in 3 months since it's on the market had gathered a whooping 3000 downloads of which about 1300 still have the game installed.
That is peanuts, nothing compared to Candy Crush Saga and other brainless games.

There was a time when mobile apps made their developers millions. This was like 5 years ago and it seems these times are over now. Now the market is saturated and the number of developers has grown too much so there is too much competition and the earning prospects have gone down accordingly.

This is not a cultural shift (5 years ago people were already drinking pumpkin spice latte) but a typical bubble that bursts. This guy is just too late. I feel sorry for him but apart from that I would like to clearly tell him that this cultural shift he is so longing for won't happen because this is not actually the problem. The truth is that there are just too many app developers and the solution is that some of these have to give up in order to improve conditions for the others.

Apart from that I agree that free-to-play with in-app-purchases never really sounded like a totally solid business model but at least it was a try to get the maximum out of the gamers. Obviously it only works to some extent. Especially it works really badly if there is an excess of games available.
And as always the most important question stays unanswered: How can gamers be forced to hand over more money?

Unless he also comes up with an answer to this all he says is purely day dreaming / wishful thinking.

A Finnish developer team complaining? I should have known! Finns know shit about marketing, see this Finnish guy who is trying to sell solar energy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W-0D6mPPlc

Their game does seem somewhat interesting though (Battlestation: Harbinger), but unfortunately I buy mobile games from Humble Bundle, not GooglePlay. I wouldn't mind a PC version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMSEoG6dv8

It still does, you just need to know this market. The problem is that some developers thinks that deep, complex and lengthy games are suitable for the mass mobile market, it is not. On mobiles it is fringe market. Those who understand this, still makes millions in the mobile market.

Here's my 2 cents..

1) the controls on my phone suck. I don't need to wear out the buttons so i don't buy games for it.
2) Mobile games (my experience) are non-transferable from the phone
3) Very low quality, tiny screen, hard on my hands, etc.
4) My phone is a phone. See reason #1.
5) Due to prices of data bandwidth, i don't want to pay for internet twice just so my handheld device can check email or stream low quality video from youtube. As such buying/downloading would be annoying (thankfully there's microSD, IF you can download it via another means)
6) I try not to get too much into a technology or fad until it's proven itself. As such, Mobile games have proven they suck so far.

Mind you I'm not using a smartphone where the mobile games are at, so maybe I'm thinking more the phone games vs app store, since my phone doesn't run android...

Blablalblabla : DDD

1) Install Freedroid repo
2) Download games
3) Play and if you like - donate

Malware free
Ad free
Hidden cost free
Transaction free
Free software hence maintained

This is like GOG, except GOG sells proprietary drm/ad-free. Means, as long as software is also updated, its also fine!

Edit: GOG should start selling mobile with same principles ! :)

Which is what I do. My general policy is to buy games that don't have microtransactions and provide all of the content up front for a set price. X-Men: Days of Future Past (the action platformer based off of the original comic arc) and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Universal Weapon are two such examples. The only exception to that in my buying habits is Hitman GO, which IIRC only sells in-game hints through microtransactions; something you can get around easily anyway.

There is a good deal of games with set price, without the microtransactions ...p. Civilization Revolutions 1+2, XCOM: Enemy Within and a few other titles are at set price and are not bad at all (also the early Asphalt games series, a series that moved to freemium model lately...). Many of the paid games are good or even great (Botanicula on an Android tablet is as fun as it is on PC).

If you are smart you will stay away of the "free" games. Those are usually on the freemium/microtransactions model.