With regard to the kind words about the looks of the project, thank you.
The environment for level one (which was shown in the video in it's incomplete form) was 210K polygons.
Appaloosa is an old school western pistol pack'n arcade style shooter. It's based in a fantastic, toony, world centered loosely around America's late 1800's Old West. It's a rail shooter with shorter action-areas that can be completed in a single mobile time wasting session. So think western popup shooter crossed with Time Crisis; and add tumble-weed bonus rounds ala Galaga. It also had direct Face Book integration for quick posting of achievements. The game was to be priced at $.99 for each level (we were toying with the idea of releasing one level at a time, episodic style) or $2.99 for the complete game.
About WP7 being viable (currently, say this year 2011) to develop apps for... I don't see the indicators or hard data that proves so. And I'm not saying this with a confrontational tone, I just haven't seen any. I keep hearing lazy statistics (which are easily manipulated like, "fastest sales", "highest rate of apps", "most devs to date", etc.) and praise ("performing better then expected")... but the hard numbers are being held for some reason. I would bet no one had recovered their time investment for WP7 development yet, let along make a living from it.
Regardless, the numbers of phones sold is something to be mindful of, but more important is how the paid apps are selling. And the short answer is they aren't.
Games sell more then any other app and 'LIVE' games sell the most. We knew we would be dead in the water without 'LIVE' support, but when we spoke to a MSFT rep in Belgium we got the answer, "oh LIVE... yes yes, that is tricky. Probably can't get you LIVE status; that is reserved for the big guys. Let me know when your game is done, and I will see what I can do to push it up the list."
We were also in contact with a dev studio who's game has always been in the top 10 and has "LIVE" certification. Their game has sold in the tens of thousands; which doesn't even cover dev costs. Maybe the costs will be recovered over the next year. But that 'maybe' was a risk I couldn't take; not with a self-funded (sweat equity) game.
We weren't looking to make big bucks. Just wanted to be able to exercise our craft and make a living. Everyone on the team was willing to live on 1/3 a typical studio salary in exchange for creative freedom and a chance to gain from their own sweat equity. We all brought senior experience to the table (I've worked on Tomb Raider, Half-Life, Tribes, Tony Hawk, and others). Sadly, the numbers aren't there. Punch in some basic math numbers on keeping 3 people alive for a 9 month dev cycle; plus additional time for sales and payment, and it's just not an equation that balances yet. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I'm bound by the realities of the real world, so at the New Year we had to evaluate the project progress and platform landscape.
If anyone has direct access to a MSFT rep, I would be happy to chat with them about bringing the game to market; Or point them to this post.
I guess the point of this post is that the phone is capable of pushing some great graphics and supporting original, mobile specific, titles of very high quality. But if a tiny 3 person team can't justify a 9 months development risk... then I see a chicken-n-egg scenario formed.
