About the $249 price tag for version 2

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi,

I quick question about the $249 price tag of V2 of the Corona SDK… I bought my original subscription is Jan 2010 and I see that V2 is going to come out in September… Now I have been following the development of V2 very closely (and I have been testing it lot) and I guess I want the V2 SDK for its Android support (although it isn’t ready yet, see: http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2010/07/13/my-experince-trying-port-corona-iphone-app-android).

Now what I understand is this, once V2 comes out it will cost $249. When my subscription expires in Jan 2011 I will need to renew at $249. If I purchase another year now it will only cost me $99.

Is that correct?

If I purchase another year now, will it be from Jan 2011 to Jan 2012 or Sept 2010 to Sept 2011.

Thanks,

Gary
PS. As a personal comment, I think $249 is way, way too high… I bought Corona in the first place because it was only $99… The mobile app market is VERY competitive with over 100,000 apps for the iPhone and for Android. Making money isn’t easy… With this new price hike my development costs have almost tripled… But my sales won’t triple… Plus being part of the Beta program I have been spending my time testing your product, finding bugs, reporting them, retesting them when a new Beta comes out and what is my reward… Thanks for testing our product for us, please now pay 3X the price. [import]uid: 4415 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 301799[/import]

#2

Gary,

If you purchase another year now for $99, it will extend your subscription another year after your current subscription ends.

We do appreciate our beta users/testers and have tried to be responsive with bug fixes and new features. We feel the $99 price was a fair price knowing that this was not yet a final product. In addition we have included Game Edition for the same price and it’s also included for another year if you renew now for $99. For our beta testers this is a big savings over the $249 price when Corona 2.0 ships.

Thanks for you input and I’ll pass along your comments.

-Tom [import]uid: 7559 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5370[/import]

#3

How much will Game Edition cost once it goes to Beta? (or final?) – for those that need to renew AFTER the “pay-$99-and-get-Game-Edition-free” offer ends.

Also, will Game Edition be an Add-On price to the Corona SDK (like an expansion, which means you’d have to pay for both), or will you just need to pay for either/or and be all set? [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5383[/import]

#4

I don’t think the price for Game Edition has been set yet for non-beta subscribers.

Corona SDK and Game Edition are two separate products. Game Edition will be a “super set” of the Corona SDK so if you purchase GE you don’t have to purchase the base SDK product. [import]uid: 7559 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5422[/import]

#5

Tom,

Thanks for your comments… I have renewed my subscription mainly because I get a year of the game edition… For me, the standard version should cost $99 and the game $249… remember many of us are independent game developers and you could price yourselves out of the market.

Sure Corona is easy to use and yes it is quick to develop apps with it… But the Apple and Android SDKs are FREE and Apple technically says we can’t use Corona so if the prices are too high it means too much risk when there are free alternatives.

Just my 2c worth!

Gary [import]uid: 4415 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5471[/import]

#6

@garysims: How did Apple technically say we can’t use Corona? They’ve approved every app I’ve written with it so far, as well as quite a few others (take a look at Ansca’s showcase). Also, you might want to read these articles:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/11/apple_relaxes_ios_sdk_to_allow_lua_but_block_flash.html

http://www.appleoutsider.com/2010/06/10/hello-lua/

[import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5476[/import]

#7

@jonbeebe

Apple hasn’t rejected any of my apps either… so that is great… BUT technically or maybe I should have said theoretically, Apple can drop all Corona apps at a whim just because they don’t use Obj-C, remember Steve Jobs said “Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.”

OK, he was talking about Flash but it applies 100% to Corona as well.

Also the new license changes don’t really apply to Corona:

  1. “Unless otherwise approved by Apple in writing”… Anyone here got such a letter from Apple?

  2. “Solely for providing minor features or functionality”… Hmmm… minor features…
    Gary
    [import]uid: 4415 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5502[/import]

#8

@garysims: Personally I don’t understand that statement Steve Jobs made because let’s imagine a world where you couldn’t use frameworks and SDK’s like Corona, Unity 3d (which can be considered “wildly popular” already), and you would have hundreds (thousands?) of third party apps that would not only be unable to make use of Apple’s “new features”, but they wouldn’t even exist… It seems kinda redundant to me.

I think there are thousands of developers who are slow to adopt Objective-C (myself included), which is why there is a need for Unity, Corona, or any custom Lua interpreter that’s built into countless of other apps for more than just “minor” features. I think Apple recognizes that. I also think they can recognize what is helping their AppStore (e.g. Unity, Corona), and what would be damaging it (e.g. hundreds of Flash apps that have performance issues, and relies on an interpreter/compiler/whatever it is that was originally made for web browsers with mice).

All in all, technically, Apple can remove any app for whatever reason they want, even if it is 100% Objective-C.

FLASH is what Apple was targeting (which started this whole thing), and they also want to make sure to be prepared for anything else that might be LIKE Flash in the future… I don’t think Corona is in that boat, or even in the sights of what those SDK changes were targeting. [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5503[/import]

#9

Well, I am going to play the bad guy here… :wink:

If/when Apple decides to apply the 3.3.2 section of the new TOS, Corona will rather be the FIRST platform to be banished: Not only the developer delivers code that is not originally written in Objective-C (with minor additions of interpreted code), but this code has also been compiled without the need of XCode! Corona (and GameSalad too) is absolutely the same case with Flash: a black-boxed “metaplatform”.

I think Shiva3D would be the second most “annoying” platform for Apple (for similar reasons). Annoying here doesn’t mean that Apple fears Corona or Shiva, but there must be an equal treatment with the Flash case for Apple to not pay huge amounts of money for discrimination policy.

Unity3D compiles on Xcode, even though it uses Mono languages for development code. They are also preparing a C++ authoring tool, just to be fully compliant with the new TOS. So don’t count Unity3D on the doom’s day…
Corona seems to be a wonderful product, but is totally violating Apple rules!
My only hope is that Apple will not apply these rules (which I consider a 40% possible scenario).

To tell the truth, Apple has some valid points on this… Just watch how many weeks/months will all these middleware platforms need to properly support GameCenter, for example. [import]uid: 7356 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5594[/import]

#10

Well if all that is true, then I’m still on-board with Corona because I know it’s not just somebody’s “pet project”… It’s a real piece of software made by a real software company that’s serious about their product.

I know if Corona was caught up in “Dooms Day” and Corona apps were removed from the AppStore, I trust that Carlos and the rest of the team would do everything in their power to…

Revise Corona so that it DOES comply with Apple’s TOS. They were able to make software that does what is does NOW, so I’m pretty sure they could revise it to output an XCode project file if they had to. I wouldn’t mind that “extra step” if Corona output an Xcode project, then YOU had to compile it and send it to Apple. You said you don’t think Unity3D would be caught up in “doom’s day” because they do that exact thing.

And I’m pretty sure a solution would come up pretty quickly. Thankfully Corona is still in it’s very early stages so something like the above I think would be a lot easier for Corona than it would for say, Flash, who’s working off of a codebase that’s several years old.

Can anyone at Ansca give us an update regarding this? Or better yet, here’s a question for anyone at Ansca who’s willing (or in the position to) answer:

What would the direction of Corona be taken IF Apple cracked down and removed all Corona-made apps from the appstore?

Would you strive to make Corona output an Xcode project so that us Corona users could compile the Objective-C/Xcode project ourselves? Or would you do something else…

I guess my BIGGEST fear is that something catastrophic like that happens (apps all removed, Corona as it is banned), and suddenly we’re waiting to no end for Corona to come out with a magic update… and the wait never ends. But like I said, I’m confident that Ansca is serious about their product and that they would do everything in their power to fix things… QUICK.

Oh, and on a side note, I’m looking (and hoping) for Corona to support GameCenter in their future Game Edition releases (as opposed to OpenFeint, since it’s basically the same thing, but will undoubtedly be the standard in social gaming).

[import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5595[/import]

#11

Oh, and if worse came to absolute worse…

As much as I am an Apple and iOS fan… I guess I’d be focusing on Android development until Corona fixed their iOS problem. I just hope Ansca wouldn’t abandon iOS development if something like that happen and put their focus ONLY on Android development… instead of doing something like having Corona output Xcode projects. [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5596[/import]

#12

@jonbeebe

If/when Apple applies 3.3.2 rules, I don’t think they will remove violating apps. They will just don’t allow updates for such apps.

Actually, I guess there is an easy way for Apple to apply the new TOS: They are going to bind apps-uploading within the Xcode build workflow (as an additional step to deafaul debug/build options). This is going to be the only way to upload an app to the AppStore. During this build-and-publish process, an Xcode internal checker will verify that there is actually not more than X% interpreted code (or something similar). Not only this, but they can check to a-priori confirm if there is actually originally written Objective-C/C/C++ (with minor pieces of interpreted code) or just metaplatforms generated ARM compiled byte-code (as Unity does nowadays). Unity works on a C++ writing tool to avoid this check. Something similar is Shiva preparing too.

As you can see, Apple could easily dictate the usage of Xcode for builds. So, no metaplatforms could work, unless they can be transformed to act like static libraries that the user can call from his Xcode project, to write less and more simple code. This pattern is the Cocos2D approach.

For Corona to be compliant, Ansca should make huge (and very timely) changes to the whole Corona workflow and this would result to a less user-friendly product. I guess Ansca don’t even want to think about this scenario and they just bet on Apple not to apply the new TOS. I don’t blame Ansca for this, but we (the developers) should be aware of the risks.
[import]uid: 7356 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5598[/import]

#13

Just to set the record straight, Corona does compile on Xcode, even though it uses the Lua language for development code. The output is Objective C. This is done on our servers when you build a project. In Beta 8 we switched from compiling with Xcode 3.2.1 (and IOS 3.1.3) to Xcode 3.2.2 (IOS 4) so we are compliant with the latest IOS. We are now looking at Xcode 3.2.4 (IOS 4.1).

When you run your app in Corona Simulator that is not running Xcode and is a simulation of how your code would run on a device using code that is running on OSX.

-Tom [import]uid: 7559 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5603[/import]

#14

@Tom

Supposing Apple decides to fully apply the new TOS rules tomorrow, asking for Xcode builds from the end-user side (no servers), does Asca has a Plan B for its customers to keep building for iPhone? If yes, is such a Plan possible to get published within a, lets say, two months time frame?

In technical terms, how would Ansca deliver the translation (lua-ObjC wrapper) library to the customer without making Corona an open-source product?

[import]uid: 7356 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5605[/import]

#15

@Tom: Well I feel much better about that. Thank you very much for the explanation.

@Magenda: I’m not sure if they could really enforce a no-servers policy because if it’s going through the same Xcode setup on our own machines as opposed to servers, the output application should be exactly the same right? [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5608[/import]

#16

@jonbeebe

No. The Objective-C libraries may be the same (Ansca made) but the Lua code will be different (user made).
The Ansca code maps lua calls to Objective-C / OpenGL calls. So Ansca has written this mapping and the user writes lua to make a game.

However, if Ansca gives this wrapper (the libraries) to the user, so he can compile the project on his own Xcode setup as Apple dictates, he will be also able to see the code of the Corona wrapper. This exact thing happens with Cocos2d which is fully TOS compliant, but Cocos2d is an open-source product. How would Ansca sell something that can be copied and resold? [import]uid: 7356 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5610[/import]

#17

I just don’t understand how there’s a difference (in the actual app) if our lua code gets sent to Ansca servers, gets compiled with Xcode, and then the app binary sent back to us as opposed to us building the Xcode project ourselves with the Corona libraries exposed, etc.

If there is no difference in the final output of the app (which is sent to Apple), then how would Apple be able to differentiate what was compiled on the end-user system, and what was compiled on a server and sent back to the end-user? To me, the process that Corona takes us is equivalent to:

Saving your project on a USB drive, taking it over to Ansca Mobile’s computers, compiling it with Xcode, and saving the final output APP back onto our USB drive and then we take it home and do as we please with the app. [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5614[/import]

#18

Ok, I now understand your point.

Well, I am sure Apple can easily understand who compiled your app (you or Ansca) but this step is not really necessary. As I said above, they can simply bind AppStore publishing within the build process. So in this scenario you should get Ansca to also upload your game to your iDP account, because you cannot build+publish. [import]uid: 7356 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5616[/import]

#19

Apple has a standalone uploader as well called “Application Loader” you can use it to uploaded precompiled versions of your app [import]uid: 846 topic_id: 1799 reply_id: 5636[/import]