Fuse Acquires Corona!

Getting Started Announcements
#1

If you haven’t heard, we’ve been acquired by Fuse. For more context, we cover the main points in this blog post and the FAQ.

We’ve created this special forum thread for any ongoing conversation/questions about the acquisition. We are very excited about this announcement and we know it is important for our community, so we want to make sure everyone knows the facts and gets a chance to participate in the conversation.

We will monitor this thread throughout the day and will try to answer questions. Jon, the Fuse Powered CEO, will also post below and will try to be available to answer questions (although he is traveling at GDC Next in LA this week!)

#2

First, let me say how excited I am to welcome Walter and the entire Corona team to Fuse, and let me reiterate that together we’ll continue developing and investing in the Corona platform.

We’re a former mobile game developer and publisher. Even though we’ve evolved our business into a platform, we still see the industry from a publisher’s perspective. And we stand in huge admiration of everything Corona has accomplished, and of the quality of games and apps that have been developed using Corona.

We are two different but complementary businesses that share a vision to help mobile game publishers make great games and succeed. Corona helps you make great games. Fuse helps you make those games more successful.  We both know our customers and care deeply about their businesses, their games, and their players. Together, we realize our vision of an integrated platform that helps mobile publishers succeed, with less hassle.

#3

wow, this is great news. thanks walter and jon, and congrats!

let’s hope we can get our hands soon on the adrally. and finally monetize our users :slight_smile:

#4

Walter / Jon,

What does this mean for folks who predominantly use Corona SDK for business apps? I see not one mention of business apps in the announcement nor in the comments above. Seems to me that the future of the platform will increasingly prioritize games and monetization that comes with games.

Any thoughts on what (if anything) you plan on doing differently going forwards to support the business apps developers?

Regards & thanks,

Kerem

#5

Will our data be sold for ad purposes? Will there be tracking code inserted in our apps? Like the corona tracking code that we had to manually disallow?
Can I keep all my info away from the ad people?

#6

First of all, congratulations.

I must admit that I have not fully digested the news, nor am I, at the moment, able to read between the lines. Therefore, I can’t yet figure out whether this a good thing or not in the long run. I really hope it is.

I do have a question, however. Will Corona SDK be gathering app statistics (like it used to do with Launch Pad)? I develop children’s apps and games and it is absolutely imperative for me that I do not display ads or gather app statistics. I had LaunchPad set to false in my build.settings. But will Corona have a statistics /monetization API baked in the SDK from now on?

EDIT: just read Juf Jannie post above. This is exactly my concern.

#7

I’m thinking more and more that Corona is not the framework for indie game developers. I’m so sick of seeing all these new features about IAP, adverts and getting as much money from players as possible. I know this model works for a lot of people and I wish them the best of luck with it, but I find it frustrating. I was really hoping that corona would go down the route of building for more platforms, but that seems quite stale now.

Good luck with everything though. I’ll probably be using corona for some time yet. I just want to make great games with great features and on as many platforms as possible. No adverts, no IAP, just great gameplay and a one of purchase price.

#8

ksan, Juf and mazrabul - take a quick look at the FAQ (http://coronalabs.com/fuse-corona-faq/) and you’ll see quick answers to your initial questions.

#9

@Rob: I think most of the indie devs also want to get a return money-wise, therefore monetization through different channels is very important. It’s fair enough if you simply want to sell your game or give it away for free. But Corona needs to offer both: great ways to monetize, and also different channels to put the game on (Steam etc). One side has been pretty much covered now I guess, lets hope we can put our games on different platforms soon.

#10

@dingo, thanks!

@kerem, take a look at our FAQ. Here’s a brief excerpt: Corona has always been about creating rich, interactive apps, and the best examples of this are clearly games. Going forward, Corona will still be a general purpose platform and developers will be free to use it to develop any type of app.

@Juf Jannie/@mazrabul/@appoet, take a look at our FAQ. You will continue to be able to manually disallow our tracking. Children’s games are example of what Corona enables and we want to continue to see you be successful at it!

@roballison182, we love the fact that there are Corona developers out there who can make money without IAP/ads. As for platforms, we just recently announced Windows Phone 8 support. In fact, another Corona dev just recently ported his apps to WP8. Like you, he avoids IAP/ads, and just charges straight up for his apps — very successfully, I might add.

#11

Hi.

I think it’s for the best. Ad tracking is inevitable with any ad platform. And if AdRally really gives more money than admob - I am in.
And if Corona folks get more money from Fuse, they can hire more people to make Corona better faster (harder stronger).

What’s an ETA for the plugin? Will it work on windows phone?

@Jon, can you confirm that AdRally typically generates higher eCPM than pure admob interstitials?

#12

@Walter, If Jon Walsh promises not to read the forum, can you tell us why you really sold Corona.  :wink:

I read the ‘polished’ reasons you wrote on the blog but i’m not buying it.  :wink:

#13

Walter, I actually “ported” our latest game to WP8 but unfortunately the performance isn’t quite there yet, we’ll probably try again soon :slight_smile: We’re actually working on games full-time from December thanks to our latest game (ALONE).

I totally understand that IAP etc are important for a lot of devs, I guess I’m just feeling frustrated that corona doesn’t build for PC/Mac yet. That’s what I’ve been dreaming about for the past couple of years!

#14

@walter, @david, indeed I saw the faq entry. With all due respect, it does not say anything about future direction. It simply says we are free to use Corona SDK for whatever we wish to use it for provided we are happy to develop custom UIs.

This is like saying, here’s a hammer… you’re free to use it to hammer nails in or whatever else you may wish to use it for. If it is putting screws into the wood then hammer is not a good choice but yes, it will still do the job as long as you’re happy with a less than ideal tool.

This is my question. Will we see increased focus on the needs of business apps or not? Straight answer would be appreciated. Thank you very much. 

#15

I for one am glad to see that Corona Labs will have more guaranteed stability.  I’ve been developing software on platforms such as Corona for a long time and it can be very hard for such platforms to last beyond the 5 year mark.  Congratulations guys.

I would like to pipe in and say that it would be nice to see (and something that Corona Labs should have as an ongoing conversation with its community) a roadmap for the next 6-18 months.  As I make decisions about what technologies to invest in as we plan our future app development, such a roadmap would greatly influence my decisions.  In its absence, I can only guess and that never leads to as successful a decision - and usually a much more conservative one.

My company is actively in development on a number of apps in Corona and we look forward to doing more.  Please help us plan to maximize our results.

#16

This would be great. Whenever I’ve asked about other platforms I get a vague answer like “It’s something we’re thinking about but it’s not a priority at the moment”. If I knew for certain that it’s not going to be considered in the next 18 months, I’ll probably need to invest some time in learning a new framework.

#17

@Walter and @Jon, Congratulations on the deal! I’m really looking forward to all of the potential that it can bring to the Corona/mobile app community.

#18

+1 on that, well said!

#19

Congratulations on the deal! It does seem like a positive move, if only to ensure that Corona Labs has a stable future and can continue to invest in continued development and support of the product.

As someone who develops primarily kids books, and increasingly business apps, the monetisation options offered by Fuse do not have an immediate appeal but I’m sure will be of value to games developers. If the Fuse platform offers more sophisticated targeting and engagement opportunities than just simply ads, which it does appear to do, and integrates well into Corona, then I shall certainly be interested.

I also agree that a clear product development roadmap going forward would be extremely beneficial. I have committed 4 years to using Corona for all my app developments and would like to feel that this investment of time and effort hasn’t been wasted (I did a brief moment of panic when I first saw the announcement!).

#20

Well, you could integrate your platform into Corona without buying it, which kinda begs the question, why did you buy it ?

It could be advantageous for those of us who use ads ; I admit that I hadn’t heard of it prior to this announcement, but one would expect AdRally to integrate efficiently without any of the odd update issues.

Are Corona guaranteeing to maintain the Ads library properly ? A cynic could see the temptation to put the effort into the company’s own product…

It would help if Fuse would enlighten us on their plans for Corona over the next year or three. As they’ve bought it, I’m presuming these exist.