This is really exciting news! I’m looking forward to working closely with the new Corona & Fuse in developing and monetizing my apps developed with Corona & Fuse 
I have 2 further questions:
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Are there going to be any changes to the pricing and/or subscription plans? (Is this how Fuse intends to recuperate its investment?)
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Will you continue to honour previous offers (like the one from last year to purchase pro subscription)?
EDIT: +1 for development / plans roadmap.
@Walter and @Jon, congratulations for this new deal first!
If this sound like adding new complementary forces to Coronalabs, well, it can only be a good news.
I think we all hope that this merger would make Corona SDK stronger and more present on the market,
and perhaps a good opportunity to consolidate parts of the product still weak or lacking.
A business app side reinforcement, and an improved visual composer for business app, could be a boosters for Corona.
Best of luck.
Ale
@mazrabul, there are no changes to the pricing/plans. As for the grandfathered pricing, yup, that’s good for two years (2 renewals).
Slightly off-topic, but how do we disable the built-in “tracking” (analytics)? I know this used to be achieved by adding “launchPad = false” to config.lua, but with the former launchPad being taken down earlier this year, I want to make sure that I’m definitely turning off any tracking or data collection in my kids apps. I tried looking in the usual places, but couldn’t find a definitive method that was documented within the last couple of years.
But more to the point: congratulations, Walter, David, and team! Like others, my first gut reaction to this announcement was fear about what it could mean for the future of the SDK, but we’ve weathered bigger changes in the past (the Ansca/Lanica split comes to mind) and always come back bigger and better. ¡Viva Corona!
Also, +1 on having a regularly-updated roadmap. That’d be a welcome addition.
Congrats to Walter and the rest of the Corona team! This must be an exciting time for them.
Meanwhile I would echo <ksan>'s comments above and ask for more clarity about the future of Corona SDK for business apps. I know it’s mentioned briefly in the FAQ, but not in useful detail.
RE: Roadmap.
We hear you. Every product I’ve worked on is always striving to improve wrt roadmap/planning.
That said, it’s not common (except in certain industries) to see companies publish complete roadmaps 12-18 months. It’s super rare to see companies who publish such a roadmap and actually *stick* to it 6 months in.
Of course, we want to do better. And we would like to find the right balance here. The challenge is that the mobile industry changes very quickly. The danger for us is promising dates months in advance, because those things are not a hard science. And often, there are external forces like Apple imposing a hard 64-bit slice requirement starting in early 2015, that disrupt our cadence.
These days, we have a strong bias to always talk about what we actually have delivered (into daily builds), rather than raise expectations about what’s coming. Translation: we’re doing it a little old school when it comes to underpromising. But the point is taken that we need to find some middle ground here.
If you have suggestions on what that middle ground would be, feel free to e-mail me: walter at coronalabs dot com
Is Merus Capital still in the picture?
Congrats on the deal!
I enjoy using Corona and I hope they continue to add more and more platforms so we can continue to “code once, release everywhere.” Thanks!
@walter don’t set dates on the roadmap, it’s never correct. Just point out your long term and short term goals with priorities. Like
long term: android audio lag, high priority
short term: publish to desktop, normal priority
I am happy for the folks that deserve so cash in their pocket, but I am saddened by the likely changes in cost to indie/free, and uneasy about the future of the platform.
So many great platforms/applications have been bought out, cannibalized, chopped to pieces and sold off in chunks.
I have recently been spending a lot of time in CoronaSDK and feel unsure now. the FAQ did not ease my concerns, these kinds of FAQs are always vague for the clear reason that no one wants to make any promises that the platform will continue to exist in any capacity; The part about business apps really sounds like “go ahead and continue using what we have, but we will not be adding new features for business apps”
*sigh* and congrats I hope things continue and progress, I really do, but for now it is gonna be hard to convince my prospective clients that building their app in Corona is the right things to do.
The Fuse purchase makes sense for Fuse. Not quite understanding how it makes as much sense for Corona, unless resources were an issue.
We do development for educational research. We aren’t interested in making money from our apps. We chose CSDK because
- Corona Labs has been working with us and our limited funding resources and graduate student programmers.
- CSDK provides rapid development (sometimes we run a morning session in a classroom and change the code before an afternoon session).
- Corona Labs makes our old code work when IOS/XCode updates occur. (perhaps the most important feature for us).
So as long as Fuse can continue to provide rapid development, support for our research and insulation from platform updates, we will be fine.
Congrats! We’re excited to bring more monetization options in our templates and IP.
I’m positive that CoronaLabs will keep supporting their products as they always did, can’t wait to see the fruits this deal will bear (:
As with all acquisitions I am under the assumption that there will be changes, such that cultures will either align or clash with the purchaser and purchasee.
I think it is great that you were able to sell the company, and find an acquirer, I’m sure if the price wasn’t right for the moment it was right than it wouldn’t have happened, so it either worked out for you or it didn’t but had to.
I don’t think asking for a time line will be of much help, because it’s such a fast paced world of development that a change in direction isn’t unlikely to happen anyway, I just hope we can still rely on the same level of product support and customer service, and due diligence in aiding the members that we’ve come to expect and love about being a part of the Corona Dev community.
When we, as developers, and I think I speak for most of us, pick a platform to learn and develop with we felt it was a great product with a strong company backing it, otherwise we’d all have picked something else.
The strengths I see in this deal to me mean that Corona will be a much more stable company in the future and that is very heartening to know that the platform I choose to learn and put months of time and energy into won’t close down anytime soon now.
Congrats Walter and team on this successful step for Corona Labs.
Glad to see so many folks excited about the combination of Fuse/Corona!
So here’s a quick summary of questions I’m seeing and some quick responses to each:
RE: AdRally integration with Corona. We’re working on a plugin right now. We are working towards a private beta which is our first milestone. We hope to hit this milestone very soon, e.g. this month or next.
RE: Business apps. I’ve posted our thinking on this forum thread. Please go there to continue the discussion.
RE: Automatic data tracking/selling/etc. Just reiterate what I’ve said earlier, you have the same capabilities to turn off Launchpad. So this should be a non-issue.
RE: Other platforms, e.g. Mac/PC-based apps. I’d like to offer this, but we have to focus. And right now, we’re still a mobile/device-first company.
@roballison, for your WP8 performance issues, try posting on the WP8 issue to see if there’s a potential solution to your game
RE: Roadmap. See above (http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/52439-fuse-acquires-corona/?p=272367)
RE: Pricing/Subscription. Just emphasizing what I said above, there are no changes to the pricing/plans. If you had a grandfathered pricing on Pro, that’s good for two years (2 renewals).
RE: AdRally vs Admob interstitials. Jon’s at GDC Next, but I’ll see if he can chime in here.
After reading the FAQ & the forum thread, the feeling as a Corona subscriber…
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Fuse: let’s get AdRally implemented asap, we will see how much money it can bring in by acquiring Corona
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CoronaLabs: although we cashed out, we will continue working on it as usual
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Corona subscriber: Corona will soon have a new Ad module
Maybe it’s not correct. Just a feeling.
The most important question is … After the acquisition, will Corona be expanding (e.g. hiring more people immediately, for example, another 20 people), or it just stays as it is?
Can Corona answer this?
I’m seriously pleased for the Corona Labs team. This is great news! Congratulations. Can’t wait to see where you take this platform next…
As a developer, I’m not sure what this deal will lead to. But, seriously I hope Corona will have better fund to hire and offer more technical support to developers from this deal. The technical support is very limited to developers for Corona especially on Enterprise version I’m dealing now, there are still difficulties in combining Native java code and Corona code. Hope to see a change for Corona.
Being venture-backed, CoronaLabs have not published any investor news for quite some time. I personally think lack of cash is one of the main reasons for the acquisition. I hope this new partnership will be beneficial for both companies to drive forward the development of the Corona SDK.
I for one would like to know more about Fuse Powered. I had never heard of them before. Who are they, what is their plan for the future?
From what I could scrape together myself, they are also a venture-backed company founded in August 2009 with headquarters in Canada (Toronto).
…also I’d like to know which ad networks do Fuse Powered serve ads from? I can’t find any info about it except that they serve ads from “30+ ad networks”.
I’d like to see a breakdown of which ad networks provide ads for:
• Static interstitials
• Video ads
• Rewarded ads