As I said in the title of this topic, I would like to know your experience regarding submitting the macOS versions of your ios apps to the App Store. It is worth to dedicate it the time?
If your game is optimized for mobile devices and has a mobile friendly touch-based UI then yes definitely. You’ll also need to consider the vast difference in display sizes between iPads and different iPhones.
I’m sure there are many other hurdles porting a desktop game to mobile (like font sizing, touch points, etc), but good luck.
Thank you for your advices @anon63346430
I have read you again and I think you misunderstood me. I mean if you already have your game on iOS in the App Store, it is worth uploading the version for macOS?
BTW, what about in-app puchases and ads? Admob and the Apple IP plugins are good enought for this implementation?
Mobile games don’t do particularly well on PC/Mac from my experience. At least from the standpoint of revenue, you’d struggle to find enough users who’d be willing to pay for a mobile port.
We published some apps to Mac App Store and Steam before Apple unified their architecture and while they got generally good reviews, became fairly popular with speedrunners and streamers etc for a few months, we didn’t make much money off any of them.
It’s also easy to underestimate the magnitude of the task sometimes with regards the changes and other accommodations you might have to make for a mobile app to deliver a user-friendly experience on bigger screens. We had gone all out with controller support, achievements, leaderboards etc and it was a fun experience back when we did it but I won’t seriously consider porting a mobile app to desktops again
Well, I’m thinking on some of my games that are already ported to desktop for Windows, so the macOS versions would be relatively easy though.
And what about ads @famousdoggstudios ? Can Admob show ads even in macOS versions?
Is the Apple IAP plugin works for macOS?
Yes, I misread what you wrote. Of the entire desktop market, Macs represent a couple of percent and are mostly used in a business environment (artist, musicians, developers, etc.).
So, at best, you can expect 1-2% additional installs compared to your Windows install base.
I haven’t published to the mac store after apple started to allow iOS apps on it so I don’t really know if the same mobile SDKs for ads work on Mac. I had deployed through the Mac App Store as a paid app and through Steam