Dyack: Apps "eroding" handheld quality

By Robert Purchese Published 19 May, 2011

"There are 17,000 fart apps right now."

The swamp of tacky iOS games is "eroding" the overall quality of the entire handheld market, reckons Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack - the App Store is causing "dramatic disruption".

"My understanding is that there are 17,000 fart apps right now," said Dyack, reported by IndustryGamers. "Those are more fart apps than anyone could possibly ever consume.

"Looking at that number it's frightening," he added. "What it seems to be doing is eroding the handheld market where you're actually getting really high quality games instead of fart apps. And I'm not saying there aren't quality games on the iOS, because there are; there are some good games there, but there's so much performance oversupply and commoditisation that it is actually affecting the industry in a very negative way."

Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata launched into a surprising attack against the volume of App Store produce during his Game Developers Conference 2011 talk. "I do agree," agreed Dyack, "that the industry has to be really careful with that - you're seeing such a dramatic disruption."

Oversupply drives the overall price of iOS games down. In the real world Dyack said most iOS games sell paltry amounts - it's not all Angry Birds and 200 million downloads.

"EEDAR did a talk where they said the gross average for an iOS game - gross, not net - was $700," revealed Dyack. "I can guarantee you that a company like ours and most people cannot survive on a $700 gross."

Silicon Knights is currently working on X-Men Destiny. Sadly, game specifics are still under wraps.

Too Human was the last game Silicon Knights released. This was a futuristic action RPG based around Norse mythology. Eurogamer gave Too Human 6/10.

Whether the Too Human concept of a trilogy will be borne out remains to be seen, although Dyack offered encouraging remarks earlier this month.

A very brief glimpse at Silicon Knights' newest game X-Men Destiny.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (40) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • MerricK #1 1 year ago

    thats one good thing about the windows phone 7 marketplace is that MS wont allow to many "similar" apps so farting apps cant take over the world!

    Saying that, if i record my farts and sell em to app makers... I could be in for a nice tidy sum :)

  • BillPoon #2 1 year ago

    Is "consume" the correct word to use when considering fart apps?

  • AcidSnake #3 1 year ago

    Can't Nintendo just buy them wholesale?
    Eternal Darkness 2!

  • mr2ange #4 1 year ago

    Well after seeing Monster hunter turned from glorious game into steaming apple turd I have to say i completely agree.

  • randompanda #5 1 year ago

    I'm pretty sure when some bright spark invented language, he'd always hoped that one day it'd be used to utter the words "consume a fart app".

  • frunk #6 1 year ago

    Dyack: Silicon Knights "eroding" console game quality

  • Engineerly #7 1 year ago

    Oh, don't mind him. He's just bitter that Angry Birds made more money than Too Human.

  • UncleLou #8 1 year ago

    "Looking at that number it's frightening," he added. "What it seems to be doing is eroding the handheld market where you're actually getting really high quality games instead of fart apps.

    In the meantime, in the real world, 98% of all DS releases are total, cynical crap that cost as much as a game like The Witcher 2.

  • Inmediasress #9 1 year ago

    What's so new about that it was just a matter of time before it went to the dogs.
    The same thing happens everywhere just like PC/Console gaming it was flooded whit shit upon shit like COD games and other bland sequels cause everybody wants in on the action.
    Wherever there is an unce of profit to have people will be fucking everything over for it.
    Edited by Inmediasress at 19/05/11 @ 10:24

  • nuanimal #10 1 year ago

    The old wind bag has a point.

  • Lexx87 #11 1 year ago

    Oh Dyack just shove off and stop moaning for god sake. Make a decent game and it will sell, you can't use this as an excuse.

  • Kami #12 1 year ago

    Isn't this another example of making a largely correct point, but the point is coming from a mouthpiece that has sod-all credibility right now?

    I wouldn't mind so much but whilst it may be a good point to make, it just comes across as moaning...

  • Seoh #13 1 year ago

    So we should have overpriced crap instead of underpriced?

    I would love to see a breakdown of that $700 statistic, does it include free apps?

  • krudster #14 1 year ago

    Dear Mr Dyack: do you bother to play any of the games I recommend every week?

    Love,

    Kristan

  • Toothball #15 1 year ago

    Whichever side if the argument you fall upon, the "17,000 fart apps" is a great statistic.

  • Zomoniac #16 1 year ago

    Whether the Too Human concept of a trilogy will be borne out remains to be seen, although Dyack offered encouraging remarks earlier this month.

    That link says Dyack plans to finish the trilogy. I fail to see how anyone who has played the first game could possibly find that 'encouraging'.

  • GreyBeard #17 1 year ago

    @Krudster

    Unfortunately the (mostly) quality apps you cover will not make their creators sufficient revenue to continue/build their business because there's an oceanic distance between the sort of numbers shifted by Angry Birds and 99.9% of all other products on the store - irrespective of their value/goodness.

    The sad truth is that when you are selling at 59p per unit (minus Apple's 30%, minus tax) you need to sell in serious volume to stay afloat. Which is kind of a problem when at pretty much any holiday or other peak selling period the big boys flood the market with price-reduced versions of successful existing franchises (hello EA), and the small fry are forced into actually giving their stuff away for free in the vain hope of getting enough uplift to get featured on the store.

    Trying to launch a title into that sort of howling gale of competition is no joke.

  • geeza2020 #18 1 year ago

    cry me a river Dyack. Or make a good game for once.

  • DanWhitehead #19 1 year ago

    I'm pretty sure that people who are going to buy fart apps will search for fart apps and will end up buying fart apps. People who are looking for good quality games are unlikely to look for or buy a fart app instead. It's like saying "How are we supposed to sell chairs when there are so many whoopee cushions on the market?"

  • UncleLou #20 1 year ago

    Isn't this another example of making a largely correct point, but the point is coming from a mouthpiece that has sod-all credibility right now?

    But what exactly is his point? I am not quite sure I get it. One the one hand, he says it's eroding the market. On the other hand, he says hardly anyone can make a living because only the odd rare title sells.

    Now if all those fart apps sold millions and developers would stop making proper games in favour of another fart app, then it would make more sense.

  • TonyHarrison #21 1 year ago

    Nintendo recently claimed the DS has had 1,150 games released for it (It'll be more now). I like the little soundbite that provides.

    There are 14 times more fart apps on the app store than there are DS games on the market. And that's just the fart apps, I'm sure there are thousands more stupid apps to go along with them.

    The DS gets a lot of crap like Ubisoft's Imagine series, but it gets a lot of great stuff to balance that out. I bet there aren't 17,000 games worth playing on the app store to balance those fart apps out.

    And that gross return figure is just sad. Embrace the mobile future everyone, but only if your company is called Rovio...

  • Kami #22 1 year ago

    The point I believe he is making is there are lots of "fart apps", but only one or two will ever really sell in enough quantity to make a living for those who created them. The rest - even if they are good and improve greatly on the formula - often arrive to the party too late, or at a time when the market is so crowded that people are slightly spoiled for choice, and have already gone for "Super Fart Fighter 2 Turbo Championship Edition: Y" - which already has the foothold, the name, the kudos.

    This isn't aimed at games exclusively though and I think it is also a far broader issue than merely apps - there are lots of games and software out there that are of very good quality, but are fighting in a market that really doesn't have any more space to accommodate them and therefore, it's more of a quirk when one does tend to sell well - Angry Birds springs to mind here, of course. It's not particularly brilliant or doing anything new, but it stood out. Nothing wrong with that, but those trying to recreate its success will more often than not find it tough to break away from that comparison. I'd even go as far as to bring it to the console/PC market - how many more sci-fi shooters can the market really accommodate? Vanquish was lovely, truly was, but it is in a market with so many other brands with an already established foothold that it was almost doomed from the outset.

    That said, we must also believe that quality will shine through in the end - and sometimes, it takes a long time before that quality is shown even the faint glimmer of light. From Ico, to Symphony of the Night and right through to Beyond Good and Evil - these are quality titles that took many years before they rose to the surface of a sea of crap. It's not an easy life being a developer, but equally the idea you can just quickly turn out something to make X amount of money is a luxury that very few developers can ever afford - or get right, especially when everyone else has the same bloody idea.

    But again, this is a person who seemingly still believes we didn't understand Too Human - overambition I am a big fan of, but mediocrity I am not into. Not when there are some really good titles out there that do things much better. So yes, the market is crowded - welcome to the games industry, Mr Dyack. We already know this. And you likely have known this for some time.

    I believe the term is "stating the obvious".

  • knocker #23 1 year ago

    It seems that mobile apps are becoming a real handy excuse that the traditional gaming industry can blame all their woes on.

    1. The majority of people that buy angry birds wouldn't have bought your games anyway.
    2. Try looking in a mirror and take some responsibility for not creating interesting and original material.

  • Vlad27145 #24 1 year ago

    @krudster

    You undoubtedly make a very good point, but it still doesn't defeat his. The fact that there are many good games on iOS and the like does nothing to eliminate the plethora of crap that is on there. Fart apps, fake X-ray apps, fake cell tracking apps, games so bad that they'd be painstakingly out of place even in the worst Wii mini-game collection, etc. The iOS at least does a relatively decent job of prioritizing the better games/apps over that crap, but it's still far from perfect, diluting the market, and parting plenty of fools with their money. And let's not talk about the situation on Android.

  • knocker #25 1 year ago

    And who on earth are EEDAR ? because this: "EEDAR did a talk where they said the gross average for an iOS game - gross, not net - was $700," is an utterly meaningless statistic.

    I know several ios developers that have released games purely for fun/cv enhancement. Total gross on each - zero.

  • knocker #26 1 year ago

    And who on earth are EEDAR ? because this: "EEDAR did a talk where they said the gross average for an iOS game - gross, not net - was $700," is an utterly meaningless statistic.

    I know several ios developers that have released games purely for fun/cv enhancement. Total gross on each - zero.

  • DanWhitehead #27 1 year ago

    For what it's worth, a search for "farts" on the App Store brings back 854 results and just from skimming the results there are more than a few in that list that aren't fart machines. There's a bunch of lifestyle advice apps, for example. Now obviously, that's still a hell of a lot of fart apps, but it's a long way from the 17,000 that Dyack claims are on there. There is a broader point to be made about how the wheat/chaff ratio on digital platforms can make it hard for worthwhile titles to stand out, but that's an industry wide problem and always has been. I'm sure publishers felt the same about the glut of half-arsed £1.99 Speccy games in the 80s.

  • oupe #28 1 year ago

    Can we have a fart app face-off?

  • dllord #29 1 year ago

    STFU and make Eternal darkness 2!

  • Stomp224 #30 1 year ago

    ""My understanding is that there are 17,000 fart apps right now"

    All of which are infinitesimally better than Too Human.

  • secombe #31 1 year ago

    I'm on the App Store pretty much every other day and I've not even accidently discovered a fart app on iOS for about 2 years now, are there really 17,000? However many there are, they don't get in my way and I'm still managing to find gems (yesterday, Starfall for iPad) on a frequent basis.

    I thought Apple stopped approving them a long time ago, or did I make that up?

  • dsmx #32 1 year ago

    Ahh well, I'll just go and put hour 53 into Peace walker the quality of that hasn't been eroded by fart apps.

  • mingster #33 1 year ago

    Weird coz Remedy made a top down arcade racer like micromachines called Death Rally and it has about 180,000 people in the leaderboard at £1.99 each. Now they are a proper studio that make HIgh quality console games as well (Alan Wake) etc.. and they can make money out of the IOS App market. The $700 statistic is nonsense. I think you need to relook at your business model Dyak.

  • Rack #34 1 year ago

    There are around 60 million rats in England, surely that has a similar effect on the quality of handheld gaming?

  • mingster #35 1 year ago

    Even Gameloft have created a World Of Warcraft MMO called Order & Chaos with ingame micropayments and a sensible £1.99 for 6 month subscription you can even buy gold ingame from Gameloft so they have cancelled out chinese gold sellers. It already has over 250,000 users, if you make a good game then it will sell.

  • Bigmac1910 #36 1 year ago

    Well, old business models die, new ones emerge, who would have thought.

  • arcam #37 1 year ago

    At one point iFart was no. 1 in the App Store and was pulling in $10,000 a day.

    Can't blame developers for chasing that kind of cash.

  • YenRug #38 1 year ago

    @mingster

    I think you need to look up what the term "average" means, once you understand that, then you can rant all you like if you're still correct.

  • cyber_nicco #39 1 year ago

    I really enjoyed Too Human, even if it had a few very irritating facets to it.

  • brod #40 1 year ago

    Why does this guy even have a voice in the gaming industry? Silicon Knights is the most overrated developer around.