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3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2011
15:00 · 9.5K views · Aug 18, 2010
Audio-only recording of the first part of John Carmack's QuakeCon 2010 keynote, taken from G4TV. It covers id Software's work around that time, including Rage and platform topics such as PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, and includes his informal audience poll about paying for mobile apps.
Cited mainly for Carmack's offhand survey asking how many people had spent $20 on Android apps, used in debates about app store economics.
3 comments from Hacker News
I take some issue with this argument. Not necessarily to say that it's false, just to say that it's not a strong argument or at the very least holds little foresight. As an example I recently downloaded Words With Friends on the Android, became immediately annoyed with the ads and was at a loss when I tried to find a pay version. I emailed them and although they replied within hours (fantastic!) they said they don't have a paid version at the moment (it's in the works). I'm reminded of John Carmack's ad-hock survey of iOS and Android users to find how many people would have spent at least $20 for apps[1], and then he explains in more detail why we won't be working with Android at that time. His reasoning is solid, but that survey puts an exclamation on the same point you're making, which is unfortunate. It's easy to claim nobody pays for things on Android if there's nothing there worth paying for. It seems to me this would make Android a prime market rather than a poor one. I've personally spent at least $40 on Android apps in the last year or so (mostly games) and will spend plenty more as developers come and give me reason (or at least a chance) to give them money. 1: this video
The question he asked at Quakecon 2010 was actually "who has spent at least $20 on the Android app store?"[1], not just on a single game. Your catch-22 scenario still holds, though I think the quantity and quality of free apps in the Android app store has also raised the bar for pay apps. [1] this video
I don't know if a guy asking a leading question (Skip to 8:40 here: this video ) trying to justifying his own decisions is 'nuff said.