Games Workshop Digital Releases

[wittdooley]

They're looking pretty damn good right now, considering the fiasco that the War Room launch is right now for Privateer. Seems like they did, in fact, make a good decision releasing the product on iOS first. Contrarily, Privateer is having loads of trouble with War Room on Android; apparently it won't even launch on a select series of devices.

Needless to say, the Privateer Press Angry Boards are on fire. I half expect their corner of the internet to explode at any moment.

[Wildeybeast]

Despite all the whiners about it not being available on Android, it made perfect business sense for them to start out on Apple. You have to programme separately for different platforms on Android, which will probably be why PP are having trouble with some devices. Apple lets them test the market and if there is high demand then look at other formats. They've only been going for a few months, but seem to be doing well, so here's hoping people keep buying them.

[JMichael]

Though I'm a Droid user, my main issue is new material that is only offered on the iPad and not at least in print.
The new Space Marine missions (which you roll to see if they replace the rulebook missions, and every army will have their own set of missions) look great...but I don't want to spend several hundred dollars just to have the iPad for missions.

[Lexington]

Mmm, not quite. GW still took the cheap, easy solution by going through iBooks. Android's a giant pain to test for when it comes to complicated programs, due to the fractured releases, but GW's digital releases are simple stuff. It would've just taken more resources and planning than I imagine they wanted to put into it. Happy to see them really following through on the project, tho.

War Room's problems have some relation to the one-size-fits-all approach they took, but it's bigger issue is that it's not really a functioning program, even at the best of times.

[wittdooley]

War Room's problems have some relation to the one-size-fits-all approach they took, but it's bigger issue is that it's not really a functioning program, even at the best of times.

I"m really disappointed, because I was stoked to get it. Even bought my two faction decks right away. Then I found all the misfires. Now, I'm using iOS, so I don't have any stability problems, but there are huge issues, my main being:

1. If you chose to do a tiered theme list, the program doesn't tell you what level you acheive in the theme, nor does it limit your troops/jacks/beasts/solo choices to the theme list. Considering Forward Kommander has that, and works very well, it's a huge miss.

2. Theme lists don't adjust point levels or fielding allotments appropriately, making it appear that you have an illegal miss.

3. If you swipe the actual boxes on the damage tracker and then swipe the number area, it does not adjust correctly. It actually killed the program on my iPad, so that's a problem.

4. I couldn't access army lists made on my iPad on my iPhone. This problem has been relayed to PP/Tinkerhouse, but it was still a bummer.

Again, I'm at least (fortuantely) able to launch the program because I do have iOS, but this release is like I said, so far a fiasco. I hope GW is watching with great interest, because I think they can learn a lot from this. I knew there were problems formatting across multiple Android formats, but I really didn't know it could be this bad.

Fanboids or app developers--> if you develop an app for Droid, do you literally have to test the app across all types of phones and tablets to ensure cross functionality?

@JMichael--> I feel you there. I'm not going to start another "merits of the iPad" debate, but I promise you if you take the plunge and do buy an iPad, you'll find yourself using it for much, much more than simply GW iBooks. And that's if you don't purchase a single additional app.

[Defenestratus]

if you develop an app for Droid, do you literally have to test the app across all types of phones and tablets to ensure cross functionality?

Depends on the app. If you're using only native Android interface elements then you can get away with not testing it on every device and be ok.

For whatever reason, the War Room's interface is built more like a game and not like an "app". Literally thousands of publishers of games and apps on Android have been able to get their wares to work across all of the platforms without issue - why this group couldn't I'll never know. The most bizarre issue seems to be that the app doesn't recognize a 4G signal as an internet connection. Now I know that iPhones are stuck in 2006 with their crappy 3G connections, but those of us who have moved on to the promised land of 20mbps/sec would really appreciate being able to use it :P

Furthermore, the list of devices that are reporting problems (and I confirmed on my Gnex running 4.1.1 AOSP Jseries binaries) is literally a list of the top 5 most popular Android devices sold in the past 2 years. Sammy GS2, Gnex, GNote, GTab2, Droid RAZR... I mean they couldn't have picked a set of more popular devices to have it fail on really.

However, the crashes really aren't what make this app horrible. This app is poorly designed, poorly implemented, does not follow the Android Design guidelines, disables the back button, forces landscape mode, has text so small that I literally needed a magnifying glass to read some of it and is coded about as well as something a programming intern would come up with.

I really think that they developed the iOS version then "ported" it to Android. Something thats doomed for failure. Its really too bad that some iOS bigots are trying to use this opportunity to point out some perceived advantage over android here. It should be a demonstration in a horrible developer/product, not android itself.

Like I said above, thousands of developers have been able to successfully code their products to work across all android devices. Why this developer couldn't is due to nothing less than incompetence.

(Looking at this company's only other release on android, it seems that they have the same problem with crashing and stability.... I don't get with PP went wit this studio to provide their android app honestly.... [url]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tinkerhousegames.cstw&feature=searc h_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS50aW5rZXJob3VzZW dhbWVzLmNzdHciXQ[/url]..)

[Defenestratus]

As for WHY PP went with an Android app, its all about numbers....

[url]http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/8/3227506/idc-q2-2012-mobile-os-market-share[/url]

[Blusox69]

That data is for smartphones. Books like these are designed for tablet use.

Below is the same smartphone data, but they also include the tablet data

[url]http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/news/20120808-android-holds-majority-share-smartphone-market-ipad-continues-dominate-tablets[/url]

[wittdooley]

You can, of course, spin numbers any way you'd like:

[url]http://www.redmondpie.com/android-sales-down-ios-sales-up-in-q2-compared-with-q2-2011-in-us/[/url]

[url]http://www.bgr.com/2012/07/30/android-us-market-share-q2-2012-apple-ios/[/url]

I will, of course, reiterate the fact that, with Android being available on more service providers (especially the "cheap" ones) they are of course going to have a larger market share. The more appropriate statistic is to look at the app sales (which I could not find a resource I'd call "reliable), which is the main reason to start on iOS in the first place.

Oh yeah, that and you dont have to worry about your app functioning on every Samsung Galaxy 7GS Extreme and Droid Razr 4X Turbo.

While it remains pretty clear that the developer is to blame in this instance, I think the fact that they're having problems on some Android devices and not all really does speak to a major development issue that comes with Android that doesn't come with iOS.

[Defenestratus]

I think the fact that they're having problems on some Android devices and not all really does speak to a major development issue that comes with Android that doesn't come with iOS.

The fact that they're having problems on some devices in no-others' fault but their own. Its not androids fault. Its the developer's.

And that BGR story is completely laughable.

App sales is another stupid metric. Fact of the matter is that there are more potential customers holding android devices (when tallking smartphones, tablets are another sad, sad story) than iOS devices.

Oh yeah, that and you dont have to worry about your app functioning on every Samsung Galaxy 7GS Extreme and Droid Razr 4X Turbo.

You do if you want to get money for your app. You see, you make fun of the names of those devices, but the devices you so cutely deride with names straight out of an 80's rappers' cover art --represent the diversity of CHOICE that exists in our ecosystem, with a variety of options, customizations and fits for each individual - as opposed to the monolithic "one size fits all" (which apparently it doesn't anymore...) approach to iOS.

Ultimately, thats why Android's marketshare has surpassed iOS's globally. Its because it represents choice.