Just FYI, that's all the same source, MobileGamer.biz reporting on AppMagic's numbers. Everyone else is simply repeating the original story. AppMagic claim to be able to estimate downloads and sales from sales rankings based on developers presumably signing up with them, sharing their revenue data, and then AppMagic estimating the revenues and downloads of apps that didn't sign up based on those that did. As far as I can tell, there is no verification by third party that their claims for their methodology of being "within 10% of real values" is accurate. Also their analysis was simply for the iPad/iOS ports,
not the Mac versions.
However, I am not arguing that the ports were successful (including for the Mac). In fact, Nat Brown has effectively confirmed they were not. I believe the term he used to describe sales of some of these ports was "disaster". (so my first comment is just beware of quoting multiple new outlets that are actually the same source as being the same as quoting multiple sources and as
@OptimusGrime already said right above me, it's not really the same argument - Apple would probably be in a much better position if they did pay for ports)
In terms of Nat Brown, he has done interviews since leaving Apple and he repeated the claim that Apple really doesn't invest in the AAA games market - i.e. doesn't deals worth any money (it's a 2hr interview, but there is one on the MacGameCast #57 -
@casperes1996 did the interview). Basically Apple just says "huge potential market, we'll help a little!" and tries to get a CDPR or Kojima to port. He even says Apple's gaming marketing help is half-assed and mostly focused on Apple not the games - in other words even the marketing help isn't that much. Nat Brown left Apple in part because of inertia in the company which still doesn't understand gaming internally. He agreed with the general idea that sales are very low on the Apple platform and lack of demand is a if not the major problem. He made it clear he was
not citing internal Apple data to make this claim, but talking with his friends in publishing after he left. That's who told him that the sales figures themselves were awful. However, the developers felt that the marketing from the PR push helped them in other ways.
Edit: the one quibble I have with his interview, re-listening to it now, is that he draws a contrast between his pitch for an Apple gaming initiative and what Apple does with AppleTV when largely it's the same idea. Apple just seems to believe it doesn't need to do it for gaming. Basically he says with AppleTV, Apple seems to be of the opinion that they just need to get a few big creators, win awards, make a splash and more creators will come of their own volition. However, Apple is doing that by paying creators lots and lots of money to get exclusive unique content and using that not just to get other creators but also increase subscriber counts. And the people losing money from this are Apple, not the creators. That's basically his pitch for an Apple games initiative as well (he has more details, and obviously there are differences like in AppleTV people pay Apple for subscription revenue while for developers obviously it's commission fee where the developer gets most of the revenue from the customer directly but also takes on the financial risk). It's just Apple seems to be of the opinion that since they have this great hardware, and they do, and a large number of total users that people should just come and they just have to do the bare minimum to convince developers to port because they should want to. So according to Apple these developers should see that "hey Kojima ported, we should too!" without accounting that Kojima didn't make any money.
