What are we doing next?

This is a question that we've been struggling with quite a bit.  Should we keep adding more features to Zengaku?  Would a new platform such as the iPad, or Android make sense?  What about some of the smaller platforms where we wouldn't get lost in the noise?  The WebOS looks interesting and RIM holds a special place in our hearts since it's just down the road and a number of our ex-coworkers are there now.  Even one of the original Redshirt's works at RIM.  But the platform seems to be a bit dense to penetrate and we're not hearing great things about the opportunities for small independent developers.  But that's probably a whole other blog post.

Some of us are very excited by the idea of doing independent mobile games, others feel like productivity applications would be more rewarding.  Coming to a decision is pretty difficult.  There are benefits to both approaches.  Games don't require a lot of support and maintenance and if you make a popular game you can build on that popularity and revenue with a new version 2 or 3 of the game and customers generally are good with that as long as there is enough of a new experience.  However productivity or utility applications seem to have different expectation.  Our friend, Barry, the maker of LiveCams had told us in the past that support and maintenance were a major part of his overhead of selling his application.

However games are very hot and cold and require a real creative spark to be done well.  We're all pretty much dedicated software developers, but we're not known for our artistic abilities, or our familiarity with Photoshop.  None of us have built a real game before. Zengaku is a pretty simple game really.  Any new game we might create will likely be a significant departure from this genre.

With a productivity or utility application you can have more opportunities to build the business beyond just the mobile market and sales are generally steadier.  A productivity product usually will have a longer shelf life as well.  Plus you get the satisfaction associated with knowing that the work you've done is going to help someone get something accomplished easier, or more quickly than they could previously.  It's a hard choice, but we seem to be settling in on a direction for now.

Games FTW!  Regardless of our personal deficits we all really enjoy games and are pretty charged up by the challenges in developing game software.  Also gaming provides a relatively simple business model with  a potentially better chance of success since a lot of small games have done quite well in the mobile marketplace by providing a fun, engaging and unique twist on a familiar gaming paradigm.  Also given Zengaku's recent growth in popularity we'll be providing more frequent update to that game to see if we can get it up to where we believe it's true sales potential should be.