Warns that its OS 'strikes out' for gaming
Digital Chocolate boss Trip Hawkins has strongly criticised Google's Android platform, in a blog post titled 'Droidful'.
While he hails the fact that Android handsets are selling in great numbers, Hawkins says that "as a game platform right now, Android strikes out", citing three reasons: payment, pricing policy and advertising rules.
Hawkins points out that many current Android handsets don't support carrier billing, and won't until 2011. But his strongest criticism is reserved for Google's stewardship of Android Market.
"Conventional games don’t sell on Android because Google has a senseless and lazy policy to ignore what is posted into their app store," he writes.
"Google also allow consumers to try any paid app and then easily return it up to 24 hours later for a full refund. Seriously, when so many other things on the app store are already free and everything else is free for 24 hours, why would anyone pay for a game?"
Hawkins suggests that Google's "denial" may last until next year too, "when the widening deficit in their app quality compared with Facebook and Apple should finally motivate them to fix the problem".
Finally, he claims that Google does not allow competing ad networks on Android, which means there are none of the 'offer completion' networks that have been an important factor in the growth of social gaming on Facebook.
"As long as they keep selling devices, Android could be a great game business within two years, but it would blossom much faster if Google becomes more proactive about these issues," concludes Hawkins.
Digital Chocolate is not the first games publisher to fire such brickbats at Android Market. Gameloft criticised Google's store in November last year, before reiterating its support for Android a few days later, after a rollicking from Google.
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