The new version of Unity, the new “trivial” hit, new categories in Google Play - the main mobile news of the week

Hello! We returned. A fresh batch of hot news mobile game dev.

Unity 4.5: pending five

Unity has officially presented the next “intermediate” version of its engine, popular among mobile application developers. Version 4.5 includes 450 patches at once. Among the most interesting is the emergence of a module manager that allows you to update various components of the engine. Full list of changes can be found on the link above. We will pay attention to the modernization of 2D physics and the acceleration of loading scenes. Developers should be pleased with the inclusion of OpenGL ES 3.0 support for iOS projects.
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Recall that quite recently, Unity has opened a representative office in Russia, paying tribute to the prospects of the local developer community. The first persons of the company (not only the Russian office, but also the international one) could be found at the recently held DevGAMM conference, where Unity was actively represented.

Returning to the news itself, it should be noted that the developers are waiting for the 5th version of the engine, the output of which is expected closer to the end of summer. These are preliminary deadlines, which are carefully commented on by Unity itself, for fear of creating premature expectations. At the same time, developers can already attend to the full upgrade at attractive prices. Contact the Russian office.

Google Play has successfully introduced new categories.

Google has taken the next step in categorizing gaming applications in its store. It may seem surprising that, by coincidence, the new scheme is much closer to categorization in another, also quite well-known app store ... Although there is a fundamental difference. On Google Play, an app publisher can choose only one category for itself, whereas in the Apple App Store two subgenres are available for selection.

Has the new structure changed anything? Yes, according to a Distimo report (which App Annie has already happily consumed), revenues in the Games category increased by 15% in April. And the biggest increase was shown by role-playing games - for which now there is a separate category of its own.

The result is due to the fact that, thanks to the new structure of the application, it is much easier to find, they do not necessarily have to compete with titans from another, more popular genre, who could be neighbors in the old classification. With 18 new categories, everything has become much easier than with the old six. Carefully choose a category for your application - money is waiting!

Make it rain - new hit!

May shook the foundations of the App Store again. First Flappy Bird, now “this”! A simple clicker toy Make It Rain: The Love of Money not only lasted 3 weeks in the top ten of the United States, but also did an incredible thing - hit the Top Grossing and is still in it, stubbornly refusing to surrender.

The game, the creation of which, according to the developer, spent $ 10,000 and a month of time, competes with games that have been made for many months and cost several million dollars. As a small studio managed to make a miracle, read the material Venturebeat. However, according to the co-founder, it was pure coincidence =).

Rovio publishes the improved Flappy Bird clone

The Finnish company Rovio, known for its Angry Birds series of products, launched a new game based on the “temporarily deceased hit” Flappy Bird - Retry in a soft lunch.

The game is quite difficult to call a clone Flappy Bird. The developers took as their basis, as they considered, the most fascinating elements of the player - the hardcore gameplay and 8-bit graphics. That's all. Further, Retry can be considered as a rather large step forward - aircraft control was complicated, we added a meta-superstructure consisting of locations, which, in turn, from a variety of levels.

The levels themselves are also a big step forward compared to Flappy Bird. Here, a rather serious puzzle, requiring the player to search for new solutions to the passage of obstacles, is saved only by checkpoints. Monetization is unpretentious - badly we pass levels, it is necessary to spend money to progress further.

It will be interesting to look at the promotion of the game in the tops, yet the game went ahead compared to Flappy Bird, but at the same time lost its simplicity, which players appreciated. The first results show the marketing potential of Rovio rather than the real potential of the game.

App Annie absorbs competitor - Distimo

The other day, the company App Annie, providing statistics on mobile applications, officially announced the acquisition of Distimo. For App Annie, this is a very important and serious step in their growth in the market, as Distimo has proven itself in mobile application analytics, has gathered a team of strong specialists who are able to make decisions in any situation. And simply - is a competitor!

The Distimo headquarters, based in the Netherlands, will become the App Annie European research center, and the studio’s founders will occupy management positions at App Annie. As a result, the total number of the team will grow to 240 employees, which will strengthen the company's position in the market.

The source of funds for this acquisition was another round of investments in App Annie in the amount of $ 17 million, now the total amount of funds raised is 39 million. The company claims that at least part of this amount was spent on the acquisition of Distimo, the rest of the investment will go on developing new products, marketing and developing existing products on the market. Expected. Will wait!

How to write press releases about the release of new applications. Tips iPhones.ru

Many developers of mobile games in the context of a limited budget for marketing write large and not very thematic media in order to obtain publication and, as an effect, free quality traffic.

Very often, this process is approached linearly, sending faceless, unemotional and patterned press releases. And this is all sinning - from indie developers to large companies.

The authors of one of the largest thematic resources in the country, iPhones.ru, receiving, according to them, fifty press releases per day, told about what text they should write to an article about your product appeared on the site. You can get acquainted with the "bad" and "good" options in the article. And we only briefly list their main tips:

We delete immediately when we see:
- Boring texts;
- “Sheets”;
- Comments of the first persons of the company;
- Word files;
- Any attachments.

We like:
- Humor;
- brevity.
- Custom text submission;
- Separate links to the full version of the press release, video and graphics (any attachments to the letter is a sin);
- Direct appeal to the author, which is a guarantee of non-mass mailing, and therefore automatically makes us interested.