The power of the Flash Platform part 4: Online gaming
There’s a good chance you immediately recognized the game in this screenshot. Over 28 million people played Farmville yesterday. Another 10 million played Cafe World. 6 million for FishVille Mafia Wars (Mafia Wars is not a Flash Game. Thanks Robert for pointing that out!). In fact, Zynga alone (maker of these games) serves 60 million players every single day… And all these games are built with the Flash Platform. I might as well stop this blog post right here because that’s a very impressive number.
There are also a ton of Flash games available on the web that are used to launch or promote a new product. Check out these games by Red Bull, Coca-Cola, and Cheetos.
There are many many many games like these out there. Know a cool one? Feel free to share the link in the comment section!
Other posts in this series:
The power of the Flash Platform Part 1
The power of the Flash Platform Part 2 – Augmented reality
The power of the Flash Platform Part 3 – Video
Build applications for a potential of 1 billion users!
From Wikipedia:
As of June 2008, the number of personal computers in use worldwide hit one billion, while another billion is expected to be reached by 2014. Mature markets like the United States, Western Europe and Japan accounted for 58 percent of the worldwide installed PCs. The emerging markets were expected to double their installed PCs by 2013 and to take 70 percent of the second billion PCs.
As I’m sure you know, PCs are everywhere these days and the market is still growing rapidly. I’m also sure you know that Adobe AIR can run on most of these as well (provided they run Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2 and SP3, Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows 2003 Server, Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher or Linux). That means that, building an application that runs on Adobe AIR has a potential user base of 1 billion users that is growing rapidly every quarter!
“That’s cool, Serge. But how do I make money from building AIR apps? Where’s the AIR app store like Apple’s app store for the iPhone?”
I think Apple has done a tremendous job at making buying and installing applications completely foolproof. But the real question is: “Do you really need an app store for AIR applications?”. There are lots of ways to monetize your application. And there are already lots of good examples of people making money with AIR applications.
For example: EarthBrowser, Agile Agenda, Broadchoice, Tanager Audioworks and Balsamiq all sell licenses per user. No developer programs to sign up to and no middle man (with the exception of the payment provider). Easy to set up and you have total control.
Selling software licenses is just one way of monetizing your AIR application. Robert Christensen, one of the AIR product managers, did a session on this topic at MAX in Milan. If you want more information on how to monetize your application, I would suggest you check out Rob’s blog post on this. Rob has a few real world cases that will definitely inspire you. You really don’t need an app store and thus you don’t have to wait to make money with your work!
Now the only things left to do, is start building your AIR applications, make money with them and send me a percentage of what you make with them ;-).
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