Editorial: Palm’s PDK will be a game changer
Palm is set to announce at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) next week the release of the Plug In Development Kit (PDK) beta. For those that do not know about the PDK, it will
“lets developers extend their webOS applications by writing plug-ins in C or C++. The webOS PDK makes it easy for developers to leverage existing code and exposes new capabilities — including high-performance 3D graphics.”
In short this will allow for easy porting of Apple iPhone applications to Palm’s new and growing application ecosystem. How far will this extend to all types of apps is not known at this time.
Reports have been that game developers that have already been using the PDK are able to port a complete 3D game in a matter of a couple days. One might wonder why an iPhone developer would be interested in bringing their app to a relatively small platform in terms of total units sold? Below are our reasons of why they would jump at the chance.
1. Money, iPhone developers rarely can get away with charging more than .99 cents to 1.99 at the Apple store, simple issue of supply and demand at play. If they want to sell apps they have to price them very low since there are so many other apps to chose from. webOS developers on the other hand can charge upwords of $9.99 like EA has done with Need For Speed Underground in the Palm App Catalog and still see very nice returns especially when you factor in bullet point #3 below.
2. App availability, right now the Palm App catalog is working towards 2,000 apps. When a good app comes out it gets a lot of press in the Palm user community and people jump on it. If you were selling hot dogs would you rather sell them to people that have been fasting or sell them to someone that owns a buffet? Due to the overwhelming cluster%$#^ that is the Apple App Store, good new apps can be hidden amongst thousands of fart and burp apps, this is not the case currently with Palm’s App Catalog.
3. Time/resources, hundreds of hours have already gone into the creation of the game when it was developed for the iPhone. Spending a small fraction of that time while opening up an additional revenue stream through a new distribution channel is a no brainer. The cost/benefit ratio makes sense from an app developers point of view, as a result very well known apps will be coming to webOS that might not have without the Palm PDK.
So what does all of this mean for you the Palm smartphone owner? It means your app catalog is about to grow much faster with some very good quality apps. Sure there are likely to be some more garbage apps come over too but I think right now the trade off is more than acceptable and welcomed by Palm and its user base.
3D Gaming, App Catalog, iPhone, Palm Inc., webOS
[...] Palm has made the PDK available, you can download the PDK at the Palm Developer Center. As we have discussed earlier the PDK is going to allow game developers (possibly other app developers) to bring their [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] platform.Put even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] platform.Put even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
[...] even more simply, it’s a way of luring developers to the webOS platform offering an easy way to convert iPhone games, for example, to work on Palm handsets, therefore bolstering the webOS’s available apps with [...]
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