"Mobile has become more difficult to support than consoles"

Swedish mobile studio Simogo is fed up with mobile and its next project will be a title for consoles, the company revealed in a blog post today. Simogo, named as such for its founders Simon Flesser and Magnus "Gordon" Gardebäck, has been continuously updating its titles on mobile to stay current with the constant OS updates, but it's a process that's become more trouble than it's worth, according to Flesser.

"We've put months of work into this, because, well, we care that our games live on, and we want you to be able to keep playing your games. Had we known back in 2010 that we would be updating our games seven years later, we would have shook our heads in disbelief," he says. "This year, a lot of time we had planned to spend on our current project, ended up being spent on just making sure that our games would not be gone from the app store. Because sadly, the platform holder seems to have no interest in preservation of software on their platform.

"We can criticize and be angry and mad about it all we want, but we don't think that any efforts we put in can change that direction. So, instead, we're thinking a lot about how we can find ways to preserve our games, and our own history, because it is inevitable that our mobile games will be gone sometime in a distant, or not so distant future, as iOS and the app store keeps on changing and evolving. We don't have a definitive answer, or any final ideas how this would be possible, but we'll keep on thinking about it, and try to come up with solutions, and we welcome any input and ideas on this from you too!"

While Flesser acknowledges that the iPhone has been revolutionary and that Simogo wouldn't even exist without its success, he no longer feels that it's a platform that's very friendly to small developers. The world of mobile development is radically different than when Simogo was founded in 2010.

Flesser continues, "It's getting increasingly financially unviable, tiring and unenjoyable for us to keep on making substantial alterations for new resolutions, guidelines, and what have you, as they seem to never end. The appeal of the mobile platform is less evident today than it was a few years back. Before we started Simogo, we had made console games, and had grown really tired of the clunky processes, politics, certifications and primitive development environments that was involved in making a console game. Today, a lot of that clunkiness is gone, and sadly, for a small developer like us, mobile has become more difficult to support than consoles. Releasing a mobile game means supporting it perpetually, and justifying that is tough for us, at the moment. So, as you have probably understood by now, our current game in development, 'Project Night Road', is indeed a console game."

Flesser adds that this doesn't mean Simogo is permanently done with mobile, but for now the studio sees more incentive to develop for consoles, and the company has partnered with a publisher to do so. "The 2010 version of Simogo would have laughed at the very idea," he jokes.

Simogo and the unnamed publisher will officially announce the new console game some time next year.