Why haven’t Games Workshop published their digital Codexes on Android as well as IOS?

Hey all - just published a detailed article about this on my blog, as a preparatory piece to preparing a proposal to GW about how they could open up their codexes to anyone who had access to a web browser.

Here's the article:
[url]http://www.tetsugaku.info/why-havent-games-workshop-published-their-digital-codexes-on-android-as-well-as-iosipad/[/url]

And here's an excerpt:

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A great many reasons. I grew tired of explaining them to fanboys on the internet so I’ll explain the problems here. Your comments are more than welcome, as is your feedback on my proposed solution.

1) Market Share.
The tablet market is split 60%/40% – IOS / Android according to the latest figures I could track down. This means that the largest single chunk, is resoundingly in Apples garden.

2) Fragmentation
Apple tablets are a single system. They all have the same size screen, one of two resolutions and predictable hardware. Android devices do not have *any* of these benefits as you can see in these info graphics. Designign for them is much, much harder as you have to account for so many more variables.

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I'd really appreciate your comments on the article as everything I can get from real gamers (you lot) helps me out with my user research.

Cheers :)

Your reasons being somewhat flawed aside - the solution is simple and as you pointed out - very easy to accomplish with HTML5.

Nice, straight forward read with really good links. Bravo on that.

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Originally Posted by Defenestratus

Your reasons being somewhat flawed aside - the solution is simple and as you pointed out - very easy to accomplish with HTML5.

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Where are the reasons flawed. You keep saying this. What in this article comes with flawed reasoning?

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Originally Posted by Defenestratus

Your reasons being somewhat flawed aside - the solution is simple and as you pointed out - very easy to accomplish with HTML5.

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Brilliant well this is the sort of feedback I'm looking for - if you could tell me what you think is flawed, source some stats and reply on the article I'd like to update it so it better reflects opinions?

I do understand the ease of writing for a single device vs multiple. But Android far out numbers iOS phones. Though tablets certainly are better for reading the codecies and such, It would be great to have them on the smaller screen as well.

Smartphone split:
50% = Android
30% = iOS

From here:
[url]http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/03/android-tops-50-ios-hits-30-in-u-s-smartphone-installed-user-base/[/url]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JMichael

I do understand the ease of writing for a single device vs multiple. But Android far out numbers iOS phones. Though tablets certainly are better for reading the codecies and such, It would be great to have them on the smaller screen as well.

Smartphone split:
50% = Android
30% = iOS

From here:
[url]http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/03/android-tops-50-ios-hits-30-in-u-s-smartphone-installed-user-base/[/url]

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Of you're definitely right about the share of the market - but those numbers don't tell the whole story, in fact they're positively misleading. As I go into in the main article there are a lot more reasons why IOS users are more likely to make the purchase than Android users, the marketplace, the accounts, the one click purchasing (linked to the credit cards), frankly IOS users are more likely to have a larger disposable income.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JMichael

I do understand the ease of writing for a single device vs multiple. But Android far out numbers iOS phones. Though tablets certainly are better for reading the codecies and such, It would be great to have them on the smaller screen as well.

Smartphone split:
50% = Android
30% = iOS

From here:
[url]http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/03/android-tops-50-ios-hits-30-in-u-s-smartphone-installed-user-base/[/url]

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No one disputes that. But who wants to read their codex on their phone?

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Originally Posted by wittdooley

No one disputes that. But who wants to read their codex on their phone?

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Well I'd want to access my army list in an easy to read format, compete with a quick reference table of all the special rules I might need at the tabletop?

I might want to tweak my army its whilst I was on the train on the way to work and didn't have my tablet.

The smart phone is ubiquitous, you always have it with you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tetsugaku

Well I'd want to access my army list in an easy to read format, compete with a quick reference table of all the special rules I might need at the tabletop?

I might want to tweak my army its whilst I was on the train on the way to work and didn't have my tablet.

The smart phone is ubiquitous, you always have it with you.

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Which is entirely different than what GW opted to do with the iPad Digital Codex. I would in no way, shape, or form want that simply ported over to the smaller screen. It would effectively need to be a different app.

But maybe I just have bad eyesight.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wittdooley

Which is entirely different than what GW opted to do with the iPad Digital Codex. I would in no way, shape, or form want that simply ported over to the smaller screen. It would effectively need to be a different app.

But maybe I just have bad eyesight.

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Indeed you are correct. The GW offering is exclusively for tablets, it doesn't even have a portrait mode over landscape, a glaring omission IMO.

However - it doesn't have to be like that, in fact the solution is available right now, it's called [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_Web_Design]responsive web design[/url]. Effectively it means reflowing content to fit the screen, whatever screen, that's being used to view the content. There's no reason why a web based GW subscription service would't be usable on your TV, your phone, your tablet, desktop and everything else whilst using a single code base.