@blacklemon - The 'mobile' market. "Oh, it made 19 billion dollars last year!" Let's examine that, shall we? The market is roughly 3 billion 'users' or so. But there are a few key statistics. 1, there are 12 million mobile developers world wide. 2, only about 5% of users spend money on apps. So, first off, if every developer got a even cut of yearly revenue, they'd only make 1,500 US. Second, and I tried to find a good statistic but this is the best I could do, is the top ten grossing iPhone games rake in 2.5 billion or so a year. And the iPhone only makes up about 20% of the smartphone market meaning that ~40% of all revenue is spoken for by 10 apps on the iOS store.
Ten apps. Nearly half of
all the revenue on the iOS app store is consumed by ten apps. Good news if it's your app of course. But if not, that means you compete directly with 11,999,990 other developers for 60% of the revenue. Suddenly that 1,500 dollars a year looks more like $108 dollars. Assuming that the other 60% was evenly divided, which of course it isn't. There are a considerable number of apps that bring in less than a few dollars in revenue a year, and no first world developer can live on even that generous 1,500 so you better break the top 100 if you want to make it your job.
On the other hand the Pi is a hobbyist market where the major sales seems to be in accessories, not software. There are a lot of DiY projects and a high demand for specialty parts to do them. That said, a enterprising person might see that as a good opportunity since the competition for high quality software on the Pi is largely non-existent and even if you only sold 10 copies of your game for 10 dollars, you'd have matched the revenue your app would achieve on the iOS store. It's almost like they are completely different markets. Not to mention other fallacies in your logic. Sell-through rates on Xbox, PS4 and Wii U are often ~30% even on under-performing titles, where mobile sell through is at best,
at best, 5% and more realistically less than 1%. That means on mobile less than 1% of the population will ever even see your app, let alone use or make a purchase with it. Where as on consoles, the Wii U included, visibility is closer to 60% since not only is there less software to keep track of, fans of those consoles tend to keep up with upcoming releases and engage with the platform through events such as E3 or dedicated publications. On the Pi, there is also a dedicated base and assuming you made the right product, there's no reason to expect you couldn't easily sell 10,000 copies and blow that mobile market right out of the water. Of course, that assumes you understand what market saturation is and bothered to understand what you are talking about.
Lastly, let's address that part about 'terrible sales'. The Wii U was an under-performing console, there's no doubt about that. However, the Wii U cost an estimated 228$ to make per unit at launch and was sold for 300$. That means Nintendo made ~216 million dollars on the Wii U at launch. Not bad for terrible sales, eh? On the flip side, the PS3 cost an estimated $690 dollars or more to make and while the exact figure is not known, what is known is that Sony reported a
loss of 2 billion dollars because they didn't have a high enough sell through rate on software to make up for the losses on the hardware. So while Nintendo did indeed end up taking a loss on the Wii U, it was from unsold units. Sony could absorb the losses in their gaming division because they are a large company that has a lot of divisions, Nintendo similarly absorbed their losses similarly since the Nintendo DS/3DS line has been consistently profitable, but their software also has unusually high sell-through rates.
I digress. When people say you are comparing apples to oranges,
@blacklemon, they are saying that because you are. What I am saying, however, is that you have no idea what you are talking about.