The App Store has been nothing but a major cash cow for smaller developers, and Peter Molyneux of Lionhead studios believes that this is a perfect experience for developers. "I think there's this opportunity now for game developers," he said, discussing the case of creative director Dene Carter, who left Lionhead to form an iPhone studio. "I think of the iPhone and Facebook and all these types of channels offer a window of opportunity for small developers to experience what it was like in [the bedroom coding era of] the late eighties."
That said, Molyneux thinks the App Store gold rush is coming to an end. While he still currently looks at the App Store as an opportunity for smaller developers to make a name for themselves, “It's inevitable that a Star Wars or Disney game, a five million dollar iPhone project, will be released. And when it does, consumers are going to like it. They're going to say 'I can pay 59p for this [indie iPhone game] or I can pay 59p for this [triple-A iPhone game]."
Molyneux’s solution to stifling the urge of developers to wander into the mobile games region has been to simply let developers create. Lionhead studios has an official policy that institutes a one-week period in which staff can work on whatever they like, “and at the end of the week we’re all going to come together, look at people’s ideas and that’s going to form the foundations of what happens next at Lionhead,” he stated.
