Grand Theft Auto 3 was made available on both Android and iPhone yesterday. It’s the exact same amazing game, with the exact same controls, and yet there’s a startling difference of more than 20 percent in customer satisfaction on both platforms. At the time of writing, in iOS, it’s sitting pretty at a superb 4.5 out of five. On the Android Market however, it’s hovering at 3.4 out of five.
That might not sound like much, but it’s a telling indicator of Android’s strengths – and weaknesses.
Let’s be clear here. Whether they’re playing on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch or Android phone, almost everyone who’s got the game up and running has been loving it. “It’s amazing to think that just 10 years ago a chunky black box console was needed to run this game, now it’s on devices small enough to hold in your hand,” says Nathan Liu, an iOS gamer. “Works great on SG2 [Samsung Galaxy S2]. Great touch screen controls. Brings back so many memories, esp the radio. Thank u Rockstar,” says Android user Neil in his review comment.
But there’s a massive discrepancy in review scores. On the Android Market, 677 users have given GTA 3 a five star rating – but a huge 463 have panned it with one star, dragging that average way down. The reason? Incompatibility, of course.
Apple’s iOS obviously enjoys the luxury of running on just a smattering of devices, with just three different screen resolutions between them. It’s easy for game developers, such as Rockstar, to code a game you only have to test on a few devices.
So it goes, of course. Android’s ability to run on any and all hardware is both a blessing and a curse. Thems the breaks – deal with it. But there’s something else at play here: on iOS, it’s only possible to download apps that are supported on your device, onto your device. Where Rockstar seems to have slipped up is by not limiting the Android version of GTA 3 to its own list of supported devices.
That list is a just a few handsets and tablets long, and they’re almost all powered by NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core chipsets, bar the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. Rockstar mentions them at the bottom of the description of the app on the Android Market.
But yesterday, when the game was released to much fanfare, it was available to download on a far wider range of phones, with very mixed results. According to reviews left for the app, it was failing on some old hardware such as the HTC Desire, but running fine on others such as the Epic 4G, an American variant of the original Samsung Galaxy S, as well as newer, single-core phones such as the Sony Ericsson Live With Walkman.
Here’s the rub: even though it’s perfectly possible to limit Android app availability by device (Try and find Adobe Flash in the Market on a phone with a low-power processor that doesn’t support it – you won’t), Rockstar didn’t do this. As computer scientist Alastair Cummings points out, this is a daft oversight: it’s quite a prominent setting in the app submission process. Instead, it just chose to flag up a warning that might be read if people could be bothered to scroll down.
Let’s face it, people are people, they’re not going to. Did you read the EULA agreement the last time you updated iTunes or your PS3? If you did, you’re a nutcase.
To make matters worse, because Android apps are only available to delete and refund from the Market for 15 minutes after purchase, customers who didn’t check compatibility downloaded it anyway, but lost the ability to get their money back – because it’s such a large game, it takes longer than 15 minutes to download the game content over Wi-Fi.
So what’s the solution here? Well, the Android Market’s new ability to sift reviews of an app for your device and build of Android’s a great start. And clearly the 15 minute refund policy is fundamentally flawed. But once again it comes back to this: Google needs to do a far better job curating its Market than it is right now. It needs to do better clamping down on malware infected apps – and spotting them in the first place. And the same applies for apps that are clearly only supported on certain phones. Think about it – you’d never expect to be able to download GTA 3 or Infinity Blade 2 on the original 2007 iPhone, would you?
Now, Apple’s app police are a source of some controversy – vague, hypocritical and sometimes oddly slack. I for one think its walled garden approach could greatly hamper advances in personal computing down the line. But I don’t think Google endangers much by adopting its more stringent app approval processes. Remember, the Android Market isn’t the only app store for Android – but by improving this experience for customers, it’ll remain the dominant one.
Interestingly, Rockstar seems to be getting its act together today. My Google Nexus S was showing Grand Theft Auto 3 as available for download yesterday, but is no longer compatible today (I’ve reached out to the company to confirm it is only making the game available for supported Android devices, but have yet to hear back). But the point is, it should never have been available on phones that wouldn’t run it in the first place. A New Year’s Resolution to sort, perhaps, Google?
What do you think? Is Google’s softly softly approach the right one? Shout up with your views in the comments.
