Our mobile game development company is an experienced service provider whose capabilities can help you achieve the highest goals. You can take advantage of our expertise and channel it to receive a mobile game that will engage your target audience.
Developing a mobile game in-house may indeed be a good idea, given plenty of time, budget, and human resources. So why outsource mobile game development at all? Well, there are multiple reasons you may want to share the responsibility of working on your product with a third-party professional that has already delivered many video games to satisfied clients. Here are at least a few of them:
Professional touch. By referring to an outsourcing mobile game development company, you significantly increase the odds of ending up with a high-quality product. Why so? Simply because the studio has already sharpened the skills of its team, having built dozens, if not hundreds, of similar mobile games that you are intending to develop. Since they have hands-on experience and enough expertise, the result of such a venture may prove to be astonishingly promising. Knowing the process inside out will help them finish your mobile game sooner and without any reduction in quality. Let’s take, for instance, Game-Ace. Our outsourcing mobile game development company offers full-cycle services, meaning we can make your product from zero to release within the estimated time frame.
Resource availability. When you lack any of the resources needed to finish your mobile game, it considerably decreases the chances of finalizing the product at all, let alone meeting the deadline. Outsourcing studios like ours already have everything they require to deliver a top-notch game for you. Resources aren’t all about software and hardware (which is always available to companies like Game-Ace). Instead, it’s quite often about people — specialists you hire to fulfill the duties and develop a mobile game that’s worth your audience’s attention. Therefore, outsourcing mobile game development will help you get 3 in 1: experts, hardware, and software.
Market insight. Game-Ace analyzes the mobile gaming market in order to provide you with the best services. If throughout the discussion, we come up with the notion that your game idea needs to be analyzed against the background of the global industry, we can conduct the discovery phase before starting to develop the product itself. Essentially, the discovery phase is extremely important when it comes to the pre-production phase. It allows us to gather more valuable information regarding what mobile game types your target audience prefers, what devices they may potentially play your game on, their screen sizes, resolution, hardware, as well as player preferences.
Cost-efficiency. Whenever you opt for in-house mobile game development, you choose to pay far more for the workforce you hire and keep compared to the cost allocated for outsourcing the same process. Therefore, your technology partner can keep within the agreed budget and time frame, simultaneously developing the top-caliber mobile game you deserve. Depending on the cooperation model you choose, you may save both time and money by taking advantage of Game-Ace’s mobile game development services because we share all the responsibilities.
Saved time. While your partner is busy with the technical part of your mobile game, you can discuss the cooperation terms and either entrust the chosen external team with full-cycle game development or share the work that needs to be finished. At the same time, you receive more free time to spend on improving your business strategy, market research, or other more valuable aspects of running a company instead of figuring out how to develop an attention-grabbing mobile game from scratch.
Today the game development industry is led by two major game engines — Unity and Unreal. What framework is best for mobile game development? Let’s identify the benefits of each and reveal the tech stack you should opt for during your project execution. Even if you are more into choosing a reliable outsourcing company than developing everything on your own, this information will help you know what platform better fits your future mobile game.
To start with, Unreal Engine may prove an excellent choice if you have enough budget and time to finish a high-end mobile game. Unlike Unity, Unreal is usually considered more complicated and has a higher entry threshold, which gradually entails other issues you’ll need to face. However, instead of comparing one engine with another, let’s better highlight the pros and cons of each of them, decorating these lists with a short conclusion.
So, what are the pros and cons of Unreal Engine in mobile game development?
Pros:
Graphics quality. With Unreal as your game engine’s preference, you won’t ever have to worry about poor computer-generated imagery (CGI), inasmuch as this platform provides the most innovative technologies to pack your mobile game with state-of-the-art visuals. Moreover, given the latest updates, Unreal Engine offers a fully optimized global illumination system, a hyper-realistic human character creator, high-quality shaders, and other innovative technical solutions that will give your mobile game a unique touch.
Almost free of charge. Unreal Engine is free and won’t charge you anything until your game brings you more than $1m. In that case, it will ask for 5% of the project’s revenue. In addition, no monthly subscription payment is required, which is good news for anyone willing to make their mobile game using Unreal Engine.
2D/3D content creation prospects. Although you may want your artists to use external software solutions, such as ZBrush, Autodesk Maya, Substance Painter, or others, Unreal Engine offers its in-built tools for modeling, sculpting, texturing, and animating your virtual environment as well as characters.
Game porting. Unreal Engine allows you to develop a game, say, for mobile platforms and then port them to a PC or console without too much of a hassle.
Cons:
High entry threshold. When you intend to develop a mobile game using Unreal, be wary that you’ll have to hire more advanced senior developers who know the score in mobile game development, which entails more costs spent on human resources management.
Too many options to tweak. For mobile game development, Unreal Engine may prove overwhelmed with additional functionality and options, which are helpful when it comes to making games for PC or console platforms.
Difficulties optimizing for low-end devices. Since Unreal Engine supports high-poly graphics for AAA projects, its capabilities may be too much for a simple mobile game built to be played on old devices.
What about the pros and cons of Unity for mobile game development?
Pros:
Excellent UI. Unity may be the best mobile game development engine thanks to its user-friendly interface and low entry threshold, which allows you to hire less experienced yet not less effective developers. Sometimes enthusiasm is a weightier argument than experience. Thanks to an intuitive UI, the mobile game development process takes less time and effort, being more rewarding.
Flexible programming language. C#, being the technology supported by Unity, is a powerful and relatively simple tool whose capabilities will be more than enough for mobile game development.
Extensive Asset Store. Unity features a marketplace with both free and paid art assets for your mobile game, with a wide range of options to choose from, depending on the scale of the virtual world you wish to build.
Large and supportive community. Aside from a low entry threshold and a comparatively straightforward programming language, Unity also comes with a global community of developers who contribute to forums that may contain information on any issue you might encounter throughout your game development journey.
Cross-platform 2D/3D support. Just like Unreal Engine, Unity allows you to build both two- and three-dimensional mobile apps, also featuring native support of AR/VR. The same goes for its cross-platform capabilities — you can build mobile games for Android and iOS devices.
Cons:
Lack of proper mobile game development documentation. In contrast to Unreal, Unity’s documentation related to creating video games for mobile platforms is often either outdated or even missing at all. Nevertheless, if you choose to opt for our mobile game development services, you won’t need to bother about this minor drawback.
Insufficient graphics for AAA mobile games. Sometimes you may feel the lack of premium-quality graphics support while working in Unity. Although this game engine isn’t as powerful as Unreal, its graphical capabilities must be enough for 90%+ of your mobile game projects.
As a result of our brief exploration of the game engine world, it’s quite evident that you should choose Unity as your base platform for mobile game development due to a high number of reasons, both mentioned and not mentioned throughout our extended answer.
When it comes to mobile game development, you may want to make up your mind on three things — answer the question of what your product must become, what audience it should target, and what platform it has to be optimized for. The last point is one of the most significant, inasmuch as it touches upon a number and kind of devices that players will be able to access your game on.
In the modern industry, there are two major approaches to making mobile games — native and cross-platform development. So, what are the differences between them? You may need to follow a certain path based on your team composition, business model, and the technology partner you choose.
To start with, native mobile game development is an approach requiring your team to be proficient in such programming languages as Java and Kotlin (for Android systems) as well as Objective-C or Switch (for iOS-based devices). In contrast, cross-platform development is already possible if your team is familiar with a particular game engine like Unity or Unreal and the programming languages they support — C# and C++, respectively.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of native mobile game development?
While mobile games built natively feature excellent performance, they can be accessed only on a limited number of devices (and given the good technical skills of your team, you can optimize your cross-platform mobile game even better).
Although mobile games developed, say, for Android, may have tight security and quality UX designed specifically for that device, it’s incredibly expensive to manage two teams working separately on Android and iOS systems at the same time. In addition, if you opt for only a single platform, you may miss your game’s full potential.
Native mobile apps are costly to deploy because, as already mentioned, you need to keep two separate teams working on different platforms, whereas in cross-platform game development, you focus exclusively on the essential aspects without having to have many departments doing the same job yet for other systems, which isn’t cost-effective at all.
Well, how about the advantages and disadvantages of cross-platform mobile game development?
Based on the extensive experience of Game-Ace, cross-platform mobile game development allows you to free two birds with one key — you save costs and time, as well as get a fully optimized product ready to be released on Google Play, App Store, or any other. Without a doubt, in some cases, this approach may cause some issues with performance on low-end devices, but given the expertise of our developers, it’s not a problem at all.
With cross-platform mobile game development, you get a high-quality result, one block of code can be reused multiple times, and your team won’t burn out, inasmuch as some of the functions you’ll certainly require are already built into a game engine of your preference, be it Unity or Unreal.
With this approach taken advantage of, you maximize the output as well as simplify your mobile game’s maintenance and updating, which is a huge deal when it comes to long-term support of your project.
As a result, we highly recommend that you opt for our cross-platform mobile game development services because that’s how you can squeeze as much potential out of your product as possible and reduce production costs without sacrificing anything.
If you resolve to build an in-house team of mobile game developers or you’d like to extend the already existing one, the information contained in this answer may prove helpful to you. What aspects should you pay attention to? What kind of specialists to hire? What tech stack to focus on? These and other crucial questions may lead a studio to a dead end, simultaneously driving employees to burnout.
Hiring capable developers to work on your mobile game can sometimes be a hell of a job that drains too many resources from your budget. In order to eschew this lot, you should build a team that is disciplined, engaged, motivated, and experienced. Here are some of the most significant aspects to consider during the recruitment phase:
Avoid freelance mobile game developers. Why? Insofar as they work as freelancers, they rarely feel engaged with your project ideas, which entails a lack of dedication and motivation. You definitely don’t want that during any development stage.
Know your goals and limits. Make up your mind regarding what you need to do, the final results, team composition, project scope, budget, etc. However, keep in mind that any mobile game development project requires at least such team members as:
a) programmers (to build the system and write scripts);
b) a UI/UX designer (to create a user-friendly interface);
c) 2D/3D artists (whether your game is two- or three-dimensional, you might need more or fewer of them);
d) a game designer (to elaborate on gameplay mechanics and the storyline);
e) a sound designer (to do magic tricks with music and sound effects);
f) testers (to ensure the absence of critical bugs and the presence of gameplay balance, good performance, optimization, etc.);
g) a project manager (as the name suggests, to manage the entire project).Prefer enthusiasts with less experience than senior specialists without motivation. It will be apparent throughout the interview whether a certain candidate is driven by enthusiasm or profit, so judge by their replies and pay careful attention to how they formulate their thoughts on different aspects of mobile game development.
Take into account pet projects. When a game developer you consider hiring is also working on their own indie games, it may be a notable plus and an excellent argument to prefer that person over others because they feel passionate about their job. Without a doubt, sometimes these projects may impede the progress of yours, but it all depends on the reward system motivating your in-house team.
Refer to outstaffing services. Although you can build a team on your own, the best way to finalize a mobile game is to address professionals who can provide a dedicated team or extend your own with other specialists you may need. Such an approach allows you to save time and costs, reaching the most ambitious goals faster as well as without sacrificing the quality of the final product.
Ultimately, you can either make use of outstaffing services and augment your in-house team with capable specialists from a third-party studio or build a team and pay the full price for keeping it inside your company. Regardless of what you choose, be wary of the pitfalls and always prefer enthusiasm over many hard skills because these can be quickly taught.
The cost of mobile game development services may vary based on your project scale, budget, team composition, established time frame, tech stack used, and many other critical characteristics. Before talking about even the average price of mobile game development, let’s reveal what features and elements affect the final cost estimation:
Mobile gaming platform. One of the most significant factors influencing the price of a mobile game to be developed implies an operating system that it must be optimized for. If you, say, want a mobile game for Android devices, your developers must use Kotlin or Java, while iOS game developers must use Swift, which undoubtedly affects the price. However, this scenario isn’t possible with Game-Ace because we rely on cross-platform game development, meaning that everything we do happens inside Unity or Unreal Engine without the need to pay more for native development.
Game type, genre, and complexity. Before diving into the production stage, you should think about what kind of mobile game you want. An action RPG, RTS, slot? There are multiple genres and game types you have to ponder over. For instance, a simple test prototype mobile game may cost around $3k, while a hyper-casual app — about $10k-$35k, depending on the level of complexity and scale.
Game dimensions. It’s no secret that usually 3D mobile games are more expensive to make than 2D. On average, a 2D mobile game project costs between $5k and $25k, whereas the price of its 3D counterpart starts at $50k and ends somewhere on the edge of your imagination.
Game engine. As a rule, the present-day industry-leading game engines for mobile game development are Unity and Unreal. Although Game-Ace can develop your product using any of the two, in most cases, we’ll end up tweaking configurations for your future mobile game inside Unity because it’s more cost-effective. If you don’t need a AA or AAA RPG open-world multiplayer mobile game, Unity is more than enough for your project.
Game development approach. Whether you intend to use the resources of your company, seek them on freelance platforms, or use the services of a professional outsourcing studio, each decision will affect the final cost estimation significantly. Well, the most cost-efficient approach is undoubtedly to address a skilled mobile game development company that can bring you the result you deserve within a reasonable time frame.
Now it’s time to provide insights into the average price of mobile game development projects. At the same time, it’s highly recommended that you contact our managers and discuss your project in great detail for a more in-depth estimation. So, a casual mobile game may cost $20k-$150k, while high-end entertainment apps quite often require you to spend about $500k-$1m, depending on multiple factors.
In any event, with our mobile game development services, you’ll get an excellent opportunity to both to get a product you expect and save resources on its creation. Our specialists have enough experience and expertise to deliver a high-quality mobile game of any type or genre. So why do everything on your own or use unreliable services provided by individual freelancers if you can find a better way to work on your project?
